Last year, on Monday, January 30, Coretta Scott King passed away at 11:25 pm Eastern Standard Time from complications due to ovarian cancer. It was almost 50 years to the hour when racists bombed her home late Monday, January 30, 1956. At the time, Martin Luther King, Jr., was over at Montgomery, Alabama's First Baptist Church, and Coretta was home looking after the couple's 2 month old daughter, Yolonda. After the blast, she ran with her baby in her arms to the neighbors' house. There, she called a parishioner, not the police. The first serious attempt on King's life ended up directed at his wife and infant child.
Within a few hours, King's father had arrived to take the family back to Atlanta, where they'd be safe. He told his son, "It's better to be a living dog than a dead lion." But King and Coretta resisted, to the betterment of his race, his country, and all who love justice.
Coretta was the anchor during King's life, and she served the same role after his death. His work and memory live on because of her, and this, the first King Holiday since her passing, it seems fitting to remember that she, too, gave her life for equality.
When the couple met in Massachusetts in early 1952, Coretta had a budding music career. She had gone from rural Alabama to study music at Antioch College and then the New England Conservatory of Music. After the couple married and King received his doctorate, he wanted to find his own church down south. Coretta was staunchly against it. She hated segregation and she never wanted to go back. But ultimately, Coretta understood her husband felt a calling, and relented.
So, just as King reluctantly became the leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Coretta found herself at the forefront of the civil rights movement.
Last year, Taylor Branch called King a modern American founder -- a facilitator of democracy when "the heirs of slavery lifted the whole world toward freedom." If we have failed to celebrate the women of America's first founding, we have certainly failed those of its second.
Shortly after her husband's death, Coretta told us, "We will not have to search for him." And thanks to her, we don't. She went forward with his message of love and justice for all people. So on this, the day we stop to remember Martin Luther King, Jr., let us also remember the person who did more for his memory than anyone.
Cross-posted at the Huffington Post