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A voice for change

Coretta Scott King, who died Tuesday at 78, was more than the "first lady of the civil rights movement." She was a wife who inspired her husband's social conscience and shared his dream, a mother who raised four children and a widow who in her own right became an influential voice in the nation's civil rights leadership.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s surviving inner circle, mostly men, said Coretta Scott King was as strong as, "if not stronger" than, the slain civil rights leader. She picked cotton as a child in rural Alabama, studied music in Boston, involved herself in politics and held true to the philosophy of nonviolence. Dr. King acknowledged her as a partner in his movement. Though men dominated the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization Dr. King helped found in 1957, Coretta Scott King did her part. She juggled the demands of motherhood to speak, sing, raise money and march at her husband's side on the front lines of the civil rights movement.

Dr. King's assassination emboldened her to continue his work. She founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta to keep her late husband's legacy alive and worked tirelessly to honor her husband with a national holiday. She also became a voice for women, religious freedom, gay rights, health care and the poor, and she threw the moral weight of her name against global injustices of the day, from the nuclear arms race and South Africa's segregation policy of apartheid to the spread of AIDS.

While some of her children sought to commercialize their father's name and legacy, Coretta Scott King never faltered in her commitment to his dream. She returns to her husband's side this week in Atlanta where flags are lowered in respect for a remarkable woman who served the cause of social justice and human rights, at home and abroad, with strength, dignity and courage.

[Last modified February 2, 2006, 02:15:36]