Who is coretta scott kings parents

Four days after the violent murder of her husband, the grieving widow and three of her four children returned to Memphis to lead the march Martin had organized.

Then, in May she led a demonstration of striking hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina. In addition to her role in the civil rights movement, King was active in the peace movement. She called the Vietnam War —75; a civil war in which U. Later, King was concerned with full employment or providing access to jobs for all people who are able to work.

She testified in Washington in favor of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of , which was aimed at reducing both unemployment and rates of price increases. She also supported equal rights and justice for women. King also led and worked on several national committees and continued to serve on the board of directors of the SCLC. She was president of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change, located in Atlanta, Georgia.

Coretta Scott King continues to work in support of world peace, full employment, and social justice. Furthermore, her commitment to nonviolence is as strong as ever. Klingel, Cynthia Fitterer. Coretta Scott King.

Chanhassen, MN: Child's World, Press, Petra. Chicago: Heinemann Library, Rhodes, Lisa Renee. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, She gained an international reputation as an advocate of civil rights, nonviolence, international peace, full employment, and equal rights for women.

Her parents, Obadiah and Bernice Scott, were truck farmers. Even though the Scotts were better off financially than most Blacks in the area, life for them and their three children was difficult. Scott, along with her mother and sister, tended the family garden and crops, fed the chickens and hogs, and milked the cows.

She helped supplement the family income by hiring out to hoe and pick cotton. According to King, her "early schooling was affected by the system of segregation. After completing six grades at the elementary school that "did not do much to prepare" her, Coretta Scott enrolled in Lincoln High School in Marion, Alabama.

Lincoln, a semiprivate American Missionary Association institution, "was as good as any school, white or black, in the area," said King.

She developed an interest in music at Lincoln and, with encouragement from her teachers, decided that music would be her career. In Scott graduated as valedictorian of her high school class and won a partial scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Eager to leave southern racial hostility, Coretta Scott enrolled at Antioch only to discover that prejudice and racism were very much alive there too. Date accessed. Chicago- Norwood, Arlisha. Coretta Scott King By Arlisha R. Works Cited. King, Coretta. How to Cite this page. Related Biographies. Abrams is now one of the most prominent African American female politicians in the United States.

Abigail Adams was an early advocate for women's rights. Four days later, Coretta led her husband's planned march through Memphis to support striking sanitation workers.

The shooter, a malcontent drifter and former convict named James Earl Ray , was hunted for two months before being apprehended. King's assassination sparked riots and demonstrations in more than cities across the country. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, serving as the center's president and the chief executive officer from its inception. After spurring the formation of what became the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, around his birthplace in Atlanta, she dedicated the new King Center complex on its grounds in Coretta remained active through her demonstrations against apartheid in South Africa, and by expressing her views as a syndicated columnist and contributor to CNN.

She also saw the year fight for formal recognition of her husband's birthday come to fruition in , when President Ronald Reagan signed a bill that established Martin Luther King Day as a federal holiday.

Coretta passed the reins of the King Center over to her son Dexter in but remained in the public eye. In , she called for a retrial for her husband's alleged assassin, though Ray died in prison the following year.

Coretta suffered a heart attack and stroke in August She died less than six months later, on January 30, , while seeking treatment for ovarian cancer at a clinic in Playas de Rosarito, Mexico. She was 78 years old.