American Author, Activist, and Civil Rights Leader Coretta Scott King
- Chrishawn Simpson
- Aug 1, 2017
- 3 min read
CORETTA SCOTT KING was an American author, activist, civil rights leader, and the wife of Martin Luther King, Jr. She was one of the most influential women leaders in our world. She helped lead the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and was an active advocate for African-American equality. In her early life, Coretta was an accomplished singer, and she often incorporated music into her civil rights work.
King played a prominent role in the years after her husband's 1968 assassination when she took on the leadership of the struggle for racial equality herself and became active in the Women's Movement. King founded the King Center and sought to make his birthday a national holiday. She later broadened her scope to include both opposition to apartheid and advocacy for LGBT rights, women's rights, economic issues, world peace, and various other causes.
During high school, Coretta became the leading soprano for the school's senior chorus. She directed a choir at her home church in North Perry Country. In 1945, she graduated valedictorian from Lincoln Normal School, where she played trumpet and piano, sang in the chorus, and participated in school musicals and enrolled at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio during her senior year at Lincoln. After being accepted to Antioch, she applied for the Interracial Scholarship Fund for financial aid.
Coretta studied music with Walter Anderson, the first non-white chair of an academic department in a historically white college. 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 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. Coretta transferred out of Antioch when she won a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She completed her degree in voice and piano at the New England Conservatory in 1954.
Coretta sacrificed her dreams as a classical singer when her husband became a full-time pastor. Her devotion to the cause while giving up on her own ambitions would become symbolic of the actions of African-American women during the movement. After her husband's death she traveled the world speaking 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 environmental justice.
Mrs. King founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. She served as the center's president and CEO from its inception until she passed the reins of leadership to son Dexter Scott King. Removing herself from leadership, allowed her to focus on writing, public speaking and spend time with her parents. She published her memoirs, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1969.
Coretta was the recipient of various honors and tributes both before and after her death. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame and was the first African-American to lie in State in the Georgia State Capitol. She has been referred to as "First Lady of the Civil Rights Movement".
To learn more about Coretta Scott King and her movement, visit her website by clicking here!
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