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Digital Library of Georgia
In Memoriam: Coretta Scott King
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Coretta Scott King, sitting beside Ralph Abernathy (right) at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, speaks to the press after the assassination of her husband, Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968. For nearly forty years after her husband's death, King continued to promote their shared vision of equality and nonviolence.

Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr., the most prominent leader of the civil rights movement, died on January 30, 2006, at the age of seventy-eight.

Born in Marion, Alabama, King graduated from Antioch College in Ohio with a degree in music. She continued her music training at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where in 1952 she met her husband, then a graduate student in philosophy at Boston University. They married in 1953. King marched alongside her husband in numerous civil rights campaigns, including those in Selma and Birmingham, Alabama. She coordinated and performed in the Freedom Concerts series to raise funds for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She also raised four children: Yolanda, Martin III, Dexter, and Bernice. In 1960 the King family moved from Montgomery, Alabama, to Atlanta, where King resided until her death.

After her husband's assasination in April 1968, King was credited with continuing his legacy as an activist and peacemaker. The day before his funeral, King led a march through downtown Memphis in tribute to her husband and in support of the sanitation workers' strike. In June 1968 she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, which teaches the principles of nonviolent resistance and serves as a repository for civil rights history, in Atlanta. King is also credited with the successful campaign to establish the third Monday in January as a national holiday honoring her husband.

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Coretta Scott King (1927-2006)
As a proponent of civil and human rights, Coretta Scott King helped her husband, the Reverend Dr. Martin...

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, often referred to as the SCLC, was one of the most significant...

Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement in the American South was one of the most significant and successful social...

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
Martin Luther King Jr., Baptist minister and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference...


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