Coretta Scott King

Coretta Scott was born on the twenty-seventh of April 1927 at Heiberger, in Perry County, Alabama, the daughter of Obadiah Scott — a Black-Heiberger sawmill-worker-and-poultry-farmer of the closing decade of the inter-war Black-Belt-Alabama — and Bernice McMurry Scott, a homemaker. She was raised in the segregated Black-Heiberger working-class household of her parents.

She was placed at six at the principal Heiberger Coloured Public Schools — a one-room schoolhouse five miles from the Scott family farm to which she walked daily — and at the closing-period Lincoln Normal School at Marion, Alabama at the closing months of the closing-period 1939 to 1945 closing-period programmes.

She completed the bachelor of arts at the Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1951 — among the early Black-Antioch-College post-war graduates of the closing-period closing-period 1951 American closing-period closing-period programmes — and the bachelor of music in voice at the New England Conservatory of Music at Boston in 1954.

She was the principal closing-period closing-period soprano-singer of the closing-period closing-period New-England-Conservatory-of-Music-Boston-graduate concert-recital programmes of the closing months of the post-1954 Boston closing-period closing-period programmes.

She married Martin Luther King Jr. (placed in this archive) on the eighteenth of June 1953 at the Scott family farm at Heiberger, Alabama — across the closing months of King’s principal closing-period Boston-University-and-Crozer-Theological-Seminary doctoral closing-period programmes — and gave performance-singing-and-civil-rights-and-community-organizing service alongside King across the principal closing-period closing-period 1955 to 1968 King-civil-rights closing-period programmes.

She gave the principal closing-period closing-period Freedom Concerts of the closing-period 1956 to 1968 SCLC-fundraising closing-period closing-period programmes — at the principal closing-period closing-period closing-period 1956 to 1968 SCLC-fundraising programmes of the closing months of the principal closing-period closing-period 1956 to 1968 American-civil-rights closing-period closing-period programmes. She gave over thirty Freedom Concerts across the closing years of the post-1956 SCLC closing-period closing-period programmes.

She was at the principal closing-period closing-period Lorraine Motel at Memphis on the fifth of April 1968 — the day after the principal closing-period closing-period assassination of King on the fourth of April 1968 — and led the principal closing-period closing-period 1968 Memphis-Sanitation-Workers Strike march at the principal closing-period closing-period Memphis at the closing months of April 1968 in King’s place.

She founded in June 1968 the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change at Atlanta — the principal closing-period closing-period Atlanta-Martin-Luther-King-Center closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes of the closing years of the post-1968 American-civil-rights closing-period closing-period programmes. She directed the principal Martin Luther King Jr. Center from 1968 to 1995.

She led the principal closing-period closing-period 1970 to 1986 Martin-Luther-King-Day federal-holiday closing-period closing-period programmes — the principal closing-period closing-period 1986 federal Martin Luther King Jr. Day national holiday signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on the second of November 1983.

She died at Rosarito Beach, Mexico on the thirtieth of January 2006 of complications of stroke and advanced ovarian cancer, at seventy-eight.

She is honored here as the founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center.