The world has lost a great woman

Tribute: Coretta Scott King

by Marsha Prescod

Coretta Scott King, 1927 - 30th January 2006, widow of the legendary civil rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Martin Luther King Jr, has died after a full and distinguished campaigning life of her own, a famed human rights activist.

Born in the southern part of the US to Obadiah and Bernice Scott, she knew what it was like to have to work on the family land as a child, to live under the shadow of racial violence from white neighbours, and to live under a legal regime that enforced segregation. An intelligent and ambitious child she graduated at the top of her class in 1945 and won a scholarship to Antioch College in Ohio studying music and elementary education. Whilst there, she performed with an internationally famous artist and civil rights activist Paul Robeson, which must have had a considerable impact upon her in view of her later life. From Antioch she got another scholarship, to the New England Conservatory in Boston where she met the young Martin Luther King Jr, -his father a leading black minister in Georgia- who was doing a PhD in theology at Boston University. They married in 1953, and the turmoil over race brewing in the South meant that they would plunge into a high profile, death-defying life of political and social change that was to inspire civil and human rights movements around the world, but demand the ultimate sacrifice from them and their family.

Background: A historical political and social struggle

In an understandable attempt to re-write history that comes with the shame of being exposed as a society in gross violation of the human rights of their black citizens, US commentators have a natural inclination to play down the viciousness of the apartheid-like system in the southern states of the US, that had existed since the abolition of slavery and which haunted the lives of black people in the 1950s. Segregated housing and schooling, shopping, hotels, churches, restaurants etc, restricted employment, arbitrary treatment under the judicial system, the lack of protection from violence from white southerners- up to and including murder- the denial of the right to vote were part of the former confederate States ‘southern way of life’. The physical violence peaceful marchers and protesters were subject to, the jailings, the threats, the bombings and the collusion (and at times involvement) of local police forces and judicial systems were all exposed under the stunned gaze of international media due to the brilliant Gandhi-influenced campaign of the southern Civil Rights Movement.

Dr Martin Luther King Jr, educated scion of the black middle class, possessing the oratorical gifts of a black priesthood well known to the African- American community but revelatory to the wider white community, was a natural focal point. Poised, calm, photogenic, with engrained southern courtesy, the young cleric was the poster boy for mass actions that had revolutionary directions at times even as it appealed to conservative factions in the African-American community, and liberal white northerners, with its heavy referencing of Biblical stories and exhortations. As a trained theologian, his intellectual reasoning brought on board prominent white protestant ministers, his moral stance and alliances brought in veterans of the socialist movement in the Northern US and Jewish people remembering the programs of Eastern Europe. These varied allies contributed financially and directly to the fight for justice and equality.

A family forged in the fire of destiny

The Kings were only in their twenties when a catalyst in the form of the Rosa Parks refusal to sit in the coloured section of the Montgomery bus galvanized Dr King, pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, and president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, into action, together with other members of the local chapter of the NAACP and other black community organizations. It was 1955 and a mere two weeks after Coretta Scott King had given birth to her first child, but Rosa Park’s arrest was the catalyst for the launching of a mass boycott of the Montgomery bus system. Life became a complex combination of family life as a wife and mother, and dealing with the effects of political activity- marches, demonstrations, meetings, rallies, fundraising events, court hearings, press conferences. Even if her husband was the main activist in the family, she was necessarily drawn in. She had to deal with him being a figurehead in a campaign of mass civil disobedience that resulted in him being thrown in jail. She used her musical training to perform as a vocalist and raise money at freedom concerts, traveling around the southern states.

In 1956 she and her daughter escaped death when a bomb exploded at the family home whilst her husband was out preaching. The reluctance of the federal government to act to protect US citizens trying to exercise their legal rights,meant those involved in the non-violent actions of civil disobedience- sit-ins at segregated facilities, at mainstream places like Woolworths, and public libraries, attempts to register to vote, ‘freedom rides’ on buses, trying to attend all white schools- faced rampant violence from the police, the national guard in a number of the southern states. The Ku Klux Klan and similar white terrorist organisations in the South ran unchecked backed by notorious city mayors and state governors such as George Wallace. Assassinations of members of the movement such as the charismatic Medgar Evers in Mississipi in 1963 were and bombing black churches were another way of intimidating those who wanted change. The apalling image of the US around the world caused by scenes of police setting dogs and firehoses on youthful peace marchers- some of whom were school children- eventually led to reluctant action by the federal government under President John F Kennedy and his brother Robert, the attorney general.

The civil rights movement gathered momentum and activities continued for the next decade even as their family expanded as more children arrived. Though it was Dr King who did most of the traveling and was often away from home, they both traveled to India in 1959 to meet King’s inspiration for non-violent political change, Mahatma Gandhi. Coretta attended the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland as a Women's Strike for Peace delegate in 1962. She accompanied her husband to Oslo in 1964 to accept his Nobel Peace Prize- a nomination which had caused outrage in the US establishment at the time. Well before Dr King spoke out publicly against the Vietnam War, Coretta spoke at an anti-Vietnam War rally in 1965 at Madison Square Garden.

A leader in her own right: and not afraid of controversial causes

When Dr King finally, inevitably became a victim of the assassin’s bullet in 1968, Coretta Scott King did not retire to the sidelines to raise her four children. She continued to develop as a political activist in her own right. Two months after his death, she made a speech on Solidarity Day calling for a solid block of women power to fight racism, poverty and war. Within a year she founded the Martin Luther King Centre for Non-Violent Social Change. She was its president and CEO. For twenty years she campaigned for her husband’s birthday to become a national holiday in the USA - which it eventually did in 1986.

Coretta Scott King’s political focus moved with the times. She did not restrict her activism to ‘safe’ mainstream areas. In the 1970s she formed a coalition of more than 100 women’s organisations, labour, business and church organisations to campaign for full employment. In the 1980s, she was arrested during an anti-apartheid demonstration outside the South African Embassy in Washington with three of her children. During that decade she travelled to Southern Africa to support the struggle against apartheid, met Winne Mandela in South Africa, refused to meet the president of that country and urged America to impose sanctions.

She clashed with the more conservative elements within her community, including her own daughter and neice when she became a supporter of lesbian and gay rights in the 90s, and later same sex marriages. She spoke out against capital punishment, (particulary in the case of juveniles) despite it being popular with the majority of her countrymen. She was against the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 at a time when very few prominent public figures dared to speak out against it.

Her death following a stroke and heart attack, resulted in tributes pouring in from around the world. Her body lay in state at the Georgia state capital,both the US Senate and House of Representatives passed special resolutions honouring her. Four US presidents (three former ones and the current serving president) attended her funeral.

Her legacy is the Martin Luther King Centre for Non-Violent Social Change, still going, an international organisation focuses on the following areas:

• The development and dissemination of programs that educate the world about Dr. King’s philosophy and methods of nonviolence, human relations, service to mankind, and related ideas;
• Building a national and international network of organisations that, through sanctioned programs, promote, compliment, and help further the organisation’s mission and objectives of building the Beloved Community that Dr. King envisioned
• Functioning as the clearinghouse for non-profit organisations and government agencies which utilise Dr. King’s image and writings for programs and ensuring that the programs are historically and interpretively accurate;
• Monitoring and reporting on the impact of Dr. King’s legacy on the world.

The world has lost a great woman.

"I am convinced that if I had not had a wife with the fortitude, strength and calmness of Coretta, I could not have stood up amid the ordeals and tensions surrounding the Montgomery movement. I came to see the real meaning of that rather trite statement: 'A wife can either make or break a husband.' Coretta proved to be that type of wife with qualities to make a husband when he could have been so easily broken. In the darkest moments she always brought the light of hope." - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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