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Coretta Scott King was an author, activist, civil rights leader, and the wife of Martin Luther King Jr (Salahub, 2018). Coretta helped lead the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and actively advocated for African-American equality (Whitehead, 2019). While Coretta was best known for being the wife of famed civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King created her legacy in the movement to end injustice. She also worked to continue her husband’s legacy after his assassination.

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Here is a link that is very important

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Until The Last Gun Is Silent: Coretta Scott King 1968/2006

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I have a dream speech

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Martin Luther King, Jr. I Have A Dream Speech

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Another thing is that coretta scott king also founded the king center .

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On Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, today's monumental American is his wife and champion, Coretta Scott King.

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Here is another

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Coretta Scott King on Martin Luther King, Jr. as a Symbol | From the WTTW Archive

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Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow explains how he has become a symbol, in a 1978 interview.

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Coretta Scott King on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Humor | From the WTTW Archive

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Coretta Scott King discusses her husband's sense of humor in a 1978 interview.

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Coretta Scott King continued to be a notable force in the Civil Rights Movement after the assassination of her husband in 1968 (Brittanica, 2019). She founded in Atlanta the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change (commonly known as the King Center) (Brittanica, 2019). In 1969, Coretta established an annual Coretta Scott King Award to honor an African American author of an outstanding text for children, and in 1979 a similar award was added to honor an exceptional African American illustrator.

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Many threats were made against Coretta Scott King and her family both before and after her husband's assassination.  Segregation, racial discrimination, and death threats were not an uncommon experience for Coretta.
Being under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and transitioning from being in the background of the Civil Rights Movement in the shadows of her husband to taking the helm and being front and center brought much disruption to the life of Coretta Scott King.

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what obstacles did coretta scott king have to overcome to achieve success?

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What obstacles did Coretta Scott King have to overcome to achieve success? | Coretta Scott King Questions & Answers | BookRags.com

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Get answers to your Coretta Scott King questions like What obstacles did Coretta Scott King have to overcome to achieve success? from BookRags.com

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Coretta Scott King attended multiple institutions for higher learning. Coretta was as well known for her singing and violin playing as her civil rights activism. She attended Lincoln High School, graduating as the school's Valedictorian in 1945, and then enrolled at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in music and education in 1951. Coretta earned a fellowship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where she met soon-to-be famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., then a doctoral candidate at Boston University’s School of Theology (Biography, 2019).

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What It Takes is an audio podcast on iTunes produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: music, science and exploration, sports, film, technology, literature, the military and social justice.

The Road to Civil Rights iBook takes readers on a journey through one of the most significant periods in America's history. Travel through the timeline and listen to members of the American Academy of Achievement as they discuss the key events that shaped the future of the country.

When God calls you to a great task, He provides you with the strength to accomplish what He has called you to do. Faith and prayer, family and friends were always available when I needed them...I learned that when you are willing to make sacrifices for a great cause, you will never be alone.

Coretta Scott was born in Heiberger, Alabama and raised on the farm of her parents, Bernice and Obadiah Scott, in Perry County, Alabama. She was exposed at an early age to the injustices of life in a segregated society. She walked five miles a day to attend the one-room Crossroad School in Marion, Alabama, while the white students rode buses to an all-white school closer by. Young Coretta excelled at her studies, particularly music, and was valedictorian of her graduating class at Lincoln High School. She graduated in 1945 and received a scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

As an undergraduate, Coretta Scott took an active interest in the nascent Civil Rights Movement; she joined the Antioch chapter of the NAACP, and the college's Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committees. She graduated from Antioch 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 Boston she met a young theology student, Martin Luther King, Jr., and her life was changed forever. They were married on June 18, 1953, in a ceremony conducted by the groom's father, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. Coretta Scott King completed her degree in voice and violin at the New England Conservatory, and the young couple moved in September 1954 to Montgomery, Alabama, where Martin Luther King, Jr. had accepted an appointment as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

They were soon caught up in the dramatic events that triggered the modern Civil Rights Movement. When Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on a Montgomery city bus to a white passenger, she was arrested for violating the city's ordinances giving white passengers preferential treatment in public conveyances. The black citizens of Montgomery organized immediately in defense of Mrs. Parks, and under Martin Luther King's leadership organized a boycott of the city's buses. The Montgomery bus boycott drew the attention of the world to the continued injustice of segregation in the United States, and led to court decisions striking down all local ordinances separating the races in public transit.

Dr. King's eloquent advocacy of nonviolent civil disobedience soon made him the most recognizable face of the Civil Rights Movement, and he was called on to lead marches in city after city, with Mrs. King at his side, inspiring the citizens, black and white, to defy the segregation laws. The visibility of Dr. King's leadership attracted fierce opposition from the supporters of institutionalized racism. In 1956, white supremacists bombed the King family home in Montgomery. Mrs. King and the couple's first child narrowly escaped injury.

The Kings had four children in all: Yolanda Denise; Martin Luther, III; Dexter Scott; and Bernice Albertine. Although the demands of raising a family had caused Mrs. King to retire from singing, she found another way to put her musical background to the service of the cause. She conceived and performed a series of critically acclaimed Freedom Concerts, combining poetry, narration and music to tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement. Over the next few years, Mrs. King staged Freedom Concerts in some of America's most distinguished concert venues, as fundraisers for the organization her husband had founded, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Dr. King's fame spread beyond the United States, and he was increasingly seen not only as a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, but as the symbol of an international struggle for human liberation from racism, colonialism and all forms of oppression and discrimination. In 1957, Dr. King and Mrs. King journeyed to Africa to celebrate the independence of Ghana. In 1959, they made a pilgrimage to India to honor the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, whose philosophy of nonviolence had inspired them. Dr. King's leadership of the movement for human rights was recognized on the international stage when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1964, Mrs. King accompanied her husband when he traveled to Oslo, Norway to accept the Prize.

In the 1960s, Dr. King broadened his message and his activism to embrace causes of international peace and economic justice. Mrs. King found herself in increasing demand as a public speaker. She became the first woman to deliver the Class Day address at Harvard, and the first woman to preach at a statutory service at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. She served as a Women's Strike for Peace delegate to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 1962. Mrs. King became a liaison to international peace and justice organizations even before Dr. King took a public stand in 1967 against U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Channeling her grief, Mrs. King concentrated her energies on fulfilling her husband's work by building The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change as a living memorial to her husband's life and dream. Years of planning, fundraising and lobbying lay ahead, but Mrs. King would not be deterred, nor did she neglect direct involvement in the causes her husband had championed. In 1969, Coretta Scott King published the first volume of her autobiography, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 1970s, Mrs. King maintained her husband's commitment to the cause of economic justice. In 1974, she formed the Full Employment Action Council, a broad coalition of over 100 religious, labor, business, civil and women's rights organizations dedicated to a national policy of full employment and equal economic opportunity; Mrs. King served as Co-Chair of the Council.

In 1981, The King Center, the first institution built in memory of an African American leader, opened to the public. The Center is housed in the Freedom Hall complex encircling Dr. King's tomb in Atlanta, Georgia. It is part of a 23-acre national historic site that also includes Dr. King's birthplace and the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he and his father both preached. The King Center Library and Archives houses the largest collection of documents from the Civil Rights era. The Center receives over one million visitors a year, and has trained tens of thousands of students, teachers, community leaders and administrators in Dr. King's philosophy and strategy of nonviolence through seminars, workshops and training programs.

Mrs. King continued to serve the cause of justice and human rights; her travels took her throughout the world on goodwill missions to Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia. In 1983, she marked the 20th anniversary of the historic March on Washington by leading a gathering of more than 800 human rights organizations, the Coalition of Conscience, in the largest demonstration the capital city had seen up to that time.

Coretta Scott King led the successful campaign to establish Dr. King's birthday, January 15, as a national holiday in the United States. By an Act of Congress, the first national observance of the holiday took place in 1986. Dr. King's birthday is now marked by annual celebrations in over 100 countries. Mrs. King was invited by President Clinton to witness the historic handshake between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Yassir Arafat at the signing of the Middle East Peace Accords in 1993. In 1985, Mrs. King and three of her children were arrested at the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C. for protesting against that country's apartheid system of racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Ten years later, she stood with Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg when he was sworn in as President of South Africa.

After 27 years at the helm of The King Center, Mrs. King turned over leadership of the Center to her son, Dexter Scott King, in 1995. She remained active in the causes of racial and economic justice, and in her remaining years devoted much of her energy to AIDS education and curbing gun violence. Although she died in 2006 at the age of 78, she remains an inspirational figure to men and women around the world.

View and listen to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historic "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on the steps of Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963.

Member of the American Academy of Achievement, poet and best-selling author, Maya Angelou shares her interpretation of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

Inducted in 1997

"When I went to the movies with other black children, we had to sit in the balcony while the white kids got to sit in the better seats below. We had to walk to school while the white children rode in school buses paid for by our parents' taxes. Such messages, saying we were inferior, were a daily part of our lives."

Young Coretta Scott's gift for music and enthusiasm for education led her far beyond the segregated world of her childhood, but when she met the young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the two resolved to return to the Deep South together and pursue the cause of justice in her own home state of Alabama. The Montgomery bus boycott thrust the young couple to the forefront of a revitalized civil rights movement, even as it exposed their growing family to the retaliation of those who opposed any change in the old system.

Braving death threats and surviving the bombing of their home by white supremacists, Coretta Scott King stood by the cause and her husband, from the Birmingham jail to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, from the March on Washington, to a stage in Oslo, Norway, where he accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace. After his assassination, she inspired the world with her courage, dignity and tireless devotion to preserving Dr. King's legacy.

As founding President, Chair, and Chief Executive Officer of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, she saw that tens of thousands of activists from all over the world were trained in the philosophy and practice of nonviolence. She served as an advisor to freedom and democracy movements all over the world, and as a consultant to world leaders including President Corazon Aquino of the Philippines, President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, and President Nelson Mandela of South Africa. One of the world's most admired women, she remained an outspoken champion of justice and human dignity to the end of her days.

(On June 18, 1999, Coretta Scott King addressed the American Academy of Achievement at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Excerpts from her remarks on that occasion are interspersed throughout two video interviews - one from 1999 and the other from 2004.)
You were a music student in Boston when you met Martin Luther King, Jr. for the first time. Did you ever imagine that the two of you would play such an important part in the Civil Rights Movement?
Coretta Scott King: No, I didn't.

I don't think that my husband, although he said he was going to go back south and fight to change the system - and he was thinking about not just in Alabama or in Georgia, but he was talking about making our society more inclusive, changing the system so that everybody could participate - although he talked about that at that time, we never dreamed that we would have an opportunity, that we would be projected into the forefront of the struggle as we were. We were just going to work from, as he said, a black Baptist Church pulpit. That was the freest place in the society at that time, but we had no idea what God had in store for us. And I do believe it was divine intervention that we were thrust into the forefront of the struggle.

Well, first of all, I was extremely excited about what was going on because this was something that had never happened before, and I knew this was history-making, and I also knew that it was not only happening in Montgomery but it was - the impact of this was maybe much further - much more extensive than Montgomery because during the Montgomery boycott we heard that there was a boycott in Johannesburg, South Africa of buses, and also there was one in Mobile and in Tallahassee, so it was like it was spreading but we also knew that the struggle was much bigger than a boycott. It was about the injustices in our society. It was about changing the society in such a way and changing the laws of the government locally, and certainly nationally we had to create new laws to protect us and protect the rights once they were won.

On a personal level, you had an extraordinary realization during the time of the Montgomery, Alabama bus desegregation court hearings. Can you take us back to that time in your life and express your personal concerns, but also the results of your soul searching?

We even experienced what was like modern day miracles when things happened. Like when the Supreme Court had ruled on bus desegregation, we were in court that day because the City of Montgomery was having a hearing and was trying to outlaw our transportation system and, if it had, maybe the people would have gotten tired and gone back to the buses. And my husband was very worried, and I said to him, "You know what? I think that by the time we go to court, and by the time the judge rules, that the Supreme Court will have ruled." And we felt that if the Supreme Court ruled it would be in our favor and that was my consolation. Sure enough, while we were in court Associated Press - an Associated Press reporter handed a note to my husband and it said, "The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled today that bus segregation in Montgomery is unconstitutional." So that ended the court session. So it was that kind of thing and intervention again that helped us to realize that we were doing the right thing, and we continued to do that, and more importantly that we had been called. I had been called personally to be in Montgomery at that time because I had always sought my purpose. As a teenager I began to think about what my life was going to be like and going to college. That was one level. Going beyond there was the next level. Going to prepare for a music career, but when I got to Boston there was, I realized, another reason for me being there. And then I wondered why Martin Luther King, Jr., a minister, that I didn't think I would ever marry a minister, and then he was going back south, I wanted to go back south, but I wasn't prepared to go at that time, because I had to finish my work, and finally in Montgomery - and then things began to happen and the house was bombed. So I did a lot of soul searching after that and tried to remember, you know, try to think back of how I got there, and I realized that all my life I had been being prepared for this role, and that we were supposed to be there in Montgomery. And it was a great feeling of satisfaction because I realized that I had found my purpose.

What was life like for you when you were growing up?
Coretta Scott King: I grew up in the Deep South. It was totally segregated in terms of race, and everything was separate but unequal. I had wonderful parents who inspired me to be the best person that I could be, and my mother always told me that I was going to go to college, even if she didn't have but one dress to put on. So I grew up knowing that I was going to somehow find a way out of the situation I grew up in.

I grew up on a farm. We were culturally deprived, but we were not poor in the sense that we didn't have very much. We had limited resources, because in the country at that time nobody had very much, and we had probably more than most people.

As an African American child growing up in the segregated South, I was told, one way or another, almost every day of my life, that I wasn't as good as a white child. When I went to the movies with other black children, we had to sit in the balcony while the white kids got to sit in the better seats below. We had to walk to school while the white children rode in school buses paid for by our parents' taxes. Such messages, saying we were inferior, were a daily part of our lives. But I was blessed with parents who taught me not to let anyone make me feel like I wasn't good enough, and as my mother told me, "You are just as good as anyone else. You get an education and try to be somebody. Then you won't have to be kicked around by anybody, and you won't have to depend on anyone for your livelihood, not even a man."

My parents taught me some wonderful values that have have stayed with me, and I've built on them throughout my life. If it hadn't been for my parents, who I consider heroes, I wouldn't be the kind of person I am. I am very thankful and grateful for them. So I went to a good school, a good private school, because that was the only school close by, and it was semi-private at the time, and that school also prepared me to go on to college. I went to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Antioch College, as you probably realize, is a college that teaches people how to have a world view. All races and religions were represented there, and it was an excellent education. I had a very broad background in liberal arts, and I had work experience as well. Antioch was about making change in societies, about social change, which was preparing me at that time for the role that I would play later in life.
Did you have any favorite books when you were growing up? Is there something you remember reading as a young person that had a big impact on you?
Coretta Scott King: I was inspired by the words of many, many persons. I used to recite a lot of poetry, and I was inspired by the words of Longfellow, "Lives of great men all remind us..." Even though I was a female, I thought, "Of course, that means me, too."

"Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime

And departing leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time."

And so on.
Besides your parents, were there other heroes or role models who were particularly important to you?
Coretta Scott King: I was inspired by the likes of Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, because I was in high school during the '40, and of course President Roosevelt was a hero of mine. I used to love to hear him speak, and I recognized the voice whenever he came on the radio, because we didn't have televisions back then. I never got to meet Mrs. Roosevelt. Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune, a black woman who became an advisor to President Roosevelt and founded a school in Florida - the Bethune-Cookman College - was another great black woman that was a role model for me. And then, of course, there was Paul Robeson, who was a great singer and had such a commanding presence. When I first met him and he performed, you could just feel so much power when he walked out on the stage, and his words were so meaningful - his very deep voice, both speaking and singing.
We've read stories of your having to go five miles to go to school and of your mother having to arrange for transportation so the black kids in your area could even go to high school. What was that like for you?
It was the way it was. I didn't like it and I always felt less - I knew I was important as they were but it just - it sort of brought down a curtain, you know, in a sense in my selfhood and helped me to be more - become more determined to get out of that situation and to try to do something about it when I finally - when I had an opportunity. I was determined myself to get an education, to get the best education possible, and to be able to come back and give back something to the community, and that was what I really went to college with my mind on as well as the New England Conservatory of Music. So I attended the New England Conservatory on a scholarship; I had a scholarship to Antioch and a scholarship to the Conservatory.
You were studying music when you met your husband, Dr. King. How did that come about? Was there someone who influenced you or encouraged you in that direction?
Coretta Scott King: I studied elementary education and music at Antioch, and I couldn't get a full music degree but I always wanted to study music; that was my first love. In high school, I had a teacher who influenced me greatly, Miss Olive J. Williams, and she was versatile in music, and I wanted to be like her. She exposed me to the world of classical music. Before then, I had never heard classical music. She exposed me also to the great composers of the world, as well as black performers, which I didn't know about at the time: Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes and Dorothy Maynor and others. So I got my foundation and my beginning there, and then, at Antioch, I built on that with another teacher named Walter Anderson. He was the one who eventually encouraged me to apply when I graduated from Antioch to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.
Just as you were entering into a new chapter of your life in college you met your future husband. What were your early impressions of that developing relationship?
After my first semester in Boston in 1951, I met Martin Luther King, Jr. Of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. was studying for his doctorate in systematic theology, and he was going to go back South and pastor a Baptist Church, and he was looking for a wife. I wasn't looking for a husband, but he was a wonderful human being, and he made everyone feel special, and he made me feel very special as a woman. I still resisted his overtures, but after he persisted, I had to pray about it, because my parents were religious, I was brought up in the church, and I had a strong faith. I always believed that there was a purpose for my life, and that I had to seek that purpose, and that if I discovered that purpose, then I believed that I would be successful in what I was doing. And I thought I had found that purpose when I decided that music was going to be my career - concert singing. I was going to be trained as a concert singer at the New England Conservatory of Music. I studied voice the first year, and after I met Martin and prayed about whether or not I should open myself to that relationship, I had a dream, and in that dream, I was made to feel that I should allow myself to be open and stop fighting the relationship. And that's what I did, and of course the rest is history.
But you finished your music education, didn't you? How did you make use of your musical training after your marriage?
Coretta Scott King: I finished Conservatory with a degree in voice and music education, and my second instrument was violin. I started doing concerts when I was a college student, and after we moved to Montgomery - my husband was called to a church there - I continued to perform. I performed concerts the first year, got pregnant, had to stop, performed between babies - I have four children - and I was doing standard concerts when I had my fourth child. I realized I could not continue to do that that way. And, I developed the "Freedom Concert" concept, where I narrated the story of the civil rights movement that we were involved in, and sang freedom songs in between the narrations that told the story of our struggle from Montgomery to Washington at that time. In 1964, I did my debut with my Freedom Concert at Town Hall, raised money for the cause, and the rest of the time I raised money for my husband's organization doing Freedom Concerts across the country and so forth.
How do you see your work now? What challenges do you see for humanity in the new century?
Coretta Scott King: I think what I've tried to do is to empower people to understand that they can make a difference. And by using the method of nonviolence as a way of life, it becomes internalized into your life; so everything that you seek to do, you use those principles and those steps, based on those principles, and the steps and methodologies, so that if you have a problem or a conflict in whatever it is you are doing, you are able to better resolve that. And if it is dealing with people, certainly you'll know how to resolve that and become reconciled and to move forward.

Today we have so many problems. Some of them are new problems. You have the human rights struggle continuing, but you also have problems like HIV and AIDS. I think young people have to be dedicated to find ways to deal with these problems, to educate the whole world, because the world as a whole needs to be educated. We have a lot of education that needs to be done here in this country so that people can avoid getting the disease. We know that people can live with the disease, but there is a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done there. There are other problems that we are fighting now. Violence is so pervasive. People have access to guns, and so many people are being killed. I've done a lot of work with the handgun control organization - it's called the Brady Organization now - with Sarah and Jim Brady. There are many things that we can do now to get involved with so many of the causes that are tending to destroy us.

I think that nonviolence allows you and empowers you to do what is necessary, because what you do is build coalitions. You can't do all of it by yourself, but you can put together a coalition and get other people involved, or join organizations that are already involved and continue to work to eradicate poverty, of course, since poverty is still with us, very much so. My husband - it was one of the triple evils that he talked about - poverty, racism and war. And of course, they all are forms of violence, and we have to continue to work to make sure that people everywhere have a decent livelihood, that they have jobs, they have housing, they have health care, they have quality education. All of these areas that we still have to work on and to improve, so that the quality of life for all people is improved, and we can achieve indeed the "beloved community" that Martin talked about, that I believe in.
Did your belief in nonviolence ever waver? It was tested time after time after time. Did you ever think that maybe nonviolence was not the way to go?
Coretta Scott King: No, I really - I never thought that it wasn't the way to go. I always - I guess because of my religious upbringing and, you know, I believed that even though we kind of stray away from it but you know what is right. I mean that you've been taught it was wrong to kill. I believe that firmly. I believe that you have to try to resolve your conflicts without violence. I believe that you have to give something back to society that has nurtured you and so I never got to the point where I felt that nonviolence was not viable. I just felt that when there was violence and it came from within, and very seldom violence did come from within, I realized that it wasn't that it wouldn't work, it's that people didn't follow the proper steps in trying to achieve it because there are a set of principles and there are a set of steps in the methodology that we were taught about nonviolence. And when we follow those they work. It may take a while but in order to have a peaceful solution and a lasting peace it has to be a nonviolent approach.
If one of these young people came to you and asked you for advice about how they should live their lives or how they can achieve what they hope to achieve, what would you say to them? What would be your advice to young people today?
Coretta Scott King: Well, certainly you have to get the best possible education and training that's available and you have to decide that you need to learn as much about the world and society. And these young people live in a global village really.

Everybody lives in a global village and a global community. I didn't know at the time. I didn't live in a global community, but I had a vision that I would be living in a global village. I knew I had to be prepared to be comfortable anywhere in the world. That was what my goal was. So these young people are being prepared differently than I was because they live in a different time but the most important thing they have to decide is not just to get an education and to be selfish about it but that they must prepare themselves to give back and to make a difference in the world. We have to create what my husband called "The Beloved Community." If we are to survive we have to learn how to solve our problems and resolve our conflicts in a nonviolent manner. And so I think it's important for them to realize that they have a personal responsibility, each one of them.
Looking to the future, what must be a priority for the next generation in order to foster a society of nonviolence and acceptance?
When I sat in the audience today and I thought about these young people who had gathered and I thought about how this all came together, I just wish that there were more gatherings such as what we have experienced here the weekend at the International Achievement Summit because if we are going to continue to change society for the better and if our world is to survive, we have got to invest in these young people in a way so that they know which is the best way and the right way. And I think the Academy is doing a great job.
Thank you so much for spending this time with us, Mrs. King.
Coretta Scott King: Thank you.
(Mrs. King closed her address to the Academy at the National Cathedral with the following words.)
On March 31st, 1968, just four days before Martin was assassinated, he delivered his last sermon, entitled "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," right here in this cathedral. In the sermon, Martin inspired us with his unshakable faith in the triumph of good over evil, and he said, "With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discord of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood." And so today, I want to challenge you to make a courageous commitment, not only to achieve personal success, but to use your success to help create this beautiful symphony of brotherhood and sisterhood, and if you embrace this challenge with prayer and faith and determination, you will surely succeed, and the 21st Century will become a glorious new age of peace and progress for all humankind. May God bless you all and give you the strength to fulfill your dreams. Thank you.

Coretta Scott King Gallery

Coretta Scott was born in Heiberger, Alabama and raised on the farm of her parents, Bernice and Obadiah Scott, in Perry County, Alabama. She was exposed at an early age to the injustices of life in a segregated society. She walked five miles a day to attend the one-room Crossroad School in Marion, Alabama, while the white students rode buses to an all-white school closer by. Young Coretta excelled at her studies, particularly music, and was valedictorian of her graduating class at Lincoln High School. She graduated in 1945 and received a scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

As an undergraduate, Coretta Scott took an active interest in the nascent Civil Rights Movement; she joined the Antioch chapter of the NAACP, and the college's Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committees. She graduated from Antioch 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 Boston she met a young theology student, Martin Luther King, Jr., and her life was changed forever. They were married on June 18, 1953, in a ceremony conducted by the groom's father, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. Coretta Scott King completed her degree in voice and violin at the New England Conservatory, and the young couple moved in September 1954 to Montgomery, Alabama, where Martin Luther King, Jr. had accepted an appointment as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

They were soon caught up in the dramatic events that triggered the modern Civil Rights Movement. When Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on a Montgomery city bus to a white passenger, she was arrested for violating the city's ordinances giving white passengers preferential treatment in public conveyances. The black citizens of Montgomery organized immediately in defense of Mrs. Parks, and under Martin Luther King's leadership organized a boycott of the city's buses. The Montgomery bus boycott drew the attention of the world to the continued injustice of segregation in the United States, and led to court decisions striking down all local ordinances separating the races in public transit.

Dr. King's eloquent advocacy of nonviolent civil disobedience soon made him the most recognizable face of the Civil Rights Movement, and he was called on to lead marches in city after city, with Mrs. King at his side, inspiring the citizens, black and white, to defy the segregation laws. The visibility of Dr. King's leadership attracted fierce opposition from the supporters of institutionalized racism. In 1956, white supremacists bombed the King family home in Montgomery. Mrs. King and the couple's first child narrowly escaped injury.

The Kings had four children in all: Yolanda Denise; Martin Luther, III; Dexter Scott; and Bernice Albertine. Although the demands of raising a family had caused Mrs. King to retire from singing, she found another way to put her musical background to the service of the cause. She conceived and performed a series of critically acclaimed Freedom Concerts, combining poetry, narration and music to tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement. Over the next few years, Mrs. King staged Freedom Concerts in some of America's most distinguished concert venues, as fundraisers for the organization her husband had founded, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Dr. King's fame spread beyond the United States, and he was increasingly seen not only as a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, but as the symbol of an international struggle for human liberation from racism, colonialism and all forms of oppression and discrimination. In 1957, Dr. King and Mrs. King journeyed to Africa to celebrate the independence of Ghana. In 1959, they made a pilgrimage to India to honor the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, whose philosophy of nonviolence had inspired them. Dr. King's leadership of the movement for human rights was recognized on the international stage when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1964, Mrs. King accompanied her husband when he traveled to Oslo, Norway to accept the Prize.

In the 1960s, Dr. King broadened his message and his activism to embrace causes of international peace and economic justice. Mrs. King found herself in increasing demand as a public speaker. She became the first woman to deliver the Class Day address at Harvard, and the first woman to preach at a statutory service at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. She served as a Women's Strike for Peace delegate to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 1962. Mrs. King became a liaison to international peace and justice organizations even before Dr. King took a public stand in 1967 against U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Channeling her grief, Mrs. King concentrated her energies on fulfilling her husband's work by building The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change as a living memorial to her husband's life and dream. Years of planning, fundraising and lobbying lay ahead, but Mrs. King would not be deterred, nor did she neglect direct involvement in the causes her husband had championed. In 1969, Coretta Scott King published the first volume of her autobiography, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 1970s, Mrs. King maintained her husband's commitment to the cause of economic justice. In 1974, she formed the Full Employment Action Council, a broad coalition of over 100 religious, labor, business, civil and women's rights organizations dedicated to a national policy of full employment and equal economic opportunity; Mrs. King served as Co-Chair of the Council.

In 1981, The King Center, the first institution built in memory of an African American leader, opened to the public. The Center is housed in the Freedom Hall complex encircling Dr. King's tomb in Atlanta, Georgia. It is part of a 23-acre national historic site that also includes Dr. King's birthplace and the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he and his father both preached. The King Center Library and Archives houses the largest collection of documents from the Civil Rights era. The Center receives over one million visitors a year, and has trained tens of thousands of students, teachers, community leaders and administrators in Dr. King's philosophy and strategy of nonviolence through seminars, workshops and training programs.

Mrs. King continued to serve the cause of justice and human rights; her travels took her throughout the world on goodwill missions to Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia. In 1983, she marked the 20th anniversary of the historic March on Washington by leading a gathering of more than 800 human rights organizations, the Coalition of Conscience, in the largest demonstration the capital city had seen up to that time.

Coretta Scott King led the successful campaign to establish Dr. King's birthday, January 15, as a national holiday in the United States. By an Act of Congress, the first national observance of the holiday took place in 1986. Dr. King's birthday is now marked by annual celebrations in over 100 countries. Mrs. King was invited by President Clinton to witness the historic handshake between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Yassir Arafat at the signing of the Middle East Peace Accords in 1993. In 1985, Mrs. King and three of her children were arrested at the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C. for protesting against that country's apartheid system of racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Ten years later, she stood with Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg when he was sworn in as President of South Africa.

After 27 years at the helm of The King Center, Mrs. King turned over leadership of the Center to her son, Dexter Scott King, in 1995. She remained active in the causes of racial and economic justice, and in her remaining years devoted much of her energy to AIDS education and curbing gun violence. Although she died in 2006 at the age of 78, she remains an inspirational figure to men and women around the world.

View and listen to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historic "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on the steps of Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963.

Member of the American Academy of Achievement, poet and best-selling author, Maya Angelou shares her interpretation of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

"When I went to the movies with other black children, we had to sit in the balcony while the white kids got to sit in the better seats below. We had to walk to school while the white children rode in school buses paid for by our parents' taxes. Such messages, saying we were inferior, were a daily part of our lives."

Young Coretta Scott's gift for music and enthusiasm for education led her far beyond the segregated world of her childhood, but when she met the young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the two resolved to return to the Deep South together and pursue the cause of justice in her own home state of Alabama. The Montgomery bus boycott thrust the young couple to the forefront of a revitalized civil rights movement, even as it exposed their growing family to the retaliation of those who opposed any change in the old system.

Braving death threats and surviving the bombing of their home by white supremacists, Coretta Scott King stood by the cause and her husband, from the Birmingham jail to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, from the March on Washington, to a stage in Oslo, Norway, where he accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace. After his assassination, she inspired the world with her courage, dignity and tireless devotion to preserving Dr. King's legacy.

As founding President, Chair, and Chief Executive Officer of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, she saw that tens of thousands of activists from all over the world were trained in the philosophy and practice of nonviolence. She served as an advisor to freedom and democracy movements all over the world, and as a consultant to world leaders including President Corazon Aquino of the Philippines, President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, and President Nelson Mandela of South Africa. One of the world's most admired women, she remained an outspoken champion of justice and human dignity to the end of her days.

(On June 18, 1999, Coretta Scott King addressed the American Academy of Achievement at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Excerpts from her remarks on that occasion are interspersed throughout two video interviews - one from 1999 and the other from 2004.)
You were a music student in Boston when you met Martin Luther King, Jr. for the first time. Did you ever imagine that the two of you would play such an important part in the Civil Rights Movement?
Coretta Scott King: No, I didn't.

I don't think that my husband, although he said he was going to go back south and fight to change the system - and he was thinking about not just in Alabama or in Georgia, but he was talking about making our society more inclusive, changing the system so that everybody could participate - although he talked about that at that time, we never dreamed that we would have an opportunity, that we would be projected into the forefront of the struggle as we were. We were just going to work from, as he said, a black Baptist Church pulpit. That was the freest place in the society at that time, but we had no idea what God had in store for us. And I do believe it was divine intervention that we were thrust into the forefront of the struggle.

Well, first of all, I was extremely excited about what was going on because this was something that had never happened before, and I knew this was history-making, and I also knew that it was not only happening in Montgomery but it was - the impact of this was maybe much further - much more extensive than Montgomery because during the Montgomery boycott we heard that there was a boycott in Johannesburg, South Africa of buses, and also there was one in Mobile and in Tallahassee, so it was like it was spreading but we also knew that the struggle was much bigger than a boycott. It was about the injustices in our society. It was about changing the society in such a way and changing the laws of the government locally, and certainly nationally we had to create new laws to protect us and protect the rights once they were won.

On a personal level, you had an extraordinary realization during the time of the Montgomery, Alabama bus desegregation court hearings. Can you take us back to that time in your life and express your personal concerns, but also the results of your soul searching?

We even experienced what was like modern day miracles when things happened. Like when the Supreme Court had ruled on bus desegregation, we were in court that day because the City of Montgomery was having a hearing and was trying to outlaw our transportation system and, if it had, maybe the people would have gotten tired and gone back to the buses. And my husband was very worried, and I said to him, "You know what? I think that by the time we go to court, and by the time the judge rules, that the Supreme Court will have ruled." And we felt that if the Supreme Court ruled it would be in our favor and that was my consolation. Sure enough, while we were in court Associated Press - an Associated Press reporter handed a note to my husband and it said, "The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled today that bus segregation in Montgomery is unconstitutional." So that ended the court session. So it was that kind of thing and intervention again that helped us to realize that we were doing the right thing, and we continued to do that, and more importantly that we had been called. I had been called personally to be in Montgomery at that time because I had always sought my purpose. As a teenager I began to think about what my life was going to be like and going to college. That was one level. Going beyond there was the next level. Going to prepare for a music career, but when I got to Boston there was, I realized, another reason for me being there. And then I wondered why Martin Luther King, Jr., a minister, that I didn't think I would ever marry a minister, and then he was going back south, I wanted to go back south, but I wasn't prepared to go at that time, because I had to finish my work, and finally in Montgomery - and then things began to happen and the house was bombed. So I did a lot of soul searching after that and tried to remember, you know, try to think back of how I got there, and I realized that all my life I had been being prepared for this role, and that we were supposed to be there in Montgomery. And it was a great feeling of satisfaction because I realized that I had found my purpose.

What was life like for you when you were growing up?
Coretta Scott King: I grew up in the Deep South. It was totally segregated in terms of race, and everything was separate but unequal. I had wonderful parents who inspired me to be the best person that I could be, and my mother always told me that I was going to go to college, even if she didn't have but one dress to put on. So I grew up knowing that I was going to somehow find a way out of the situation I grew up in.

I grew up on a farm. We were culturally deprived, but we were not poor in the sense that we didn't have very much. We had limited resources, because in the country at that time nobody had very much, and we had probably more than most people.

As an African American child growing up in the segregated South, I was told, one way or another, almost every day of my life, that I wasn't as good as a white child. When I went to the movies with other black children, we had to sit in the balcony while the white kids got to sit in the better seats below. We had to walk to school while the white children rode in school buses paid for by our parents' taxes. Such messages, saying we were inferior, were a daily part of our lives. But I was blessed with parents who taught me not to let anyone make me feel like I wasn't good enough, and as my mother told me, "You are just as good as anyone else. You get an education and try to be somebody. Then you won't have to be kicked around by anybody, and you won't have to depend on anyone for your livelihood, not even a man."

My parents taught me some wonderful values that have have stayed with me, and I've built on them throughout my life. If it hadn't been for my parents, who I consider heroes, I wouldn't be the kind of person I am. I am very thankful and grateful for them. So I went to a good school, a good private school, because that was the only school close by, and it was semi-private at the time, and that school also prepared me to go on to college. I went to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Antioch College, as you probably realize, is a college that teaches people how to have a world view. All races and religions were represented there, and it was an excellent education. I had a very broad background in liberal arts, and I had work experience as well. Antioch was about making change in societies, about social change, which was preparing me at that time for the role that I would play later in life.
Did you have any favorite books when you were growing up? Is there something you remember reading as a young person that had a big impact on you?
Coretta Scott King: I was inspired by the words of many, many persons. I used to recite a lot of poetry, and I was inspired by the words of Longfellow, "Lives of great men all remind us..." Even though I was a female, I thought, "Of course, that means me, too."

"Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime

And departing leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time."

And so on.
Besides your parents, were there other heroes or role models who were particularly important to you?
Coretta Scott King: I was inspired by the likes of Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, because I was in high school during the '40, and of course President Roosevelt was a hero of mine. I used to love to hear him speak, and I recognized the voice whenever he came on the radio, because we didn't have televisions back then. I never got to meet Mrs. Roosevelt. Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune, a black woman who became an advisor to President Roosevelt and founded a school in Florida - the Bethune-Cookman College - was another great black woman that was a role model for me. And then, of course, there was Paul Robeson, who was a great singer and had such a commanding presence. When I first met him and he performed, you could just feel so much power when he walked out on the stage, and his words were so meaningful - his very deep voice, both speaking and singing.
We've read stories of your having to go five miles to go to school and of your mother having to arrange for transportation so the black kids in your area could even go to high school. What was that like for you?
It was the way it was. I didn't like it and I always felt less - I knew I was important as they were but it just - it sort of brought down a curtain, you know, in a sense in my selfhood and helped me to be more - become more determined to get out of that situation and to try to do something about it when I finally - when I had an opportunity. I was determined myself to get an education, to get the best education possible, and to be able to come back and give back something to the community, and that was what I really went to college with my mind on as well as the New England Conservatory of Music. So I attended the New England Conservatory on a scholarship; I had a scholarship to Antioch and a scholarship to the Conservatory.
You were studying music when you met your husband, Dr. King. How did that come about? Was there someone who influenced you or encouraged you in that direction?
Coretta Scott King: I studied elementary education and music at Antioch, and I couldn't get a full music degree but I always wanted to study music; that was my first love. In high school, I had a teacher who influenced me greatly, Miss Olive J. Williams, and she was versatile in music, and I wanted to be like her. She exposed me to the world of classical music. Before then, I had never heard classical music. She exposed me also to the great composers of the world, as well as black performers, which I didn't know about at the time: Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes and Dorothy Maynor and others. So I got my foundation and my beginning there, and then, at Antioch, I built on that with another teacher named Walter Anderson. He was the one who eventually encouraged me to apply when I graduated from Antioch to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.
Just as you were entering into a new chapter of your life in college you met your future husband. What were your early impressions of that developing relationship?
After my first semester in Boston in 1951, I met Martin Luther King, Jr. Of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. was studying for his doctorate in systematic theology, and he was going to go back South and pastor a Baptist Church, and he was looking for a wife. I wasn't looking for a husband, but he was a wonderful human being, and he made everyone feel special, and he made me feel very special as a woman. I still resisted his overtures, but after he persisted, I had to pray about it, because my parents were religious, I was brought up in the church, and I had a strong faith. I always believed that there was a purpose for my life, and that I had to seek that purpose, and that if I discovered that purpose, then I believed that I would be successful in what I was doing. And I thought I had found that purpose when I decided that music was going to be my career - concert singing. I was going to be trained as a concert singer at the New England Conservatory of Music. I studied voice the first year, and after I met Martin and prayed about whether or not I should open myself to that relationship, I had a dream, and in that dream, I was made to feel that I should allow myself to be open and stop fighting the relationship. And that's what I did, and of course the rest is history.
But you finished your music education, didn't you? How did you make use of your musical training after your marriage?
Coretta Scott King: I finished Conservatory with a degree in voice and music education, and my second instrument was violin. I started doing concerts when I was a college student, and after we moved to Montgomery - my husband was called to a church there - I continued to perform. I performed concerts the first year, got pregnant, had to stop, performed between babies - I have four children - and I was doing standard concerts when I had my fourth child. I realized I could not continue to do that that way. And, I developed the "Freedom Concert" concept, where I narrated the story of the civil rights movement that we were involved in, and sang freedom songs in between the narrations that told the story of our struggle from Montgomery to Washington at that time. In 1964, I did my debut with my Freedom Concert at Town Hall, raised money for the cause, and the rest of the time I raised money for my husband's organization doing Freedom Concerts across the country and so forth.
How do you see your work now? What challenges do you see for humanity in the new century?
Coretta Scott King: I think what I've tried to do is to empower people to understand that they can make a difference. And by using the method of nonviolence as a way of life, it becomes internalized into your life; so everything that you seek to do, you use those principles and those steps, based on those principles, and the steps and methodologies, so that if you have a problem or a conflict in whatever it is you are doing, you are able to better resolve that. And if it is dealing with people, certainly you'll know how to resolve that and become reconciled and to move forward.

Today we have so many problems. Some of them are new problems. You have the human rights struggle continuing, but you also have problems like HIV and AIDS. I think young people have to be dedicated to find ways to deal with these problems, to educate the whole world, because the world as a whole needs to be educated. We have a lot of education that needs to be done here in this country so that people can avoid getting the disease. We know that people can live with the disease, but there is a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done there. There are other problems that we are fighting now. Violence is so pervasive. People have access to guns, and so many people are being killed. I've done a lot of work with the handgun control organization - it's called the Brady Organization now - with Sarah and Jim Brady. There are many things that we can do now to get involved with so many of the causes that are tending to destroy us.

I think that nonviolence allows you and empowers you to do what is necessary, because what you do is build coalitions. You can't do all of it by yourself, but you can put together a coalition and get other people involved, or join organizations that are already involved and continue to work to eradicate poverty, of course, since poverty is still with us, very much so. My husband - it was one of the triple evils that he talked about - poverty, racism and war. And of course, they all are forms of violence, and we have to continue to work to make sure that people everywhere have a decent livelihood, that they have jobs, they have housing, they have health care, they have quality education. All of these areas that we still have to work on and to improve, so that the quality of life for all people is improved, and we can achieve indeed the "beloved community" that Martin talked about, that I believe in.
Did your belief in nonviolence ever waver? It was tested time after time after time. Did you ever think that maybe nonviolence was not the way to go?
Coretta Scott King: No, I really - I never thought that it wasn't the way to go. I always - I guess because of my religious upbringing and, you know, I believed that even though we kind of stray away from it but you know what is right. I mean that you've been taught it was wrong to kill. I believe that firmly. I believe that you have to try to resolve your conflicts without violence. I believe that you have to give something back to society that has nurtured you and so I never got to the point where I felt that nonviolence was not viable. I just felt that when there was violence and it came from within, and very seldom violence did come from within, I realized that it wasn't that it wouldn't work, it's that people didn't follow the proper steps in trying to achieve it because there are a set of principles and there are a set of steps in the methodology that we were taught about nonviolence. And when we follow those they work. It may take a while but in order to have a peaceful solution and a lasting peace it has to be a nonviolent approach.
If one of these young people came to you and asked you for advice about how they should live their lives or how they can achieve what they hope to achieve, what would you say to them? What would be your advice to young people today?
Coretta Scott King: Well, certainly you have to get the best possible education and training that's available and you have to decide that you need to learn as much about the world and society. And these young people live in a global village really.

Everybody lives in a global village and a global community. I didn't know at the time. I didn't live in a global community, but I had a vision that I would be living in a global village. I knew I had to be prepared to be comfortable anywhere in the world. That was what my goal was. So these young people are being prepared differently than I was because they live in a different time but the most important thing they have to decide is not just to get an education and to be selfish about it but that they must prepare themselves to give back and to make a difference in the world. We have to create what my husband called "The Beloved Community." If we are to survive we have to learn how to solve our problems and resolve our conflicts in a nonviolent manner. And so I think it's important for them to realize that they have a personal responsibility, each one of them.
Looking to the future, what must be a priority for the next generation in order to foster a society of nonviolence and acceptance?
When I sat in the audience today and I thought about these young people who had gathered and I thought about how this all came together, I just wish that there were more gatherings such as what we have experienced here the weekend at the International Achievement Summit because if we are going to continue to change society for the better and if our world is to survive, we have got to invest in these young people in a way so that they know which is the best way and the right way. And I think the Academy is doing a great job.
Thank you so much for spending this time with us, Mrs. King.
Coretta Scott King: Thank you.
(Mrs. King closed her address to the Academy at the National Cathedral with the following words.)
On March 31st, 1968, just four days before Martin was assassinated, he delivered his last sermon, entitled "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," right here in this cathedral. In the sermon, Martin inspired us with his unshakable faith in the triumph of good over evil, and he said, "With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discord of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood." And so today, I want to challenge you to make a courageous commitment, not only to achieve personal success, but to use your success to help create this beautiful symphony of brotherhood and sisterhood, and if you embrace this challenge with prayer and faith and determination, you will surely succeed, and the 21st Century will become a glorious new age of peace and progress for all humankind. May God bless you all and give you the strength to fulfill your dreams. Thank you.

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Coretta Scott King - Academy of Achievement

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"When I went to the movies with other black children, we had to sit in the balcony while the white kids got to sit in the better seats below. We had to walk to school while the white children rode in school buses paid for by our parents' taxes.

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Coretta and her sisters traveled by bus for many miles from their home to attend the closest black high school. Though her parents were uneducated, they were determined to send all three of their children to college. Coretta was a gifted musician and loved to sing. She transferred from Antioch to the New England Conservatory of Music on scholarship, studying voice and violin.

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The widow of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King became a forceful public figure and important leader in the civil rights movement. She made numerous contributions to the struggle for social justice and human rights throughout her life.

Coretta Scott was born the second of three children to Obadiah Scott and Bernice McMurray Scott in Heiberger, Alabama on April 27, 1927. She spent her childhood nearby on a farm owned by her family since the Civil War. During the Depression, Coretta and her siblings picked cotton in order to help support the family. This appeared to be the beginning of her determination to further her education.

After graduating at the top of her high school class in 1945, Scott enrolled at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Although Antioch was historically a white campus, Scott's older sister had become the first fulltime black student to live on campus, and following in her footsteps, she majored in education and music. During her college years Scott faced racial discrimination when the Yellow Springs School Board refused to let her teach in a nearby elementary school. This incident ended her dreams of becoming a teacher. Instead in 1949 she applied to and was accepted by the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. It was while attending the conservatory that she met Martin Luther King Jr., also a graduate student in Boston at that time.

Coretta Scott and Martin Luther King Jr. married on June 18, 1953. The following year they moved to Montgomery, Alabama where Martin Luther King Jr. began his work as a minister at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. In 1955 Dr. King led the Montgomery bus boycott which initiated a new era of civil rights agitation. By marrying a man committed to civil rights, Coretta Scott King became an activist in her own right, sharing her husband's work, walking beside him in marches, traveling with him to give speeches or giving them herself when he was unable to do so. She also began to develop her own reputation in social activism when she joined the Women's Strike for Peace, a group formed in 1961 to support a ban on nuclear testing. King was also a delegate to the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1962. By this point Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr. had four children.

When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, Coretta King was thrust into the national spotlight. She calmed local and national racial tensions by exuding quiet dignity and courage at his public funeral in Atlanta. Then just four days after his death, Coretta Scott King led a march of fifty thousand people through the streets of Memphis.

In 1969 Coretta King announced plans to establish the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia. The King Center is now the official memorial dedicated to the advancement of the legacy and ideas of Dr. King. She also led a 17-year national campaign to establish Dr. King's birthday as a national holiday. She finally succeeded in 1986 when President Ronald Reagan signed the proclamation. Coretta King was also involved in the anti-apartheid campaign of the 1980s. By the late 1990s she became an activist for HIV/AIDS prevention and a supporter of lesbian and gay rights.

Coretta Scott King suffered a stroke and heart attack in 2005. Never fully recovering, she passed away on January 20, 2006 at a rehabilitation center in Mexico.

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Coretta Scott King (1927-2006) * BlackPast

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Image Courtesy of ©Bettmann-Corbis The widow of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King became a forceful public figure and important leader in the civil rights movement. She made numerous contributions to the struggle for social justice and human rights throughout her ...

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Coretta was a natural leader so staying behind while her husband, Martin Luther King Jr.,  led the Civil Rights movement did not satisfy her. This character trait alone led to many disagreements in Coretta's marriage to Martin. Coretta was committed to the Civil Rights Movement and wanted to take a public leadership role, but Martin wanted her to focus on her role as a mother raising their (4) children.
As much as Coretta Scott King is remembered as a leader, it can not go with saying that she displayed  amazing integrity and bravery.

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Celebrities Galore - The Spiritual Encyclopaedia Of The Famous

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Coretta Scott King - a female celebrity - born on Wednesday April 27th 1927, in Marion, Alabama, United States.

Freedom is the key to Coretta's personality. Coretta Scott King loves travel, adventure, variety and meeting new people, and she longs to experience all of life. She also loves to be involved in several things at the same time as long as she is not tied down to any one area. Change is constant in her world, requiring adaptability and courage.

With her upbeat and often inspiring personality, Coretta Scott King makes friends easily and attracts people from all walks of life. She has a way with words and an uncanny ability to motivate others. Thus, Coretta can be very successful and happy in sales, advertising, publicity, promotion, politics or any profession that requires communication skills and understanding of people.

Coretta is multi-talented and possesses a variety of diverse abilities. However, discipline and focus are the true keys to her success. Without these, many of the tasks Coretta begins will remain unfinished and she will fail to realize the true fruits of her abilities. With hard work and perseverance, however, the sky is the limit. Self-employment attracts King powerfully, yet her challenge is to settle into one area to cultivate her ability sufficiently to earn a living and attain success. Once Coretta Scott King finds her niche, the motivation and inspiration she supplies others with will bring her much in return, and she will find her friends and colleagues supporting and promoting her on the road to success.

She is often a late-bloomer and needs to experience life before she can truly know and commit to her heart's desire. Coretta Scott King may be perceived as a wild child by adults and a source of concern by her family. However, she must not be obliged to hurry her choice of career or family. Coretta's challenge is to learn the true meaning of freedom-from-within through her jurney. She should try to maintain an exercise program to keep her body in shape. The flexibility and durability of King's body will promote security and confidence within her.

Coretta Scott King is sensual and loves to taste all of life. Sex, food and other sensory experiences are essential to the enjoyment of hers. She finds it difficult to commit to one relationship, but once committed, she can be as faithful as an old dog. More...

Coretta Scott King is a practical and down to earth person that can think through any situation or problem.

Her good health and physical stamina allow her to work long and hard for anything that she believe in, and quite often for material rewards.

Coretta utilizes her practical skills, strong physical dexterity, strength, and good health to work with her hands in either a practical or artistic way, such as being a sculptor or craftsman that possesses both physical and mental talents, and strives for high quality end results.

She is easy to get along with, and she has natural ability to save money and pool up economic resources.

Tour Coretta's menu and gain more insight into her personality traits, relationships, strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, compatibility with you and with others, and much more.

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Coretta Scott King - a female celebrity - born on Wednesday April 27th 1927, in Marion, Alabama, United States. Freedom is the key to Coretta's personality. Coretta Scott King loves travel, adventure, variety and meeting new people, and she longs to experience all of life.

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Coretta grew up on a farm in Marion, AL where she and her (3) siblings picked cotton to help support the family during The Great Depression.  As a child, she experienced the segregation and racism firsthand, as that was the standard at the time. Coretta's family-owned lumber mill was torched (burned down) by white neighbors.

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Quick Facts
"I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation.""Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.""Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe that you must become its soul.""I'm fulfilled in what I do. I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes-the finer things of life-would make you happy. My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.""Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated."

Name

Coretta Scott King

Birth Date

April 27, 1927

Death Date

January 30, 2006

Did You Know?

In her younger years, Coretta Scott King was as well known for her singing and violin playing as her civil rights activism.

Did You Know?

The young soprano won a fellowship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.

Education

Lincoln High School, New England Conservatory of Music, Antioch College

Place of Birth

Marion, Alabama

Place of Death

Playas de Rosarito, Mexico

Who Was Coretta Scott King?

Coretta Scott met her husband, Martin Luther King Jr., while the two were both students in Boston, Massachusetts. She worked side by side with King as he became a leader of the civil rights movement, establishing her own distinguished career as an activist. Following her husband's assassination in 1968, Coretta founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and later successfully lobbied for his birthday to recognized as a federal holiday. She died of complications from ovarian cancer in 2006, at age 78.

Early Life

Coretta was born on April 27, 1927, in Marion, Alabama. In the early decades of her life, Coretta was as well known for her singing and violin playing as her civil rights activism. She attended Lincoln High School, graduating as the school's valedictorian in 1945, and then enrolled at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, receiving her Bachelor of Arts in music and education in 1951.

Coretta was awarded a fellowship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where she met soon-to-be famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., then a doctoral candidate at Boston University's School of Theology. They married on June 18, 1953, at her family home in Marion.

After earning her degree in voice and violin from NEC in 1954, Coretta moved with her husband to Montgomery, Alabama, where he served as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and she, subsequently, oversaw the various tasks of a pastor's wife.

Civil Rights Activist

Working side by side with her husband throughout the 1950s and '60s, Coretta took part in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955, journeyed to Ghana to mark that nation's independence in 1957, traveled to India on a pilgrimage in 1959 and worked to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, among other endeavors.

Though best known for working alongside her husband, Coretta established a distinguished career in activism in her own right. Among many roles, she worked as a public mediator and as a liaison to peace and justice organizations.

Death of MLK

On April 4, 1968, while standing on a balcony outside of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, Martin Luther King Jr. was struck and killed by a sniper's bullet. Four days later, Coretta led her husband's planned march through Memphis to support striking sanitation workers.

The shooter, a malcontent drifter and former convict named James Earl Ray, was hunted for two months before being apprehended. King's assassination sparked riots and demonstrations in more than 100 cities across the country.

Continuing the Mission After His Death

In the aftermath of her husband's assassination, Coretta founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, serving as the center's president and the chief executive officer from its inception. After spurring the formation of what became the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, around his birthplace in Atlanta, she dedicated the new King Center complex on its grounds in 1981.

Coretta remained active through her demonstrations against apartheid in South Africa, and by expressing her views as a syndicated columnist and contributor to CNN. She also saw the 15-year fight for formal recognition of her husband's birthday come to fruition in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan signed a bill that established Martin Luther King Day as a federal holiday.

Coretta passed the reins of the King Center over to her son Dexter in 1995 but remained in the public eye. In 1997, she called for a retrial for her husband's alleged assassin, though Ray died in prison the following year.

Death

Coretta suffered a heart attack and stroke in August 2005. She died less than six months later, on January 30, 2006, while seeking treatment for ovarian cancer at a clinic in Playas de Rosarito, Mexico. She was 78 years old.

Funeral

Coretta's funeral was held on February 7, 2006, at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia, eulogized by daughter Bernice King. The televised service at the megachurch lasted eight hours and had over 14,000 people in attendance, including U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, along with most of their wives. Barack Obama, then a senator, was also present.

Personal Life

The author of My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. (1969), Coretta had four children with King: Yolanda Denise (1955-2007), Martin Luther III (b. 1957), Dexter Scott (b. 1961) and Bernice Albertine (b. 1963). The surviving children manage the King Center and their father's estate.
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"I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation." "Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation."

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Acting stubbornly and against her husband’s wishes, Coretta Scott King stood by MLK's side throughout the civil rights movement. Coretta Scott King stepped into the role as leader of the Civil Rights Movement after her husband's assassination in 1968. Coretta campaigned for 14 years to have her husband’s birthday observed as a national holiday. In 1983, she finally succeeded when President Reagan signed the 1983 bill establishing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a federal holiday.

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On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. died after being shot while preparing for a march on behalf of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee.

Go to the web site to view the video.

The impact of King's death reverberated throughout the country. Half a century later, the Atlanta-born civil rights leader's dedication to global peace and social justice continues to inspire generations.

At Stanford, hundreds of photos show intimate moments of grief that immediately followed King's assassination.

The photos are a part of Stanford University Libraries' Bob Fitch Photography Archive, established in 2013, and are available online for public viewing.

The collection includes about 200,000 images taken by Fitch, an activist and photographer who worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960s.

Fitch is best known for his work that captured iconic images of major civil rights figures, including King, labor rights leader Cesar Chavez and social activist Dorothy Day.

Exploring historical photos online

Anyone interested in the history of the civil rights movement in the United States is welcome to look through thousands of photos that the Stanford Libraries' staff has digitized so far from the Bob Fitch Photography Archive. In addition to photos of King and his family, the online collection includes images of activists Cesar Chavez and Dorothy Day as well as other scenes from that time period.

Almost 3,000 images from the archive have been digitized so far, and the Stanford Libraries' staff are working on adding additional photos to the online archive.

"All of these photos bring back so many memories," said Stanford historian Clayborne Carson, who attended the historic 1963 March on Washington. "It was a very turbulent time. Bob Fitch's photos are invaluable because they provide us a unique window into that period of grief. Viewers see Coretta King in her bedroom as she is grieving for her husband and trying to console her children, while also meeting with his movement colleagues and political leaders."

Stanford's ties to Martin Luther King Jr. date to 1964, when the late civil rights leader delivered a speech in Memorial Auditorium.

King gave a second lecture at Stanford, titled "The Other America," on April 14, 1967, less than a year before he was assassinated. In that speech, he talked about the racial injustice that was at the root of black poverty.

Today, King's legacy of nonviolence is more relevant than ever in a time of increasing political polarization and tension in the United States and around the world, said Carson, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor and founding director of Stanford's Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.

Carson has overseen the preservation and examination of King's papers since 1985, when the late Coretta Scott King asked him to edit and publish a definitive multivolume edition of her late husband's speeches, sermons, writings and correspondence.

Since then, the King Papers Project has produced seven volumes, and Carson has edited four additional books on King.

Through the work of Carson and his colleagues at the King Institute, King's message of nonviolent activism and collective action is being preserved for future generations.

King's legacy honored on April 3

The King Institute is hosting a special event to celebrate Martin Luther King's life at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 3, at CEMEX Auditorium. The event will feature a premiere of a new documentary about King, called I Am MLK Jr. After the documentary screening, the event will feature a program of music, spoken word and tributes. The event is free and open to the public.

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Archive features powerful photos before, after King's death | Stanford News

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On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. died after being shot while preparing for a march on behalf of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Go to the web site to view the video. The impact of King's death reverberated throughout the country.

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Coretta Scott was born the second of three children to parents Obadiah Scott and Bernice McMurray Scott in Heiberger, AL, on April 27, 1927.
When Coretta Scott King died on the evening of January 30, 2006, she had ovarian cancer (Hitti, 2006). According to the King family, at the time of her death, Coretta was in Mexico exploring treatment options.

King's family said in a statement released to the media:

"Mrs. Coretta Scott King was in Mexico for observation and consideration of treatment for ovarian cancer (Hitti, 2006). She was considered terminal by physicians in the United States. Mrs. King and her family wanted to explore other options (Hitti, 2006)."

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Coretta Scott King: Biography of Coretta Scott King, American civil rights activist who was the wife of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.