Pioneer of Civil Rights Coretta Scott King

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Pioneer of Civil RightsCoretta Scott King

• Date of birth April 27, 1927
• Date of death January 31, 2006

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Biography Coretta Scott King19272006

• WHEN you are willing to make sacrifices for a
  great cause, you will never be alone.

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Coretta Scott King

• She was born in Heiberger, Alabama.
• She graduated in 1945 and received a scholarship
  to Antioch college in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

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Academy of Achievement

• As an undergraduate, she took an active interest
  in the nascent civil rights movement she joined
  the Antioch chapter of the NAACP, and the
  colleges Race Relations and Civil Liberties
  Committees.
• She graduated from Antioch with a B.A. in music
  and education and won a scholarship to study
  concert singing at New England Conservatory of
  Music in Boston, Massachusetts.

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Coretta Scott King

• In Boston she met a young theology student,
  Martin Luther King, Jr., and her life was changed
  forever.
• They were married on June 18, 1953, in a ceremony
  conducted by the grooms father, the Rev. Martin
  Luther King, Sr.
• After she completed her degree in voice and
  violin at the NEC, they moved in Sept. 1954 to
  Montgomery, Alabama, where Martin Luther King Jr.
  had accepted an appointment as Pastor of the
  Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• When Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on a
  Montgomery city bus to a white passenger, she was
  arrested for violating the citys ordinances
  giving white passengers preferential treatment in
  public conveyances.
• Under Martin Luther King Jr. s leadership
  organized a boycott of the Montgomery bus drew
  the attention of the world to the continued
  injustice of segregation in the United States,
  and led to court decisions striking down all
  local ordinances separating the races in public
  transit.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• Dr. Kings eloquent advocacy of nonviolent civil
  disobedience soon made him the most recognizable
  face of the civil rights movement, and he was
  called on to lead marches in city after city,
  with Mrs. King at his side, inspiring the
  citizens, black and white, to defy the
  segregation laws.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• The visibility of Dr. Kings leadership attracted
  fierce opposition from the supporters of
  institutionalized racism.
• In 1956, white supremacists bombed the King
  family home in Montgomery.
• 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.
• Over the next few years, Mrs. King staged Freedom
  Concerts in some of Americas most distinguished
  concert venues, as fundraisers for the
  organization her husband had founded, the
  Southern Christian Leadership conference.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• In 1957, Dr. King and Mrs. King journeyed to
  Africa to celebrate the independence of Ghana.
• In 1959, they made a pilgrimage to India to honor
  the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, whose philosophy of
  nonviolence had inspired them.
• In 1964, Mrs. King accompanied her husband when
  he traveled to Oslo, Norway to accept the Nobel
  Prize for Peace.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• In 1960s, Dr. King broadened his message and his
  activism to embrace causes of international peace
  and economic justice. Mrs. King found herself in
  increasing demand as a public speaker.
• She became a first woman to deliver the Class Day
  address at Harvard, and the first woman to preach
  at a statutory service at St. Pauls Cathedral in
  London.
• She served as a Womens Strike for Peace delegate
  to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in
  Geneva, Switzerland in 1962.
• Mrs. King became a liaison to international peace
  and justice organizations even before Dr. King
  took a public stand in 1967 against United States
  intervention in the Vietnam War.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was
  assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Channeling
  her grief, Mrs. King concentrated her energies on
  fulfilling her husbands work by building the
  Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent
  Social Change as a living memorial to her
  husbands life and dream. Years of planning,
  fundraising and lobbying, lay ahead, but Mrs.
  King would not be deterred, nor did she neglect
  direct involvement in the causes her husband had
  championed.
• In 1969, Coretta Scott King published the first
  volume of her autobiography, My Life with Martin
  Luther King Jr.
• In 1970s, Mrs. King maintained her husbands
  commitment to the cause of economic justice.
• In 1974, she formed the Full Employment Action
  Council, a broad coalition of over 100 religious,
  labor, business, civil and womens rights
  organizations dedicated to a national policy of
  full employment and equal economic opportunity
  Mrs. King served as Co-Chair of the Council.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• In 1981, the King Center, opened to public. The
  Center receives over one million visitors a year,
  and has trained tens of thousands of students,
  teachers, community leaders and administrations
  in Dr. Kings philosophy and strategy of
  nonviolence through seminars, workshops and
  training programs.
• Mrs. King continued to serve the cause of justice
  and human rights her travels took her throughout
  the world on goodwill missions to Africa, Latin
  America, Europe and Asia.
• In 1983, she marked the 20th Anniversary of the
  historic March on Washington, by leading a
  gathering of more than 800 human rights
  organizations, the Coalition of Conscience, in
  the largest demonstration the capital city has
  seen up to that time.
• Mrs. King led the successful campaign to
  establish Dr. Kings birthday, January 15, as a
  national holiday in the United States. By the Act
  of Congress, the first national observance of the
  holiday took place in 1986. Dr. Kings birthday
  is now marked by annual celebrations in over 100
  countries.
• In 1993, Mrs. King was invited by President
  Clinton to witness the historic handshake between
  Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Yassir
  Arafat at the signing of the Middle East Peace
  Accords.
• In 1985, Mrs. King and three of her children were
  arrested at the South African embassy in
  Washington, D.C., for protesting against that
  countrys apartheid system of racial segregation
  and disenfranchisement. 10 years later, she stood
  with Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg when he was
  sword in as President of South Africa.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• After 27 years at the helm of The King Center,
  Mrs. King turned over leadership of the Center to
  her son, Dexter Scott King, in 1995.
• She remained active in the causes of racial and
  economic justice, and in her remaining years
  devoted much of her energy to AIDS education and
  curbing gun violence.
• Although she died in 2006 at the age of 78, she
  remains and inspirational figure to men and women
  around the world.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• Coretta Scott King speaks at a peace
  demonstration in Washington, D.C.,1970

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• Martin Luther King Jr. eats Sunday dinner with
  his wife, Coretta Scott King, and their young
  children at home in Atlanta.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott
  King during a news conference following the
  announcement that he had been awarded the Nobel
  Peace Price.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• Coretta Scott King plays piano and sings with her
  children Yolanda, Marty, and Bernice at home
  after church.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• Martin Luther King, Jr. with his wife Coretta
  Scott King and colleagues during the famous march
  from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in
  Montgomery , March 1965

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta march
  together along a rural Mississippi road with the
  March Against Fear.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• Coretta Scott King displaying her book My Life
  With Martin Luther King Jr. February 9, 1970

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• Coretta Scott King and her daughters, Yolanda and
  Bernice, talk with a fellow parishioner outside
  Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• Coretta Scott King holds her sleeping daughter
  Bernice at the funeral of her husband, Martin
  Luther King Jr.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• Braving death threats and surviving the bombing
  of their home by white supremacists, Coretta
  Scott King stood by the cause and her husband,
  from the Birmingham jail to the steps of the
  Lincoln Memorial, from the March on Washington,
  to a stage in Oslo, Norway where he accepted the
  Nobel Prize for Peace. After his assassination,
  she inspired the world with her courage, dignity
  and tireless devotion to preserving Dr. King's
  legacy.
• When her husband was assassinated in Memphis,
  Tennessee, in 1968, Coretta King took it for
  granted that she would continue his work. Just
  four days after his death she led a march of
  fifty thousand people through the streets of
  Memphis, and later that year she took his place
  in the Poor Peoples March to Washington.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• As founding President, Chair, and Chief Executive
  Officer of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for
  Nonviolent Social Change, she saw that tens of
  thousands of activists from all over the world
  were trained in the philosophy and practice of
  nonviolence. She has served as an advisor to
  freedom and democracy movements all over the
  world, and as a consultant to world leaders
  including President Corazon Aquino of the
  Philippines, President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia,
  and President Nelson Mandela of South Africa. One
  of the world's most admired women, she remained
  an outspoken champion of justice and human
  dignity to the end of her days.

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Coretta Scott King 19272006

• Source Citation
• http//www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/kin1bio-
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