Coretta Scott King, born in Heiberger, Alabama, was exposed at an early age to the injustices of life in a segregated society. She walked five miles a day to attend the one-room Crossroad School in Marion, Alabama, while the white students rode buses to an all-white school closer by. She graduated in 1945 and received a scholarship to Antioch College in Ohio, where she took an active interest in the civil rights movement joining the Antioch chapter of the NAACP, and the college's Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committees.
While studying music 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 groom's father, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr.
They were soon caught up in the dramatic events that triggered the modern civil rights movement. When Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on a Montgomery city bus to a white passenger, she was arrested for violating the city's ordinances giving white passengers preferential treatment in public conveyances. The black citizens of Montgomery organized immediately in defense of Mrs. Parks, and under Martin Luther King's leadership organized a boycott of the city's buses. The Montgomery bus boycott 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. Dr. King's 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.
Mrs. King became the first woman to deliver the Class Day address at Harvard, and the first woman to preach at a statutory service at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. She served as a Women's 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.
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Channeling her grief, Mrs. King concentrated her energies on fulfilling her husband's work by building The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change as a living memorial to her husband's life and dream. Mrs. King maintained her husband's 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 women's rights organizations dedicated to a national policy of full employment and equal economic opportunity; Mrs. King served as Co-Chair of the Council.
Mrs. King led the successful campaign to establish Dr. King's birthday, January 15, as a national holiday in the United States. By an Act of Congress, the first national observance of the holiday took place in 1986. Dr. King's birthday is now marked by annual celebrations in over 100 countries. 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 1993. In 1985 Mrs. King and three of her children were arrested at the South African embassy in Washington, D.C., for protesting against that country's apartheid system of racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Ten years later, she stood with Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg when he was sworn in as President of South Africa.
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 has remained active in the causes of racial and economic justice, and in recent years has devoted much of her energy to AIDS education and curbing gun violence.
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