Category: People
Key figures: Coretta Scott King (1927–2006), Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter (attendees at state funeral)
Summary
Coretta Scott King was born on April 27, 1927, in Marion, Alabama, the second of three children of Obadiah and Bernice McMurry Scott. She grew up in Perry County during the era of Jim Crow segregation and demonstrated exceptional academic and musical ability from an early age. After graduating valedictorian of her class at Lincoln High School, she attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, on a scholarship — an institution known for its progressive racial policies — where she majored in music and elementary education and became active in civil rights causes through the campus NAACP chapter.
In 1951, King received a scholarship from the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation to attend the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she studied voice and violin. It was in Boston that she met Martin Luther King Jr., then a doctoral student at Boston University. They married on June 18, 1953, at her parents’ home in Marion, Alabama. Together they had four children: Yolanda Denise (1955), Martin Luther III (1957), Dexter Scott (1961), and Bernice Albertine (1963).
Coretta Scott King died on January 30, 2006, at the age of 78, at a holistic medical facility, Vista La Mar, in Rosarito Beach, Baja California, Mexico. The cause of death was respiratory failure secondary to advanced ovarian cancer, compounded by complications from the stroke she had suffered in August 2005, which had left her right side paralyzed and impaired her speech. Her passing marked the end of the last direct living witness generation to the founding years of the American Civil Rights Movement.
Life and Activism
Role During the Civil Rights Movement
Coretta Scott King was not a passive observer of the movement her husband led — she was an active participant and, at times, a strategic counselor. She performed in civil rights Freedom Concerts beginning in 1962, combining narration with solo voice recitals to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in cities including New York, Los Angeles, and London. These concerts raised significant funds and helped sustain the SCLC financially during critical phases of the movement.
Following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, Coretta Scott King stepped immediately into public leadership. Just four days later, on April 8, she led a march of approximately 42,000 people through Memphis in honor of sanitation workers whose strike her husband had been supporting when he was killed. Within days she had also returned to speaking engagements and appeared on national television, deliberately maintaining public visibility at a moment when the civil rights movement faced its deepest crisis of leadership.
Founding of the King Center
Two days after her husband’s assassination, Coretta Scott King founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta — an institution that would become the custodian of his papers, the home of his crypt, and the organizing base for the annual commemorations of his birthday. The center’s permanent facility, adjacent to the King family’s birth home in the Sweet Auburn district of Atlanta, was formally completed in 1981. Under her leadership, the King Center established programs in nonviolent conflict resolution, trained tens of thousands of activists internationally, and built an archive recognized as the definitive repository of documents from the American civil rights era.
Campaign for the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday
Coretta Scott King’s most politically significant achievement after her husband’s death was the fifteen-year campaign to establish a federal holiday in his honor. She first lobbied Congress for the holiday in 1968, the year of his assassination, and introduced the first formal petition for a federal holiday to the Congressional leadership. The effort required sustained advocacy through multiple administrations and faced consistent opposition from conservatives who argued that granting a holiday to a private citizen was inappropriate or too costly for businesses.
President Ronald Reagan signed the legislation creating the holiday on November 2, 1983. The first nationwide observance took place on January 20, 1986. Coretta Scott King attended the signing ceremony at the Rose Garden, alongside members of Congress and civil rights leaders. The signing came after Reagan had initially opposed the holiday on grounds of cost, and only after Congress passed the measure with veto-proof majorities in both chambers.
Broader Advocacy: Women’s Rights, Anti-Apartheid, and LGBTQ+ Rights
King consistently expanded her definition of civil rights beyond racial equality. She was an early and vocal opponent of South African apartheid, participating in sit-in demonstrations at the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C., in the 1980s and calling for sanctions. She attended the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s first democratically elected president in May 1994.
She was also notable among civil rights leaders of her generation for publicly endorsing LGBTQ+ rights. As early as 1983 she was linking racial civil rights to gay rights rhetorically; in 1998 she delivered a speech at the NAACP national convention explicitly arguing that the civil rights movement should embrace gay and lesbian equality. In a 2004 op-ed, she wrote that Martin Luther King Jr. had opposed discrimination in all its forms and that opposing gay marriage was inconsistent with his vision. Her willingness to take this position put her at odds with some elements of the Black church leadership but aligned her with progressive civil rights advocates who saw the issues as interconnected.
Final Years and Health Decline
In August 2005, Coretta Scott King suffered a stroke that paralyzed her right side and significantly impaired her speech, ending her ability to continue the public appearances and advocacy she had pursued for nearly four decades. Her son Dexter Scott King and daughter Bernice King became increasingly prominent in managing the King Center following her incapacitation. In the final weeks of her illness, King traveled to the holistic medical center in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, seeking alternative treatment not available to her under conventional medicine in the United States.
Death, Funeral, and Legacy
Lying in State
Coretta Scott King’s body was returned to Atlanta on February 2, 2006. On February 6–7, 2006, her casket lay in state at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta, where she became the first African-American woman — and only the third woman in Georgia history — to receive that honor. Approximately 16,000 members of the public filed past her casket during the two-day vigil. The Georgia governor ordered flags flown at half-staff across the state.
State Funeral
Her funeral service was held on February 7, 2006, at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia, presided over by Bishop Eddie Long. The service lasted more than six hours and was attended by four sitting or former U.S. presidents — George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter — as well as senators, House members, civil rights leaders, and celebrities. An estimated 10,000 to 14,000 people attended inside the church, with thousands more watching on screens outside. Multiple eulogists, including several of the presidents, drew explicit parallels between King’s legacy and contemporary political issues, prompting some controversy when remarks touched on the Iraq War and domestic surveillance programs.
She was interred at the King Center in Atlanta, in the Freedom Hall complex, alongside her husband.
Historical Standing
Coretta Scott King occupied a singular role in American history: for 38 years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, she served as the living bridge between the civil rights movement’s defining era and the present. Her death in 2006 — the same year as the deaths of other civil rights-era figures including Rosa Parks (October 2005, the year before) — underscored the passage of a founding generation. The grief expressed globally upon her passing reflected both personal mourning for a beloved figure and awareness that the generation of direct witnesses to the movement’s central moments was now almost entirely gone.