Coretta Scott King: Education, Career, and Legacy
Coretta Scott King was an American author, activist, and civil rights leader, best known as the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. However, she was an accomplished woman in her own right, with a strong commitment to education and a career dedicated to social justice and equality. Coretta Scott King's life was one of dedication to civil rights, peace, and equality. Her early education instilled in her a passion for learning and a commitment to social justice, which she carried throughout her life.
Early Life and Education
Coretta Scott was born on April 27, 1927, in Heiberger, Alabama. Her parents, Obadiah Scott and Bernice McMurry Scott, were landowners who valued education and instilled that value in their children. Despite lacking formal education themselves, Coretta Scott's parents intended for all of their children to be educated. Coretta's maternal grandparents were Mollie and Martin van Buren McMurry, who were of African-American and Irish descent. Martin, Coretta's maternal grandfather, was a self-taught reader with little formal education, he is noted for having inspired Coretta's passion for education.
The Scott children attended a one-room elementary school 5 miles (8 km) from their home and were later bused to Lincoln Normal School. The bus was driven by Coretta's mother Bernice, who bused all the local black teenagers. Coretta Scott graduated valedictorian from Lincoln Normal School in 1945, where she played trumpet and piano, sang in the chorus, and participated in school musicals.
During her senior year at Lincoln, Coretta enrolled at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. After being accepted to Antioch, she applied for the Interracial Scholarship Fund for financial aid. Her older sister Edythe already attended Antioch as part of the Antioch Program for Interracial Education. Coretta studied music with Walter Anderson. She 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 Coretta Scott 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.
In 1948, Scott wrote that college graduates “had greater freedom of movement: they went on trips; they visited cities; they knew more about the world”. She later credited Antioch with preparing her for her role in the civil rights movement. She stated that “the college’s emphasis on service to mankind reinforced the Christian spirit of giving and sharing” and provided “a new self-assurance that encouraged me in competition with all people”.
Read also: Discover Agnes Scott College
Coretta transferred out of Antioch when she won a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. It was while studying voice at that school with Marie Sundelius that she met Martin Luther King Jr. Scott initially showed little interest in meeting him, even after Powell told her that he had a promising future, but eventually relented and agreed to the meeting. Their dates usually consisted of political and racial discussions, and in August of that year Coretta met King's parents Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King.
Marriage and Early Career
Coretta Scott and Martin Luther King Jr. were married on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her mother's house; the ceremony was performed by Martin Sr. Coretta had the vow to obey her husband removed from the ceremony, which was unusual for the time. After completing her degree in voice and piano at the New England Conservatory, she moved with her husband to Montgomery, Alabama, in September 1954, where Martin became the full-time pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
After we married, we moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where my husband had accepted an invitation to be the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Before long, we found ourselves in the middle of the Montgomery bus boycott, and Martin was elected leader of the protest movement. As the boycott continued, I had a growing sense that I was involved in something so much greater than myself, something of profound historic importance. I came to the realization that we had been thrust into the forefront of a movement to liberate oppressed people, not only in Montgomery but also throughout our country, and this movement had worldwide implications.
The couple moved into the church's parsonage on South Jackson Street shortly after this. Coretta became a member of the choir and taught Sunday school, as well as participating in the Baptist Training Union and Missionary Society.
King's devotion to the cause while giving up on her own musical ambitions would become symbolic of the actions of African-American women during the movement. The Kings' first child was born on November 17, 1955, and was named Yolanda at Coretta's insistence. After Martin Luther King became involved in the Montgomery bus boycott, Mrs. King often received threats directed towards him. By the end of the boycott, the Kings had come to believe in nonviolent protests as a way of expression consistent with biblical teachings.
Read also: Learn about the Scott-Ellis Scholarship
On Christmas Eve of 1955, King took her daughter to her parents' house and met with her siblings as well. Yolanda was their first grandchild. On February 21, 1956, Martin Luther King said he would return to Montgomery after picking up Coretta and their daughter from Atlanta, who were staying with his parents. Two days later, Coretta and Martin Luther King drove back to Montgomery.
On April 25, 1958, King made her first appearance at a concert that year at Peter High School Auditorium in Birmingham, Alabama. She told the story of the Montgomery bus boycott. The concert was important for Coretta as a way to continue her professional career and participate in the movement. On September 3, 1958, King accompanied her husband and Ralph Abernathy to a courtroom. A few weeks later, King visited Martin's parents in Atlanta. At that time, she learned that he had been stabbed while signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom on September 20, 1958. King rushed to see her husband, and stayed with him for the remainder of his time in the hospital recovering. On February 3, 1959, Mr. and Mrs. King and Lawrence D. Reddick started a five-week tour of India. During their trip, Coretta used her singing ability to enthuse crowds during their month-long stay.
Activism and Civil Rights Work
Coretta Scott King played a prominent role in the American civil rights movement. She participated in marches, gave speeches, and organized events to raise awareness and funds for the cause. She accompanied her husband on his travels, both domestically and internationally, and served as a key advisor and confidante.
After King’s assassination on 4 April 1968, Coretta Scott King devoted much of her life to spreading her husband’s philosophy of nonviolence. Just days after his death, she led a march on behalf of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Later that month, she stood in for her husband at an anti-Vietnam War rally in New York. In May 1968, she helped to launch the Poor People’s Campaign, and thereafter participated in numerous anti-poverty efforts.
She also participated in musical programs to raise funds for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). She conceived and performed a series of critically acclaimed Freedom Concerts, combining poetry, narration and music to tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement.
Read also: Scott Bessent's biography
In 1961 she attended a disarmament conference in Geneva, Switzerland, as a member of the group Women Strike for Peace. While her husband refrained from publicly challenging the Kennedy and Johnson administrations’ foreign policy in the early 1960s, Coretta King attended several peace rallies and picketed the White House in 1965.
The King Center and Legacy Preservation
With a deep commitment to preserving King’s legacy, almost immediately Coretta Scott King began mobilizing support for the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change. As founding president of the King Center, she guided its construction next to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King had served as co-pastor with his father, Martin Luther King, Sr.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Scott King continued to speak publicly and write nationally syndicated columns, and began efforts to establish a national holiday in honor of her husband. In 1983, she led an effort that brought more than a half-million demonstrators to Washington, D.C., to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King had delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. 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, which began in January 1986.
As early as 1967, Mrs. King’s initial vision encompassed preserving the papers of Dr. King which would become the Library Documentation Project. The Documentation Project consisted of the voluminous files and books of Dr. King and materials relevant to his life and work. Due to Mrs. King’s vision and efforts, there exists today the compilation of the largest repository of primary source materials on Dr. King, and the American Civil Rights Movement in the world, which provides important links to the accurate understanding of this period in history. Mrs. King carried the message of nonviolence and the dream of the Beloved Community. She lived her phenomenal life as a woman of wisdom, faith, determination, compassion, hope, and healing.
Later Life and Activism
During the 1980s, Coretta Scott King reaffirmed her long-standing opposition to South African 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. She also remained active in various women’s organizations, including the National Organization for Women, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and United Church Women.
Throughout her life, Coretta Scott King carried the message of nonviolence and social justice to almost every corner of the globe. On 30 January 2006, Coretta Scott King died in her sleep at a holistic health center in Rosarito Beach, Mexico.
tags: #coretta #scott #king #education #and #career
