Coretta scott king biography information

Before long, we found ourselves in the middle of the Montgomery bus boycott, and Martin was elected leader of the protest movement. As the boycott continued, I had a growing sense that I was involved in something so much greater than myself, something of profound historic importance. I came to the realization that we had been thrust into the forefront of a movement to liberate oppressed people, not only in Montgomery but also throughout our country, and this movement had worldwide implications.

I felt blessed to have been called to be a part of such a noble and historic cause. King's devotion to the cause while giving up on her own musical ambitions would become symbolic of the actions of African-American women during the movement. Coretta became a member of the choir and taught Sunday school, as well as participating in the Baptist Training Union and Missionary Society.

Wallace, she "captivated her concert audience". The Kings' first child was born on November 17,and was named Yolanda at Coretta's insistence. King often received threats directed towards him. In Januaryshe answered numerous phone calls threatening her husband's life, as rumors intended to make African Americans dissatisfied with Martin Luther King spread that he had purchased a Buick station wagon for her.

By the end of the boycott, the Kings had come to believe in nonviolent protests as a way of expression consistent with biblical teachings. The three were not harmed. Yolanda was their first grandchild. Martin joined them the next day, at dinner time. On February 21,Martin Luther King said he would return to Montgomery after picking up Coretta and their daughter from Atlanta, who were staying with his parents.

During Martin Sr. King picked up her daughter and went upstairs, which he would express dismay in later and tell her that she "had run out on him". With a performance sponsored by the Omicron Lambda chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, King changed a few songs in the first part of the show but still continued with the basic format used two years earlier at the New York gala as she told the story of the Montgomery bus boycott.

The concert was important for Coretta as a way to continue her professional career and participate in the movement. The concert gave the audience "an emotional connection to the messages of social, economic, and spiritual transformation. On September 3,King accompanied her husband and Ralph Abernathy to a courtroom. Martin was arrested outside the courtroom for "loitering" and "failing to obey an officer".

At that time, she learned that he had been stabbed while signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom on September 20, King rushed to see her husband, and stayed with him for the remainder of his time in the hospital recovering. King and Lawrence D. Reddick started a five-week tour of India.

Coretta scott king biography information: Coretta Scott King was

The three were invited to hundreds of engagements. The two returned to the United States on March 10, On January 30,Coretta and Dexter congregation member Roscoe Williams' wife Mary Lucy heard the "sound of a brick striking the concrete floor of the front porch. The two went to the rear of the home, where Yolanda was sleeping and Coretta called the First Baptist Church and reported the coretta scott king biography information to the woman who answered the phone.

He was confronted by an angry crowd of his supporters, who had brought guns. He was able to turn them away with an impromptu speech. A white man was reported by a lone witness to have walked halfway up to King's door and thrown something against the door before running back to his car and speeding off. Ernest Walters, the lone witness, did not manage to get the license plate number because of how quickly the events transpired.

The two arrived nearly at the same time, along with her Martin Luther King's mother and brother. Coretta's father Obie said he would take her and her daughter back to Marion if his son-in-law did not take them to Atlanta. Coretta refused the proclamation and insisted on staying with her husband. Author Octavia B. Vivian wrote "That night Coretta lost her fear of dying.

She committed herself more deeply to the freedom struggle, as Martin had done four days previously when jailed for the first time in his life. Martin Luther King Jr. After being released three days later, he was sent back to jail on October 22 for driving with an Alabama license while being a resident of Georgia and was sent to jail for four months of hard labor.

After his arrest, Mrs. King believed he would not make it out alive and telephoned her friend Harris Wofford and cried while saying "They're going to kill him. I know they are going to kill him. Kennedy, was campaigning at the time and told Shriver of King's fears for her husband. After Shriver waited to be with Kennedy alone, he suggested that he telephone King and express sympathy.

Sometime afterward, Robert F. Kennedy obtained King's release from prison. Martin Sr. I know this must be very hard on you. I understand you are expecting a baby, and I just want you to know that I was thinking about you and Dr. If there is anything I can do to help, please feel free to call on me. King had come to respect President Kennedy and understood his reluctance at times to get involved openly with civil rights.

After King and her daughter were due to come home, Martin rushed back to drive them himself. President Kennedy was with his father Joseph P. Kennedy, Srwho was not feeling well. King's call to the White House switchboard. The next day, President Kennedy reported to King that the FBI had been sent into Birmingham the previous night and confirmed that her husband was fine.

He was allowed to speak with her on the phone and told her to inform Walker of Kennedy's involvement. King had issued her own statement regarding the aid of the president instead of doing as her husband had told her and report to Wyatt Walkerthis according to author Taylor Branchmade her portrayed by reports as "an anxious new mother who may have confused her White House fantasies with reality.

The march was timed to celebrate the group's second anniversary and celebrated the successful completion of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Coretta and Martin learned of John F. Kennedy's assassination when reports initially indicated he had only been seriously wounded. Coretta joined her husband upstairs and watched Walter Cronkite announce the president's death.

King sat with her visibly shaken husband following the confirmation. The FBI planned to mail tapes of her husband's alleged affairs to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference office since surveillance revealed that Coretta opened her husband's mail when he was traveling.

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The FBI learned that Martin Luther King would be out of office by the time the tapes were mailed and that his wife would be the one to open it. Edgar Hoover even advised to mail "it from a southern state. Publicly, Mrs. King would say "I couldn't make much out of it, it was just a lot of mumbo-jumbo. Edgar Hoover to denounce King by revelations about his personal life.

Most prominently, perhaps, she worked hard to pass the Civil Rights Act of King spoke with Malcolm X days before his assassination. Malcolm told her that he was not in Alabama to make trouble for her husband, but instead to make white people have more appreciation for King's protests, seeing his alternative. Her father "caught a glimpse of America's true potential" and for the called it "the greatest day in the whole history of America" after seeing chanting for his daughter's husband by both Caucasians and African Americans.

Coretta Scott King criticized the sexism of the Civil Rights Movement in January in New Lady magazine, saying in part, "Not enough attention has been focused on the roles played by women in the struggle. By and large, men have formed the leadership in the civil rights struggle but In honor of the first woman elected to the House of Representatives, the group was called the Jeannette Rankin Brigade.

She learned of the shooting after being called by Jesse Jackson when she returned from shopping with her eldest child Yolanda. She received a large number of telegrams, including one from Lee Harvey Oswald 's mother, which she regarded as the one that touched her the most.

Coretta scott king biography information: Coretta Scott King (née Scott;

In an effort to prepare her daughter Bernice, then only five years old, for the funeral, she tried to explain to her that the next time she saw her father he would be in a casket and would not be speaking. Senator Robert F. Kennedy ordered three more telephones to be installed in the King residence for King and her family to be able to answer the flood of calls they received and offered a plane to transport her to Memphis.

Robert F. Kennedy promised her that he would help "any way" he could. King was told to not go ahead and agree to Kennedy's offer by Southern Christian Leadership Conference members, who told her about his presidential ambitions. She ignored the warnings and went along with his request. Nixon also went to Martin Luther King, Jr. Nixon believed participating in the procession would be "grandstanding".

On April 8,King and her children headed a march with sanitation workers that her husband had planned to carry out before his death. After the marchers reached the staging area at the Civic Center Plaza in front of Memphis City Hall, onlookers proceeded to take pictures of King and her children but stopped when she addressed everyone at a microphone.

She said that despite the Martin Luther King Jr. The two spent five minutes together and despite the short visit, Coretta called it comforting. King's parents arrived from Alabama. Two days after her husband's death, King spoke at Ebenezer Baptist Church and made her first statement on his views since he had died. She said her husband told their children, "If a man had coretta scott king biography information that was worth dying for, then he was not fit to live.

Using notes he had written before his death, King constructed her own speech. Baker declined after thinking it over, stating that her twelve adopted children known as the "rainbow tribe" were "too young to lose their mother". Coretta Scott King eventually broadened her focus to include women's rightsLGBT rightseconomic issues, world peace, and various other causes.

As early as Decembershe called for women to "unite and form a solid block of women power to fight the three great evils of racismpoverty and war ", during a Solidarity Day speech. King made it clear that there was no reason "why a nation as rich as ours should be blighted by poverty, disease, and illiteracy. After he died the following day, Ethel Kennedy, who King had spoken to with her husband only two months earlier, was widowed.

King flew to Los Angeles to comfort Ethel over Bobby's death. Not long after this, the King household was visited by Mike Wallacewho wanted to visit her and the rest of her family and see how they were faring that coming Christmas. She introduced her family to Wallace and also expressed her belief that there would not be another Martin Luther King Jr.

She furthered that she believed her children needed her more than ever and that there was hope for redemption in her husband's death. King became the first non-Italian to receive the award. King traveled to London with her sister, sister-in-law, Bennette and several others to preach at St. Paul's Cathedra l. Before, no woman had ever delivered a sermon at a regularly appointed service in the cathedral.

She served as the center's president and CEO from its inception until she passed the reins of leadership to son Dexter Scott King. Removing herself from leadership, allowed her to focus on writing, public speaking and spend time with her parents. President Richard Nixon was advised against visiting her on the first anniversary of his death since it would "outrage" many people.

At a subsequent speech, she denounced the War in Vietnam. Coretta was also under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation from until Her husband's activities had been monitored during his lifetime. Documents obtained by a Houston television station show that the FBI worried that Coretta would "tie the anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement.

Every year after the assassination of her husband inCoretta attended a commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to mark his birthday on January She fought for years to make it a national holiday. Inshe said that there should be at least one national holiday a year in tribute to an African-American man, "and, at this point, Martin is the best candidate we have.

Silver, an Atlanta attorney, made the appeal at the services on January 14, Coretta Scott King later confirmed that it was the "best, most productive appeal ever". Day was made a federal holiday. After the death of J. Edgar Hoover, King made no attempt to hide her bitterness towards him for his work against her husband in a long statement.

Johnson inas a very close friend of the former president. On July 25,King held a press conference in defense of then-Ambassador Andrew Young and his controversial statement on political prisoners in American jails. Johnson ranch to meet with Lady Bird Johnson. On August 26,King resented endorsing Jesse Jackson for president, since she wanted to back up someone she believed could beat Ronald Reaganand dismissed her husband becoming a presidential candidate had he lived.

Day, she was at the event. Reagan called her to personally apologize for a remark he made during a nationally televised conference, where he said we would know in "35 years" whether or not King was a communist sympathizer. Reagan clarified his remarks came from the fact that the papers had been sealed off until the year Oprah Winfrey tried to find out why the "community has not allowed black people to live there since King tried to not get involved in the controversy around the naming of the San Diego Convention Center after her husband.

She maintained it was up to the "people within the community" and that people had tried to get her involved in with "those kind of local situations. On January 17,King showed disdain for the U. In retaliation, she suggested peace protests. Sessions for having the FBI "turn its back on the abuses of the Hoover era. King defended her, saying at Riverside Church in Harlem that federal prosecutors targeted her to tarnish her father Malcolm X 's legacy.

Simpson murder casewhich she negated coretta scott king biography information a long-term effect on relations between races when speaking to an audience at Soka University in Aliso Viejo, California. She called for everyone to "pick up the torch of freedom and lead America towards another great revolution. During the s, King was subject to multiple break-ins and encountered Lyndon Fitzgerald Pacea man who admitted killing women in the area.

He broke into the house in the middle of the night and found her while she was sitting in her bed. After nearly eight years of staying in the home following the encounter, King moved to a condominium unit which had also been the home, albeit part-time, for singers Elton John and Janet Jackson. Regarding plans to construct a monument for her husband in Washington, D.

Coretta Scott King fought to ensure that her husband's coretta scott king biography information was not distorted and the history told at his monument in Washington D. During the s, Coretta Scott King reaffirmed her long-standing opposition to apartheidparticipating in a series of sit-in protests in Washington, D. King had a day trip to South Africa in September Botha and Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi.

Prior to leaving the United States for the meeting, King drew comparisons between the civil rights movement and Mandela's case. Coretta Scott King was a long-time advocate for world peace. Author Michael Eric Dyson has called her "an earlier and more devoted pacifist than her husband. King was vocal in her opposition to capital punishment and the invasion of Iraq.

In Augustin Washington, D. In response to the Supreme Court's decision in Bowers v. Hardwick that there was no constitutional right to engage in consensual sodomy, King's long-time friend, Winston Johnson of Atlanta, came out to her and was instrumental in arranging King as the featured speaker at the September 27,New York Gala of the Human Rights Campaign Fund.

As reported in the New York NativeKing stated that she was there to express her solidarity with the gay and lesbian movement. She applauded gays as having "always been a part of the civil rights movement". On April 1,at the Palmer House Hilton in ChicagoKing called on the civil rights community to join in the struggle against homophobia and anti-gay bias.

On March 31,at the 25th anniversary luncheon for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education FundKing said: "I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people, and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King, Jr. Her funeral was conducted by Bishop Eddie Longwhich has been criticized by then-NAACP chairman Julian Bond who refused to attend it, stating that he "just couldn't imagine that she'd want to be in that church with a minister who was a raving homophobe".

King had a group of supporters begin gathering her husband's papers inthe year before his death. Inshe came under criticism by Hosea Williamsone of her husband's earliest followers, for having used the King Center to promote "authentic material" on her husband's dreams and ideals, and disqualified the merchandise as an attempt to exploit her husband.

She sanctioned the kit, which contained a wall poster, five photographs of King and his family, a cassette of the I Have a Dream speech, a booklet of tips on how to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day and five postcards with quotations from King himself. She believed it to be the authentic way to celebrate the holiday honoring her husband, and denied Hosea's claims.

King sued her husband's alma mater of Boston University over who would keep over 83, documents in December and said the documents belonged with the King archives. However, her husband was held to his word by the university; he had stated after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in that his papers would be kept at the college. Coretta's lawyers argued that the statement was not binding and mentioned that King had not left a will at the time of his death.

Silber in a meeting demanded that she send the university all of her husband's documents instead of the other way around. King wanted the south to be the repository of the bulk of his papers. Now that the King Center library and archives are complete and have one of the finest civil-rights collections in all the world, it is time for the papers to be returned home.

On January 17,President George H. Bush laid a wreath at the tomb of her husband and met with and was greeted by King at the center. King praised Bush's support for the holiday, and joined hands with him at the end of a ceremony and sang " We Shall Overcome ". King, however, said her husband had changed his mind about allowing Boston University to keep the papers.

Chapter 5 Difficult Days. Chapter 6 Becoming a Widow. Chapter 8 Four Children Another Legacy. Chapter 10 Coretta on the International Stage. Chapter 11 Guardians of Martins Image and Words. If anything Coretta was more political than her husband and was worried that marrying a pastor might curtail her activism, but she says they developed a close bond — both personal and political.

Late inMartin Luther King was asked by a reporter if he had educated Coretta on civil rights issues, he replied. At the time, Coretta was highly regarded as a singer and had completed a degree in voice and piano at the New England Conservatory. However, she knew that by marrying Martin Luther King, she would have to forsake her own music career as they both became more committed to the civil rights movement and his career as a pastor.

After their marriage, they moved to Montgomery, Alabama in the deep south. Shortly after they found themselves in the middle of the Montgomery Bus boycott — precipitated by Rosa Parks refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus. Martin Luther King became the leader of the boycott — which soon spread to become national news. Despite threats of violence, Coretta decided she would always stay with her husband and not retreat to a safer place.

She later explained:. I realized how important it was for me to stand with Martin. You were the only one who stood with me. It was a difficult time to balance the need to protect her family but also dealing with the real sense of hatred felt from those who opposed the civil rights movement and wished to hold on to racism and segregation. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.

Although Coretta gave up her classical music career, she continued to pursue music with the local Baptist church. Like her husband, she was committed to the ideal of non-violence. Inthe couple visited followers of Mahatma Gandhi in India where they learnt more about non-violent protest. The FBI also recorded their telephone and could hear her next understandably bitter conversation to her husband.

She later expressed great resentment at the actions of J. Tammy Duckworth. Christine de Pisan. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Betty Friedan. Hillary Clinton. Gloria Steinem. Harriet Tubman. Malala Yousafzai. Civil Rights Activist Working side by side with her husband throughout the s and '60s, Coretta took part in the Montgomery Bus Boycott ofjourneyed to Ghana to mark that nation's independence intraveled to India on a pilgrimage in and worked to pass the Civil Rights Actamong other endeavors.

Death Coretta suffered a heart attack and stroke in August Industries Civil Rights U. Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.