The founding president of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta , Georgia, Coretta Scott King continued her commitment to the civil rights struggle following the 1968 assassination of her husband, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Born on 27 April 1927 in Heiberger, Alabama, Coretta Scott spent her childhood on a farm owned by her parents, Obadiah "Obie" Scott and Bernice McMurray. After graduating from Lincoln High School, Coretta Scott won a scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she received her B.A. in music and elementary education in 1949. While at Antioch, Scott joined the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committee.
With the help of a fellowship from the Smith Noyes Foundation, Scott enrolled at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music in 1951, eventually earning a Bachelor of Music degree in voice. During her time in Boston, she met Martin Luther King, Jr., a doctoral candidate at Boston University's School of Theology. Despite the initial objections of King's parents, who wanted King to marry a woman from his hometown of Atlanta, the two were married at the Scott family home near Marion on 18 June 1953.
During much of her husband's very public career, Coretta King remained out of the public spotlight, raising the couple's four children: Yolanda Denise (1955), Martin Luther III (1957), Dexter Scott (1961), and Bernice Albertine (1963). However, she continued to play a central role behind the scenes of many of the major civil rights campaigns of the 1950's and 1960's, and she was by her husband’s side when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and during the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 that led to the passage of voting rights legislation.
Coretta King put her musical training to use throughout the black freedom struggle, participating in "freedom concerts," which included poetry recitation, singing, and lectures related to the history of the civil rights movement. The proceeds from these concerts were donated to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Coretta King accompanied her husband on many of his trips, traveling to Ghana in 1957 and India in 1959. In 1962, Coretta King's interest in disarmament efforts took her to Geneva, Switzerland, where she served as a Women's Strike for Peace delegate to the seventeen-nation Disarmament Conference.
After King’s assassination on 4 April 1968, Coretta King devoted much of her life to spreading her husband's philosophy of nonviolence. Just a few days after his death, she led a march on behalf of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Later that same month, she substituted for her husband at an anti-Vietnam War rally in New York. In May 1968, Coretta King helped to launch the Poor People's Campaign and thereafter participated in numerous anti-poverty efforts.
With a deep commitment to preserving King's legacy, Coretta King immediately began mobilizing support for the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, which would include an exhibition hall, a restoration of the King childhood home, an Institute for Afro-American Studies, a library containing King's papers, and a museum. As founding president of the Center, she guided its construction next to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King had served as co-pastor with his father, Martin Luther King, Sr. and developed programs that trained tens of thousands of people in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Coretta King continued to speak publicly and write nationally syndicated columns. In 1983, she led an effort that brought more than a half-million demonstrators to Washington, D.C., to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The following year, Coretta King began efforts to establish a national holiday in honor of her husband. As chairperson of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission, she successfully formalized plans for the annual celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day that began in January 1986.
During the 1980's, Coretta King also reaffirmed her long-standing opposition to apartheid, participating in a series of sit-in protests in Washington that prompted nationwide demonstrations against South African racial policies. In 1986, she traveled to South Africa and met with Winnie Mandela. After her return to the United States, she personally urged President Ronald Reagan to approve sanctions against South Africa. Coretta King also remained active in various women's organizations, including the National Organization for Women, the Women's International League for Peace, and Church Women United.
In 1985 Mrs. King asked Stanford professor Clayborne Carson to direct the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, which had been initiated in 1984 by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. As a result of Dr. Carson's selection, the Project became a cooperative venture of Stanford University, the King Center, and the King Estate. The project is currently part of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.
Coretta Scott King has supported nonviolent freedom struggles around the world and has served as an advocate for racial and economic justice, religious freedom, and dignity and human rights for women and children, gays and lesbians, and people with disabilities.
On 31 January 2006, Coretta Scott King died in her sleep at a holistic health center in Rosarito Beach, Mexico. She was 78.