One of the most celebrated champions of human and civil rights, Coretta Scott King, in partnership with her husband, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ignited democracy movements worldwide. Coretta Scott was born in Marion, Alabama on April 27, 1927. Her parents were both entrepreneurs and her mother was musically talented. At age 10, Coretta worked to increase the family's income. As a child, she expressed interest in music and quickly excelled in grade school as lead in the choir. She graduated valedictorian from Lincoln Normal High School, where she played trumpet and piano, sang in the chorus, and participated in school musicals.
She entered Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1945. While at Antioch, Scott studied voice and music education. Coretta studied music with Walter Anderson, the first non-white chair of an academic department in a historically white college. She also became politically active, due largely to her experience of racial discrimination by the local school board. Coretta became a member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as the Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committees.
She credited Antioch with preparing her for her role in the civil rights movement, stating that “the college’s emphasis on service to mankind reinforced the Christian spirit of giving and sharing” and provided “a new self-assurance that encouraged me in competition with all people”. Coretta Scott graduated from Antioch College with a B.A. in music and education and won a scholarship to study concert singing at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts in 1951. While working toward a degree in voice, she met Martin Luther King, Jr., then a graduate theology student at Boston University.
Although she was not initially attracted to him, the two began to date, and were married at the Scott family home in Marion on 18 June 1953. The ceremony was performed by Martin Luther King Sr. Coretta had the vow to obey her husband removed from the ceremony, which was unusual for the time. After the wedding, they returned to Boston to complete their degrees. Coretta Scott King earned her bachelor of music degree in June 1954. After Coretta completed her degree in voice and violin at the New England Conservatory, the newlyweds moved to Montgomery Alabama.
Martin Luther King had accepted a position as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The church became a center for the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama and eventually the country. Before long, they found themselves in the middle of the Montgomery bus boycott, as Martin was elected leader of the protest movement. Although Scott King was focused on raising the couple’s four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther King, III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice Albertine King , she continued to play a critical role in many of the civil rights campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s.
Although the demands of raising a family had caused Coretta Scott King to retire from singing, she found another way to put her musical background to the service of the cause. She also conceived and organized a series of Freedom Concerts as fundraising efforts to benefit the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The proceeds from these concerts were donated to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Scott King also accompanied her husband around the world, traveling to Ghana in 1957 and India in 1959.
She was particularly affected by the women she met in India. “As we traveled through the land, we were greatly impressed by the part women played in the political life of India, far more than in our own country”. In 1962, Coretta Scott King’s interest in disarmament efforts took her to Geneva, Switzerland, where she served as a Women’s Strike for Peace delegate to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference. Two years later, she accompanied her husband to Oslo for the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize. She later recalled thinking: “What a blessing, to be a co-worker with a man whose life would have so profound an impact on the world”
As a leading participant in the Civil Rights Movement, Coretta recognized the importance of women to that movement. She implored, “Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe that you must become its soul.” Coretta Scott King became a symbol, in her own right, of her husband's struggle for peace and brotherhood, presiding with a quiet, steady, stoic presence over seminars and conferences on global issues. On April 4, 1968, a shot rang out as King stood on the 2nd floor balcony at the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 p.m.
After King’s assassination, Coretta Scott King devoted much of her life to spreading her husband’s philosophy of nonviolence. "I'm more determined than ever that my husband's dream will become a reality" Mrs. King said soon after his slaying. Coretta King was now thrust into the national spotlight, and she showed a demonstration of the strong will that lay beneath the placid calm and dignity of her character. Just days after his death, she led a march on behalf of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Later that month, she stood in for her husband at an anti–Vietnam War rally in New York.
Only two months after her husband’s assassination, she spoke during the Poor People’s Campaign at the Lincoln Memorial in June 1968, and announced that it was time for “a solid block of women power to fight the three great evils of racism, poverty and war.” In 1969, she became the Founding President, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of The King Center. With a deep commitment to preserving King’s legacy, almost immediately Coretta Scott King began mobilizing support for the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
As founding president of the King Center, she guided its construction next to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King had served as co-pastor with his father, Martin Luther King, Sr. In 1974, Mrs. King formed a broad coalition of over 100 religious, labor, business, civil, and womens’ rights organizations dedicated to a national policy of full employment and equal economic opportunity. She also remained active in various women’s organizations, including the National Organization for Women, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and United Church Women.
She was a strong advocate and spokesperson for the movement to abolish apartheid in South Africa. Along with her daughter Bernice and son Martin III, Mrs. King was arrested for demonstrating in front of the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C. After the fall of apartheid, under Mrs. King’s leadership The King Center trained 300,000 new South African voters on the principles of nonviolence in preparation for the country’s first multiracial election. She then stood with president-elect Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg when he became South Africa’s first democratically elected president.
Every year after the assassination of her husband in 1968, Coretta attended a commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to mark his birthday on January 15. She fought for years to make it a national holiday. As chairperson of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Federal Holiday Commission, she successfully formalized plans for the annual celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, which began in January 1986. In January 1986, Mrs. King oversaw the first legal holiday in honor of her husband – a holiday which is celebrated by millions of people in the United States and worldwide in over 100 countries.
For over forty years, Mrs. King traveled throughout the world speaking out on behalf of racial and economic justice, women’s and children’s rights, gay and lesbian dignity, religious freedom, the needs of the poor and homeless, full employment, and nuclear disarmament. When the grand narrative of American feminism is rewritten, Coretta Scott King will join her fallen African American sisters— Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary McLeod Bethune, Sojourner Truth, Mary Church Terrell, and others, as celebrated icons of the herstory of women’s movement.