King, Coretta Scott, 1927-2006

Coretta Scott King (b. April 27, 1927, Marion, AL–d. Jan. 30, 2006, Rosarito Beach, Mexico) was the wife of Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. She attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and earned a degree from the New England Conservatory of Music studying under Marie Sundelius. She met King in Boston and they were married in 1953. They had four children: Yolanda (1955), Martin III (1957), Dexter (1961), and Bernice (1963).The King family lived in Montgomery, Alabama.

Mrs. King conceived and performed a series of Freedom Concerts and worked alongside her husband in his Civil Rights career. After her husband’s assassination in 1968, Mrs. King founded and devoted great energy and commitment to building and developing programs for the Atlanta-based Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. In 1974 she formed a coalition dedicated to a national policy of full employment and equal economic opportunity. In 1983, she brought together more than 800 human rights organizations to form the Coalition of Conscience. She helped organize Mobilization Against Fear and Intimidation in Forsyth County, Georgia (1987). Mrs. King served as head of the U.S. delegation of Women for a Meaningful Summit in Athens, Greece (1988) and co-convener of the Soviet-American Women’s Summit in Washington, DC (1990).