Coretta Scott King dead at 78

[markomalley]

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Coretta Scott King, who surged to the forefront of the fight for racial equality in America after her husband Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, has died at age 78. She had suffered a stroke and a heart attack in August. Mrs. King's steely determination, grace and class won her millions of admirers inside and outside the civil rights movement.
	Rep. John Lewis, a Democratic congressman from Georgia and civil rights leader, said it was "a very sad hour." "Long before she met and married Dr. King, she was an activist for peace and civil rights and for civil liberties," he told CNN. "She became the embodiment, the personification (of the civil rights movement after Dr. King's death) ... keeping the mission, the message, the philosophy, ... of nonviolence in the forefront." At the White House, Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president, told Fox television's "Fox and Friends": "President Bush and first lady Laura Bush were always heartened by their meetings with Mrs. King. What an inspiration to millions of people. I'm deeply saddened by today's news."
PUSHED TO THE FRONT Coretta Scott King played a major back-up role in the civil rights movement until the death of her husband, who was assassinated on a Memphis motel balcony on April 4, 1968, while supporting a sanitation workers strike. Mrs. King, who was in Atlanta at the time, learned of her husband's shooting in a telephone call from Rev. Jesse Jackson, a call she later wrote, "I seemed subconsciously to have been waiting for all of our lives." As she recalled in her autobiography "My Life With Martin Luther King Jr.," she felt she had to step fully into the civil rights movement. "Because his task was not finished, I felt that I must rededicate myself to the completion of his work," she said. Determined to make sure Americans did not forget her husband or his dream of a color-blind society, she created a memorial and a forum in the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. The center has archives containing more than 2,000 King speeches and is built around the King crypt and its eternal flame.

'>http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle....;

[Raf]

Ah, dang. Rest well. Hope to see you soon.

[gc]

Thanks for posting the article.

She lived to a grand old age.

gc

[topoftheworld]

She set an incredible example of dignity and grace. A true woman behind the man.

[herbiejuan]

Coretta did a fine job of leading her family through the years. I watched her often on the local (Atlanta) news and was impressed by her dignity and grace. I hope her children can continue to pass on that heritage.

[Radar OReilly]

She may have been the "woman behind the man" while he was alive............but over the past 40 years...she has been a monument to human dignity in her own right.

Coretta Scott King..........a woman after God's own heart.

ror