"N" Search of Ecstasy

I was on my way to work this morning when I heard the news. I immediately gasped in shock because I felt like I had just heard of the death of someone I knew personally.

The woman who turned a life once devastated by her husband’s assassination, into one devoted to preserving his legacy of human rights and equality had died.

As soon as I got to work I called my sister and I asked:

Nic: “Did you hear that Coretta Scott King died last night in her sleep?”

Sister: “No!”

Nic: “Yes, apparently her daughter went to try to wake her last night and she was not able to. She has peacefully slipped away in her sleep.”

Sister: “Oh my goodness! I heard them talking about her on the radio, but I missed the beginning. I didn’t know that this was why they were talking about her.”


This was the beginning of a short discussion about what she meant to our lives.

I first began to conscientiously think about the possible death of this civil rights icon when she was admitted to Atlanta's Piedmont Hospital in the fall of 2005. She had suffered from a stroke that left her weakened, unable to walk, and barely able to speak. I thought to myself and prayed that she would make it and she did, for a while at least.

In her earlier years, Coretta Scott was studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music and planning on a singing career when a friend introduced her to Martin Luther King (Click here to see MLK post), a young Baptist minister working toward a Ph.D. at Boston University. It’s my understanding that she was not even interested in meeting him. But before she knew it, she was in love and they were married in 1953. The following year they moved to Montgomery, AL., and it was there that Dr. King would begin his ministry.

When Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, Scott King did not focus on her grief, but rather directed that energy into action. Just days later, she led a march through the streets of Memphis, and later that year took his place as a leader of the Poor People's March in Washington, D.C.

She kept his dream alive while also raising their four children -- Denise, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott and Bernice Albertine. She worked to keep his ideology of equality for all people at the top of our nation’s agenda. She petitioned for over a decade to have her husband’s birthday observed as a national holiday, then watched with pride in 1983 as President Reagan signed the bill into law. The first federal holiday was celebrated in 1986.

Due to her recent stroke, Scott King missed the annual M.L. King holiday celebration in Atlanta earlier this month, but she did appear with her children at an awards dinner a couple of days earlier, smiling from her wheelchair but not speaking. The crowd gave her a standing ovation.
In the last years of her life, Scott King focused much of her energy on AIDS awareness and curbing gun violence.

Before I start, I am dissappointed by the lack of national television coverage. Locally, the news did well and internet coverage has been great. But as for CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN Headline News, the coverage was not NEARLY what I had hoped. All they are talking about is that damn State of the Union Address that President George W. Bush will deliver tonight.

Hmmmmmph!

I am truly saddened by her death. To me, Mrs. King symbolized a firm matriarch of the movement for equality and justice. She meant a great deal to the people of Atlanta, GA. especially.

Most of us were not around Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive, but we all had an opportunity to get to know Coretta Scott King and she was definitely a compassionate and caring woman.

Without the movements started by her husband and continued by her, I would not be where I am today. Most of us wouldn’t. Many of us would be cleaning someone’s house or something domestic because we all would not have had the chance to get the quality educations that we have obtained. We would not have the skills to hold that wonderful position that pays us so well. I just hope people will realize what her legacy meant for this generation. So many take it for granted, but think of what your life would have been life without the civil rights movement and people like the King’s. What did she mean to you?