Coretta Scott King
Virtual Timeline
Coretta Scott King was a renowned American civil rights activist, author and the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. She was most known for being very active and vocal in the civil rights movement which began in full force around the 1950s.
This timeline outlines the major events in the life of Coretta Scott King, a civil rights activist and wife of Martin Luther King Jr.
April 27, 1927
Coretta Scott was born April 27, 1927, in Heiberger, near Marion, Alabama.
She spent her childhood on her parents' farm in Heiberger. The farm had been in the family since the Civil War, but the Scotts were not at all rich. They were so hard hit during the Depression that the children picked cotton to help earn money. There were three children — Edythe, Coretta, and Obie. Obie was named after his father, Obediah Scott, a resourceful man who was the first black person in the district to own a truck and who eventually opened a country store. Their mother, Bernice (McMurray) Scott, was also a strong character.
Source: Gale Virtual Reference Library Added by: Colin Harris
Born to farmers who owned their land since the Civil War, the 3 Scott children picked cotton during the Depression to make ends meet for the family. Mrs. Scott determined that her children would graduate from high school, which was 9 miles from home. Mrs. Scott rented a bus and drove area children to and from school, an astonishing feat for a black woman in that era.
Said Mrs. King, "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."
Source: about.com/Deborah White Added by: Colin Harris
1945
Coretta Scott Enrolls At Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio
Wanting a better life for their children, the Scotts sent all three to college.
Coretta, who graduated at the top of her high school class in 1945, won a scholarshipto study elementary education and music at to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She matriculated in 1945 and was one of only three African Americans in her class; the future jurist A. Leon Higginbotham was one of the others. Scott was active in extracurricular activities, especially in projects designed to improve race relations. She joined the college chapter of the NAACP and performed onstage at Antioch with Paul Robeson, the actor, singer, and activist, who encouraged her to pursue a musical career.Scott studied piano and the violin, but focused on singing. She gave her first solo concert in 1948 and graduated with a BA from Antioch in Music Education three years later, in 1951.
Source: Oxford University Press/Barbara Woods Added by: Colin Harris
Scott King graduated valedictorian of Lincoln Normal School in 1945 and enrolled at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Edythe Scott already attended Antioch as part of the Antioch Program for Interracial Education, which recruited non-white students and gave them full scholarships in an attempt to diversify the historically white campus. Coretta said of her first college:
Antioch had envisioned itself as a laboratory in democracy, but had no black students. (Edythe) became the first African American to attend Antioch on a completely integrated basis, and was joined by two other black female students in the fall of 1943. Pioneering is never easy, and all of us who followed my sister at Antioch owe her a great debt of gratitude.
Coretta studied music with Walter Anderson, the first non-white chair of an academic department in a historically white college. Scott King also became politically active, due largely to her experience of racial discrimination by the local school board. She became active in the nascent civil rights movement; she joined the Antioch chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the college's Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committees. The board denied her request to perform her second year of required practice teaching at Yellow Springs public schools, for her teaching certificate Scott King appealed to the Antioch College administration, which was unwilling or unable to change the situation in the local school system and instead employed her at the college's associated laboratory school for a second year.
Source: Wikipedia Added by: Colin Harris
Although Antioch enjoyed a liberal reputation, Scott found that it was not immune to racial discrimination. When she applied to practice as a student teacher, the music department required that she do so at an all-black school system near the campus. The school district in which all other Antioch students did their practice work had no black teachers, and the college administration did not wish to upset the racial status quo in conservative southern Ohio by sending an African American student to teach there. Coretta Scott protested this Jim Crow policy to the office of the college president, but the president refused to support her request. She subsequently agreed to do her internship at the demonstration school on campus.
Source: Oxford African American Studies Center Added by: Colin Harris
1952
Coretta Scott Meets Martin Luther King Jr.
Moving to Boston changed the course of Coretta Scott's life in more ways than one, for in 1952 a friend there introduced her to Martin Luther King Jr., an ordained Baptist minister who was attending Boston University's School of Theology. Although she has said that she never wanted to be the wife of a pastor, Scott warmed to the theology student's sincere passion for social justice and also fell for his distinctive line of flattery. King, for his part, admired Scott for standing up to his father, who wanted him to marry into one of Atlanta's leading black families. Scott bluntly told the imposing Daddy King that she, too, was from one of the finest families.
Source: Oxford African American Studies Center/Barbara Woods Added by: Colin Harris
1954
Coretta moves with King to Montgomery, Alabama. King had accepted the pastor position in Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
Moving to Boston changed the course of Coretta Scott-King life.
Jun 18 1953
Coretta Scott Marries Martin Luther King Jr.
When he proposed, she deliberated for six months before saying yes, and they were married in the garden of her parents' house on June 18, 1953.
The 350 guests, elegant big-city folks from Atlanta and rural neighbors from Alabama, made it the biggest wedding, white or black, the area had ever seen.
Even before the wedding, she made it clear she intended to remain her own woman. She stunned Dr. King's father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., who presided over the wedding, by demanding that the promise to obey her husband be removed from the wedding vows. Reluctantly, he went along. After it was over, the bridegroom fell asleep in the car on the way back to Atlanta while the new Mrs. King did the driving.
Source: New York Times/Peter Applebome Added by: Colin Harris
While initially wary of dating a Baptist minister, she was impressed by his sophistication and intellect and recalled King telling her: “You have everything I have ever wanted in a wife” The two were married at the Scott family home near Marion on 18 June 1953. After the wedding they returned to Boston to complete their degrees. Coretta Scott King earned her bachelor of music degree in June 1954.
Although Scott King was focused on raising the couple's four children: Yolanda Denise (1955), Martin Luther III (1957), Dexter Scott (1961), and Bernice Albertine (1963), she continued to play a critical role in many of the civil rights campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s, performing in freedom concerts, that included poetry recitation, singing, and lectures related to the history of the civil rights movement.
Source: The Martin Luther King , Jr. Research And Education Institute Added by: Colin Harris
1955
Coretta and MLK give birth to Yolanda on November 17. Yolanda is the first child of the couple.
Dec 1 1955 to Dec 20 1956
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system.
Quick Read: "Montgomery Boycott", written by Coretta Scott-King
Many historically significant figures of the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and others, as listed below. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city's black population who were the drivers of the boycott were also the bulk of the system's ridership. The ensuing struggle lasted from December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person, to December 20, 1956 when a federal ruling took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.
Source: Wikipedia Added by: Kevin Rogers
1957
Coretta and MLK welcome their second child, Martin Luther King III, on October 23, 1957.
1961
Coretta and MLK welcome their third child, Dexter, who is born on January 30, 1961.
1963
Coretta’s fourth and last child is born March 28, 1963. The child is named Bernice Albertine King.
Feb 9 1959
Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King Travel To India.
“I left India more convinced than ever before that nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.”
King says in his autobiography that “Gandhi was the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change” during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott in 1956 that ended segregation on that city’s buses, and throughout the years King led the American civil rights movement.
King wanted to see for himself the results of Gandhi’s nonviolent campaign to end British colonial rule and improve the lives of India’s “untouchables” (members of the lowest social caste). Invited by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, King, along with his wife, Coretta, and biographer Lawrence Reddick, arrived in Bombay (now Mumbai) on February 9, 1959, and traveled to New Delhi and several other cities over the next four weeks.
Source: U. S. State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs/Louise Fenner Added by: Colin Harris
1968
Coretta Scott King Founds The Martin Luther King Jr. Center For Nonviolent Social Change
Coretta Scott King started the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in the basement of the couple's home in the year following King's 1968 assassination.
In 1981, the center was moved into a multimillion dollar facility on Auburn Avenue, near King's birth home and next to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he preached from 1960 until his death.
In 1977, a memorial tomb was dedicated, and the remains of Martin Luther King Jr. were moved from South View Cemetery to the plaza that is nestled between the center and the church. Martin Luther King Jr.'s gravesite and a reflecting pool are also located next to Freedom Hall. Mrs. King was interred with her husband on February 7, 2006.
As of 2006, the King Center is a privately owned inholding within the authorized boundaries of the national historic site. However, there is debate within the King family on whether it should remain so or be sold to the National Park Service.
Source: Wikipedia Added by: Colin Harris
In the 1970s Coretta King established and chaired the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. This project took her around the world in search of financial support, lecturing to audiences numbering in the hundreds. The King Center, which was dedicated on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta in 1981, contains more than 1 million documents related to the King family's civil rights activities. Several thousand scholars have used its library resources since it was established, but in the 1990s Coretta King and her family came under fire for the way she tightly controlled her husband's legacy, including his image and papers. She was also involved in a feud with the National Park Service over their handling of the King property on Auburn Avenue.
Source: Oxford African American Studies Center/Barbara Woods Added by: Colin Harris
The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change
National Park Service(Public Domain)Apr 4 1968 6:01PM
Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassinated at Lorraine Motel
In March 1968, Reverend King went to Memphis, Tennessee in support of striking African American sanitation workers.
"Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. "
- Coretta Scott King
The workers had staged a walkout on February 11, 1967, to protest unequal wages and working conditions. At the time, the city of Memphis paid black workers significantly lower wages than whites. In addition, unlike their white counterparts, blacks received no pay if they stayed home during bad weather; consequently, most blacks were compelled to work even in driving rain and snow storms.
On April 3, King returned to Memphis to address a gathering at the Mason Temple (World Headquarters of the Church of God in Christ). His airline flight to Memphis was delayed by a bomb threat against his plane. With a thunderstorm raging outside, King delivered the last speech of his life, now known as the "I've Been to the Mountaintop" address. As he neared the close, he made reference to the bomb threat:
And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats... or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. [applause] And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! [applause] And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!
King was booked in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, owned by black businessman Walter Bailey (and named after his wife). King's close friend and colleague, Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, who was present at the assassination, told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that King and his entourage stayed in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel so often that it was known as the "King-Abernathy Suite."
According to biographer Taylor Branch, King's last words were to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was going to attend: "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."
At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, while he was standing on the motel's second floor balcony, King was struck by a single bullet fired from a rifle. The bullet travelled through the right side of his neck, smashing his throat and then going down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder.
King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where doctors opened his chest and performed manual heart massage. He was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. According to biographer Taylor Branch, King's autopsy revealed that though he was only 39 years old, he had the heart of a 60 year old man.
Source: Wikipedia Added by: Rob Brent
At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, a shot rang out. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been standing on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN, now lay sprawled on the balcony's floor. A gaping wound covered a large portion of his jaw and neck. A great man who had spent thirteen years of his life dedicating himself to nonviolent protest had been felled by a sniper's bullet.
Violence and controversy followed. In outrage of the murder, many blacks took to the streets across the country in a massive wave of riots. The FBI investigated the crime, but many believed them partially of fully responsible for the assassination. A man was arrested, but many people, including some of Martin Luther King Jr.'s own family, believe he was innocent.
Source: Jennifer Rosenberg Added by: Rob Brent
Apr 8 1968
Coretta Scott King Leads Silent Memorial March For Martin Luther King Jr.
An assassin finally snuffed out Dr. King's life on April 4, 1968, while he led a strike of 1,300 black sanitation workers - the working poor of their day - to demand the right to have a union.
Many whites in Memphis, calling him a communist and racial agitator, said they were glad he was dead.
In this frightening atmosphere, Mrs. King and three of her children led some 20,000 marchers through the streets of Memphis on April 8, holding signs that read, "Honor King: End Racism," "Union Justice Now," or, simply, "I Am A Man." National Guardsmen lined the streets, perched on M-48 tanks, bayonets mounted, as helicopters circled overhead. She led another 150,000 in a funeral procession through the streets of Atlanta the next day.
Her quiet courage and composed demeanor renewed people's sense of pride, courage and respect for the peaceful principles the civil-rights movement stood for. In the wake of King's death, riots spread to 125 cities, leading to the deaths of 43 and arrests of more than 20,000 people, with the deployment of 60,000 National Guardsmen to suppress the rebellion - the largest military intervention in domestic affairs since the Civil War.
Source: Michael Honey/Seattle Times (April 2nd, 2006) Added by: Colin Harris
1969
Coretta Scott King Publishes 'My Life With Martin Luther King Jr.
In the years immediately following her husband's death, King was involved in many things.
For example, in June of 1969 Coretta Scott King published her first biography, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr. , which focused on their relationship with their family, civil rights, and activism. This book is a detailed story of the life they shared until the assassination of her husband.
Source: University of Minnesota Added by: Colin Harris
My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. is more than Coretta Scott King’s autobiography, more even than the story of her marriage. In key respects, it is also a mirror of the African American experience in the twentieth century. In seventeen chapters, an epilogue, and several appendices, Mrs. King surveys her background in Marion, Alabama, her education at Antioch College (Ohio), and her fifteen-year marriage that ended tragically with the assassination of her famous husband on April 4, 1968.
Source: enotes.com Added by: Colin Harris
Nov 2 1983
'Martin Luther King Jr. Day' Becomes a National Holiday
Coretta King’s most enduring contribution to American culture has been as chair of the Martin L. King Jr. Federal Holiday Commission.
In the late 1970s the King Center collected six million signatures on a petition urging the creation of a Martin Luther King Jr. memorial holiday, and in November 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed the bill designating the national holiday.
Source: Oxford University Press/Barbara Woods Added by: Colin Harris
The 98th Congress (1983-84) would finally prove that perseverance does pay off. The first session marked the 15th anniversary of King’s death. During the previous year the King Center had called for and mobilized a conference to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the March on Washington, with more than 100 organizations participating. A coalition was subsequently formed to lobby for the Holiday bill. Singing star Stevie Wonder provided funds to open a Holiday lobbying office and staff in Washington, D.C. Later that year Coretta Scott King and Stevie Wonder presented a petition to Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.) containing the signatures of six million citizens.
Source: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars/Don Wolfensberger Added by: Colin Harris
More information
- Time Magazine: A Brief History of Martin Luther King Jr. Day
www.time.com - Martin Luther King Jr. Day Of Service Website
www.mlkday.gov
1985
Clayborne Carson Directs The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project
The King Papers Project's principal mission is to publish a definitive fourteen-volume edition of King's most significant correspondence, sermons, speeches, published writings, and unpublished manuscripts.
The published volumes of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., have already influenced scholarship and become essential reference works. Building upon this research foundation, the Project also engages in other related educational activities. Using multimedia and computer technology to reach diverse audiences, it has greatly increased the documentary information about King's ideas and achievements that is available to popular as well as scholarly audiences. The Project also offers unique opportunities for students to become involved in its research through the King Fellowship Program.
Source: The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute Added by: Colin Harris
In 1985 Coretta Scott King invited Dr. Carson to direct a long-term project to edit and publish the papers of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This project was initiated by the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta and is being conducted in association with Stanford University and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Estate. Under Dr. Carson's direction, the King Papers Project has produced four volumes of a projected fourteen-volume comprehensive edition of King's speeches, sermons, correspondence, publications, and unpublished writings.
Source: Hachette Book Group Added by: Colin Harris
More information
The King Papers Project: And Interview With Clayborne Carson
www.stanford.eduEbony: The Woman Behind The King Anniversary
books.google.com
1986
Coretta Scott King Travels To South Africa
During the 1980s, Scott King reaffirmed her long-standing opposition to apartheid, participating in a series of sit-in protests in Washington, D.C. that prompted nationwide demonstrations against South African racial policies.
In 1986, she traveled to South Africa and met with Winnie Mandela, while Mandela's husband Nelson Mandela was still a political prisoner on Robben Island. She declined invitations from Pik Botha and moderate Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Upon her return to the United States, she urged Reagan to approve economic sanctions against South Africa.
Source: Wikipedia Added by: Colin Harris
January, 1993
Calls for peace protests across the nation over a missile strike on Iraq.
February, 1993
Praises FBI boss William S. Sessions for his efforts in restructuring the FBI and including ethnic minorities and women in the organization.
1995
Joins forces with Betty Shabazz and Myrlie Evers to encourage more than one million African American women to register for the presidential election.
1997
Delivers a speech at Loyola University (Lake Shore campus).
1997
Donates $5,000 to help in the rehabilitation of Betty Shabazz (the widow of Malcolm X) who had suffered burns from a fire incident in her home.
Apr 1 1998
Coretta Scott King Calls On Civil Rights Community to Join In Struggle Against Homophobia
"I've always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy," King told 600 people at the Palmer House Hilton, days before the 30th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination on April 4, 1968. She said the civil rights movement "thrives on unity and inclusion, not division and exclusion." Her husband's struggle parallels that of the gay rights movement, she said.
Source: Chicago Sun Times, April 1, 1998, p. 18 Added by: Colin Harris
Apr 23 1998
James Earl Ray Dies In Prison
In Atlanta, Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, issued a statement that said: ''This is a tragedy, not only for Mr. Ray and his family but also for the entire nation.
America will never have the benefit of Mr. Ray's trial, which would have produced new revelations about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., as well as establish the facts concerning Mr. Ray's innocence.
''The King family has asked President Clinton and Attorney General Reno to conduct a full investigation of all new and unexamined evidence related to the assassination and to establish a Truth and Reconcilitation Commission that would grant amnesty and immunity from prosecution for all those who come forward with information.''
Source: New York Times/Lawrence Van Gelder Added by: Colin Harris
In 1997, she [Coretta Scott King] spoke out in favor of a push to grant a trial for James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty to killing her husband and then recanted.
"Even if no new light is shed on the facts concerning my husband's assassination, at least we and the nation can have the satisfaction of knowing that justice has run its course in this tragedy," she told a judge.
The trial never took place; Ray died in 1998. Coretta Scott King still appealed for a federal commission with subpoena power to look into the assassination, saying she did so "not only for our family, but for the entire nation."
Source: Seattle Times (Associated Press/Errin Haines) Added by: Colin Harris
Jan 30 2006
Coretta Scott King Dies
After suffering a stroke and mild heart attack in August 2005, Coretta Scott King died on 30 January 2006 while being treated at the Hospital Santa Monica in Mexico City.
Her funeral service was attended by 115,000 people, including President George W. Bush and the former presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush. Other attendees included famous civil rights activists and writers, celebrities, and an assortment of politicians. The service took on a political edge (to George Bush and the first lady's obvious discomfort) with pointed reminders of King's advocacy of nonviolence and occasional references to the war in Iraq. The six-hour service was completed with a eulogy delivered by her daughter, Bernice (who was five when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968), who said: “Thank you, mother, for your incredible example of Christ-like love and obedience. We're going to miss you.”
Source: Oxford African American Studies Center Added by: Colin Harris
Coretta Scott King, aged 78, died in the late evening of January 30, 2006 at a rehabilitation center in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, where she was undergoing holistic therapy for her stroke and advanced stage ovarian cancer. The main cause of her death however, is believed to be respiratory failure due to complications from ovarian cancer. The clinic at which she died was called the Hospital Santa Monica, but was licensed as Clinica Santo Tomas. Newspaper reports indicated that it was not legally licensed to "perform surgery, take X-rays, perform laboratory work or run an internal pharmacy, all of which it was doing." It was also founded, owned, and operated by San Diego resident, and highly controversial alternative medicine figure, Kurt Donsbach. Days after Mrs. King's death, the Baja California, Mexico state medical commissioner, Dr. Francisco Vera, shut down the clinic.
Source: Wikipedia Added by: Colin Harris
More information
CNN: Coretta Scott King Dies
www.cnn.comNew York Times: Coretta Scott King, a Civil Rights Icon, Dies at 78
www.nytimes.com
Coretta Scott King's Former Grave in Atlanta, Georgiawikipedia/Michael David Murphy(CC BY-SA)
Aug 30 2007
Uncovered Documents Show FBI Was Spying On Coretta Scott King
The American Civil Liberties Union today issued a call to change FBI spying guidelines after documents were released revealing that the FBI spied on Coretta Scott King, after the death of her husband Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in an attempt to stem the civil rights movement. After the government was criticized for spying on Dr. King, the FBI was prohibited from spying on Americans. But in 2002 former Attorney General John Ashcroft changed the guidelines to permit the FBI to spy on individuals in public places.
Source: American Civil Liberties Union Added by: Colin Harris
Atlanta, Aug. 31: Today, Martin Luther King
III and Elder Bernice A. King issued the following statement regarding the release of FBI materials related to Coretta Scott King:
"While we are still grieving the passing of our mother, it is unfortunate that the FBI chose to publicly release illegal surveillance undertaken by the federal government of our family, especially because our parents were always striving to elevate the quality of human life by eliminating what they identified as the triple evils of poverty, racism, and war, which still plague our world. For the sake of this and future generations we will continue to focus on eliminating these social injustices and we would hope that the nation will do so as well."
Source: PR Newswire/The King Family Added by: Colin Harris
More information
NPR: Inside Coretta Scott King's FBI File
www.npr.org