Coretta Scott King dies

This is very sad. First we lose Rosa Parks, now we lose Coretta Scott King. She was described as a "matriarch of the movement, a patriot of all that America stands for." by The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a family friend.

From CNN.com

Coretta Scott King, the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., died Monday night in California, according to a former aide and a public relations firm representing the family.

Coretta King, 78, suffered a stroke and a mild heart attack last August. She was receiving further medical treatment in California in her rehabilitation.

"This is a very sad hour," U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the Democrat from Georgia, told CNN on Tuesday.

"She was the glue. Long before she met and married Martin Luther King Jr. she was an activist," he said.

On January 14, King made a surprise appearance in Atlanta at a Salute to Greatness dinner as part of the Martin Luther King Day celebrations, receiving a standing ovation as she waved at the crowd.

She did not speak at the event and was in a wheelchair.

Born in Marion, Alabama, on April 27, 1927, Coretta Scott graduated as valedictorian of her high school class and attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She received a B.A. in music and education and then studied concert singing at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. She got a degree in voice and violin, according to her official biography.

While there, she met a theology student at Boston University, Martin Luther King Jr. They married on June 18, 1953, in her hometown of Marion.

As the young pastor began his civil rights work in Montgomery, Alabama, Coretta Scott King worked closely with him, organizing marches and sit-ins at segregated restaurants while raising their four children: Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott and Bernice Albertine.

She also performed in "Freedom Concerts," singing and reading poetry to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization which Dr. King led as its first president.

The family endured the beating, stabbing and jailing of the civil rights leader, and their house was bombed.

After an assassin's bullet killed her husband in Memphis in 1968, Coretta Scott King turned her grief into the nurturing of her husband's legacy. She founded the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, a memorial to her husband's work and dream.

She spoke out "on behalf of racial and economic justice, women's and children's rights, gay and lesbian dignity, religious freedom, the needs of the poor and homeless, full-employment, health care, educational opportunities, nuclear disarmament and ecological sanity," her biography on The King Center's Web site said.

"She wore her grief with dignity," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a civil rights leader. "She moved quietly but forcefully into the fray. She stood for peace in the midst of turmoil."

Coretta Scott King dies

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