Practically all Americans celebrate or at the very least know about the national Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. But how many know it came to pass because of the activism and efforts of his widow, Coretta Scott King?
Today, on what would have been Coretta Scott King’s 94th birthday, we honor and celebrate her.
Coretta Scott King worked alongside MLK Jr. throughout the civil rights movement, and continued social justice work for decades after his assassination in 1968 until her own passing in 2006.
The mother of four founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in 1968 and activist lobbied tirelessly for fifteen years to have her late husband’s birthday recognized as a federal holiday.
In 1983 she finally succeeded when President Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law declaring MLK Day starting on January 20, 1986. Coretta Scott King honored the occasion in Atlanta, Georgia, placing a wreath on King’s tomb and holding a ceremony at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King had served as co-pastor for eight years before his death.
Coretta Scott King also spoke up for women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, against the Vietnam War, against apartheid in South Africa and called out the FBI for its extensive surveillance of both her and MLK. King wrote about her life and work in the book My Life With Martin Luther King, Jr., first published in 1969.
In 2005, King allowed her alma mater, Antioch College, to create the Coretta Scott King Center as a learning resource to address issues of race, class, gender, diversity, and social justice for the campus and the surrounding community. The Center opened in 2007.
King was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame in 2009 and the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2011.
To learn more about her life and legacy, watch the video above, or check out the books My Life, My Love, My Legacy and Coretta Scott by Ntozake Shange and Kadir Nelson.
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