Coretta Scott King

Coretta Scott was born on April 27, 1927, in Heiberger, AlabamaAlabamaAlabama is a U.S. state in the Southeast on the Gulf of Mexico, with its capital at Montgomery. It was admitted to the Union on December 14, 1819, as the 22nd state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 5,024,279 residents.Open the full entry, to Obadiah (Obie) Scott and Bernice McMurry Scott, who owned farms and wanted their children to receive the best possible education. She grew up on the family farm under segregation.⁠[1][2][3]

She attended a rural one-room schoolhouse and then the private Lincoln Normal School in Marion, Alabama, where she studied music and graduated as valedictorian. By the age of 15 she was choir director and pianist of her church’s junior choir.⁠[3][2][1]

In 1945 she entered Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OhioOhioOhio is a state in the Midwestern United States; its capital is Columbus. It joined the Union in 1803 as the 17th state, the first carved from the Northwest Territory, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 11,799,448.Open the full entry, on a partial scholarship, studying voice and music education, and joined the local chapter of the NAACP. She graduated in 1951 with a B.A. in music and education.⁠[1][2][3]

In 1951 she enrolled at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston with a grant from the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, and she received a bachelor of music degree in June 1954.⁠[2]

In early 1952 her friend Mary Powell introduced her to Martin Luther King Jr., then a doctoral candidate at Boston University’s School of Theology. They married on June 18, 1953, at the Scott family home near Marion, Alabama, with the groom’s father officiating.⁠[2][3]

In September 1954 the couple settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where Martin Luther King Jr. became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.⁠[1]

During the Montgomery bus boycott, on January 30, 1956, someone threw dynamite onto the porch of the King home; no one was hurt. Her father urged her to leave Montgomery, but she stayed.⁠[3]

In December 1956 she gave a concert in New York City to raise funds for the Montgomery Improvement Association, using narration, poetry and music to tell the story of the boycott. It became the model for her later Freedom Concerts, which in the 1960s combined poetry, singing and lectures on civil rights history to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.⁠[3][1][2]

In 1957 the Kings traveled to Ghana for its independence celebrations and also visited Nigeria, France, Italy and the Vatican. In 1959 she spent nearly a month in India on a pilgrimage connected with Mahatma Gandhi, writing that “we were greatly impressed by the part women played in the political life of India.”⁠[1][2]

In 1962 she attended the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, as a delegate of Women’s Strike for Peace. In 1964 she accompanied her husband to Oslo, Norway, when he received the Nobel Peace Prize.⁠[2][1]

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TennesseeTennesseeTennessee is a U.S. state in the southeast-central United States, with its capital at Nashville. It was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1796, as the 16th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 6,910,840 residents.Open the full entry, on April 4, 1968. Days later she led a march in Memphis in support of the striking sanitation workers, and later that month she spoke in his place at an anti–Vietnam War rally in New York City. In May she helped launch the Poor People’s Campaign, and she went on to take part in many anti-poverty efforts.⁠[2][3]

In 1968 she became the first woman to deliver the Class Day address at Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

On June 26, 1968, she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center as a nonprofit organization and served as its founding president. In 1978 it was renamed the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., commonly known as The King Center; it stands next to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.⁠[1][2]

She was instrumental in developing the King Center campus, the King Birth Home and the King National Historic Site, which was redesignated the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park in 2017, and her vision led to the creation of the King Library and Archives.⁠[1]

In 1969 she became the first woman to preach at a statutory service at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. In 1974 she formed a coalition of more than 100 religious, labor, business, civil rights and women’s rights organizations working for full employment and equal economic opportunity, and she co-chaired the National Committee for Full Employment and the Full Employment Action Council.⁠[1]

In 1983 she led more than 800 human rights organizations in forming the Coalition of Conscience, which sponsored the 20th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and drew more than half a million people to Washington, D.C.; in 1988 she reconvened the coalition for the march’s 25th anniversary. In 1985 she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project. In 1988 she headed the U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry delegation to Women for a Meaningful Summit in Athens, Greece, and in 1990 she co-convened the Soviet-American Women’s Summit in Washington, D.C.⁠[1][2][3]

She led the educational and lobbying campaign to make her husband’s birthday a national holiday. On November 2, 1983, President Ronald ReaganRonald ReaganRonald Reagan (1911–2004) was an American politician and actor who worked as a radio sports announcer and film actor before serving as governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989.Open the full entry signed H.R. 3706 (Public Law 98-144) in the White House Rose Garden, making the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday; speaking at the ceremony, she said, “Martin Luther King, Jr., and his spirit live within all of us.”⁠[1][4]

Congress created the Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission in 1983, and she chaired it for its entire existence, formalizing plans for the annual observance. The first legal holiday in his honor was observed in January 1986. Some states initially refused to recognize the holiday; New HampshireNew HampshireNew Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by Quebec, Canada, to the north, Vermont across the Connecticut River to the west, Massachusetts to the south, and Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east; its capital is Concord. One of the original 13 colonies, it became the ninth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on June 21, 1788, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 1,377,529.Open the full entry was the last to adopt it, in 1999.⁠[1][2][3]

In the 1980s she opposed apartheid in South Africa, joining sit-in protests in Washington that sparked demonstrations across the country. She was arrested with her daughter Bernice and son Martin III while demonstrating outside the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C. In 1986 she traveled to South Africa, where she met Winnie Mandela.⁠[2][1]

After apartheid ended, The King Center, with the support and funding of the U.S. State Department, trained 300,000 new South African voters in nonviolence before the country’s first multiracial election. In 1994 she attended Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as president.⁠[1][3]

Her last public appearance was at a King Day dinner on January 14, 2006. She died in her sleep on January 30, 2006, at a holistic health center in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, at the age of 78.⁠[2][3]

Her body lay in the rotunda of the Georgia State Capitol, the first woman and the first African American so honored, and tens of thousands viewed her body at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Four living U.S. presidents and their wives attended her funeral at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, as did Barack Obama. First buried near her husband’s crypt at the King Center, she was reinterred with him in November 2006 in an enlarged crypt in the middle of the reflecting pool of the King Center’s Freedom Hall Complex.⁠[1][3]

She and Martin Luther King Jr. had four children: Yolanda Denise King (1955), Martin Luther King III (1957), Dexter Scott King (1961) and Bernice Albertine King (1963).⁠[2][1]

She published the memoir My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1969. The King Center records that she wrote two books, edited a collection of Martin Luther King Jr.’s quotations and wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column.⁠[2][1]

She received honorary doctorates from more than 60 colleges and universities and helped found and served on dozens of organizations, including the Black Leadership Forum, the National Black Coalition for Voter Participation and the Black Leadership Roundtable.⁠[1]

The New Georgia Encyclopedia article calls the campaign for the federal King holiday “perhaps Coretta King’s greatest achievement.”⁠[3]

The King Center: Official website: https://thekingcenter.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]