Coretta Scott King
Podcast - Coretta Scott King
Hello! Today I’m premiering a new type of episode, where I do a deep dive on a real rebel mother.
Historically, the stories of many incredible, brilliant, culture-shaping women were frequently told only in relation to the men around them or the children they raised. Sometimes we only know of these women because they’re the wife of so-and-so, or the mother of so-and-so, but I’ve always been curious about the experience of the woman herself. And I’m particularly interested in hearing the stories of mothers, not in relation to their children, but from her point of view, especially if she was an activist or rebel mother in some way.
So each month or so I’m going to feature a different rebel mother and show her as a whole complete human being, full of dreams and passion and flaws and wisdom and imagination. I want to be inspired by stories of mothers who used their mothering experience as fuel for their activism, women who didn’t see motherhood as incompatible with their desire for social justice, or a distraction from their “real” potential. Mothers who embraced the yes/and of motherhood - yes they were a mother and they were a scholar, writer, activist, artist, and more.
I’m going to read a quote from the rebel mother we’re learning about today, Coretta Scott King, that perfectly sums this idea up, and in fact, was the inspiration for this whole series. In her memoir, Coretta: My Life, My Love, My Legacy , she wrote “most people who have followed my career from afar, or even given me a second thought, know me as Mrs. King: the wife of, the widow of, the mother of, the leader of. Makes me sound like the attachments that come with my vacuum cleaner. In one sense, I don’t mind that at all. I’m proud to have been a wife, a single parent, and a leader. But I am more than a label. I am also Coretta.”
When I read her memoir, I was blown away by this astonishing woman and mother. While she is widely celebrated for her tireless efforts in advancing racial equality and justice, one aspect of her activism that often goes unnoticed is the profound way in which she used her role as a mother to advocate for change. So let’s hear a little bit about her own story and get to know Coretta!
Coretta Scott was born in 1927 in Alabama, a state that was at the time deeply entrenched in Jim Crow and extreme racial segregation and discrimination. She opens her memoir with a story about the time she was 15 and white supremacists burned her family home to the ground, the home that her father had built with his own hands. Coretta's mother, Bernice Scott, was a radical in her own way and was fiercely committed to ensuring her three children received an education, despite the economic realities of the depression and segregation and white supremacy as the norm.
Coretta first attended a school called Lincoln Normal School, which was a private boarding school for African American students. She did really well academically and because of her talent for singing and music, she was offered a scholarship to Antioch College in Ohio.
This was a big deal because it was a progressive school that cared about social justice. It was at Antioch where Coretta began to develop her own ideas about civil rights and social change. She began to dream of a world where, quote, “all kinds of people would be welcome and could live in peace and harmony.” end quote. The vision of this world would eventually be named the Beloved Community, and it was these early years of Coretta’s education and connections that helped prepare her to be part of one of the greatest human rights movements of the twentieth century.
In 1951, when she was 24 years old, Coretta was accepted to the New England Conservatory of music to study voice and violin. One day, a friend of hers, Mary Powell, introduced Coretta to Martin Luther King Jr., who was pursuing his doctorate in systematic theology at Boston University. Coretta was immediately struck by Martin's charisma, intelligence, and deep commitment to the civil rights movement. Their connection was instantaneous, and they quickly fell in love. In fact, Martin brought up the subject of marriage on their first date. Coretta wrote, quote, “it became clear that Martin wanted a stay-at-home wife who was intelligent and well educated, but who would be a homemaker and a mother of his children.” end quote. Martin intended to become a pastor of a large church and wanted someone who could handle the role of a pastor’s wife.
Let’s zoom out for a little context. In the early 1950s, many women, black or white, were expected to fulfill traditional gender roles within their families. This often meant being the primary caretaker of the children, as well as taking on domestic tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Women were often responsible for maintaining family cohesion and nurturing their children's development, even in the face of racial discrimination for black families.
In Alabama, the roles and expectations for Black women were heavily influenced by deeply entrenched racism and discrimination. Economically, opportunities were limited, and they were often relegated to low-paying, domestic, or service-oriented jobs. Access to higher education and professional careers was restricted, which contributed to economic disparities between Black and white women. Coretta had already broken some of these barriers with her pursuit of higher education and a professional career in music.
Despite the limitations placed on them in the 1950s, many Black women played a crucial role in sustaining the Black community in Alabama. They were often the backbone of churches and community organizations, providing essential support and guidance. They served as educators in segregated schools where they could instill a sense of pride, resilience, and a desire for change in children. Their dedication to preserving cultural heritage and fostering a strong community spirit laid the foundation for the civil rights movement.
So Coretta realized that if she were going to marry Martin, she would need to fulfill that role for him, to support his career and care for the family while he led the church. But she didn’t give up her dreams entirely. She insisted that Martin Luther King Sr, who married them, take out the word “obey” from the traditional vows. And she astutely changed her major from performing arts to music education, so she could help support the family wherever they lived by teaching.
Coretta and Martin married in June of 1953, and their first daughter Yolanda was born in November 1955, two weeks before a seamstress and NAACP secretary named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama - the same town where the new King family lived.
Ok, let’s step back a bit again. The middle of the 1950s was an incredible tense period of time in the South, and especially in Alabama. In 1954, the year before the Montgomery bus boycott began, the Supreme Court decided unanimously, in Brown v. Board of Education, that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional, and emotions were running hot.
In August 1955, a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago named Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi by two white men. His mother requested an open-casket funeral and the picture of his brutally beaten body was widely publicized, which shocked and horrified the nation and served as a stark reminder of the violence that Black people endured in the South. The acquittal of the murderers ignited a sense of urgency in the fight for racial equality.
There had also been other Black women who refused to move on busses. In March 1955, fifteen year old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat. Ten years earlier, Irene Morgan in Virginia did not move when asked to give up her seat to a white couple. Twelve years earlier, Rosa Parks herself was stopped from boarding a city bus by a driver who ordered her to board at the rear door and then drove off without her.
Earlier in 1955, Parks completed a course in "Race Relations" at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, where nonviolent civil disobedience had been discussed as a tactic. So on December 1, 1955, while Parks was sitting in the first row in which black people could sit and a white man boarded the bus, the bus driver told everyone in her row to move back. While all of the other black people in her row complied, Parks refused, and she was arrested.
The next day, Friday December 2, a local civil rights leader E.D. Nixon called Martin Luther King Jr. and said “we have taken this type of thing too long. I feel the time has come to boycott the buses. It’s the only way to make the white folks see that we will not take this sort of thing any longer.” The very next day the King residence began to serve as a command post for a new group which would eventually be named the Montgomery Improvement Association, MIA. Coretta explained it was her responsibility to answer the telephone for directions and encouragement, while also cooking meals and take notes at continuous meetings.
Ok, let’s hold up. This is Saturday, December 3. Coretta’s baby girl was born on November 17. That means she was TWO WEEKS POSTPARTUM and she was helping to organize and sit in on meetings of one of the biggest political and social protest campaigns in the civil rights movement.
When I was two weeks postpartum, I could barely walk around the block with my baby strapped to my chest. I was still bleeding, leaking breast milk, exhausted, emotional, sweaty, and spent most of the day wearing old pajama pants and a ratty bathrobe that I kept open for easy boob access. I’m trying to imagine myself wearing a 1950s house dress and heels, baking casseroles and pastries, making urgent phone calls and taking notes…and…yeah. I don’t think so.
Shortly after the bus boycott began, Coretta was sitting in the living room of her house chatting with a friend while her infant baby slept in the crib. Suddenly she heard a sound and before they could get halfway out of the room a bomb exploded on the porch, shattering the door and window and filling the house with smoke. Luckily no one was hurt. Coretta said later on, quote, “the boycott had become personal for me very quickly. It burned into my mind the price I might have to pay for refusing to bow down to a system that insisted upon reducing us to less than human. The knowledge that I could be killed, along with all the people I loved, had to settle within me. In addition, Martin was unfairly jailed for the first time, which made me understand that if we continued with the movement, I would have to adjust to his being snatched away from me without really knowing if we would ever return. Montgomery made me face the reality that I could lose my own life and leave my daughter without a mother.”
The Montgomery Bus Boycott continued for over a year until the supreme court finally upheld the ruling in Browder v. Gayle that Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. This event propelled Martin Luther King, Jr. into national attention as a rising civil rights leader.
Coretta had her own private concerns about the attention. How involved was she supposed to get with the civil rights movement? Was she supposed to continue her career as a concert singer? Should she become a public speaker? She asked, quote, “how could i balance being there for martin and being home with the children and being deeply involved in the movement? How could i compartmentalize myself in so many ways and still hold onto the corner of my life that belonged strictly to coretta?” end quote. I think every mother has asked herself similar versions of these questions at every major life transition, although not perhaps to such a degree.
But the civil rights movement was rushing along, and Coretta was fully swept up in the action. She opened the first meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization that believed that the most potent weapon available was nonviolent social action.
Coretta and Martin traveled extensively which connected them to world leaders and have a deeper understanding of the world. In 1957 during a trip to Ghana, Coretta realized she was pregnant again. Martin Luther King III was born October 23, 1957, five weeks after the Little Rock Central High School integration, when the famous “little rock nine” students had to be escorted into school by the national guard.
Coretta stepped away from many of her activities as she tried to stay home with her two children. But she still struggled in the limited role the expectations of the time placed on her. She felt called to music and her concert career, and she enjoyed being Martin’s copartner and confidante. She recalls a conversation with Martin where he asked, “you aren’t totally happy being my wife and the mother of my children, are you? She replied, i love being your wife and the mother of your children. But if that’s all I am to do, I'll go crazy.”
Their third child, Dexter Scott King, was born in January of 1961. In December of 1961 Martin was jailed in Albany, Georgia. Coretta would leave her baby with caregivers and drive Yolanda and Martin III, who were 7 and 5, to go visit Martin in jail. The King family was continuously under threat. Martin was nearly fatally stabbed in 1958, and during the course of his civil rights activism, he was arrested a total of 29 times. This put a huge strain on the family, and Coretta was the one to hold everyone together. She remained committed to nonviolent action as a means of protest and In 1962, Coretta served as a delegate to Switzerland for the Women Strike for Peace conference.
In 1963, when Coretta was 8 months pregnant with their 4th child, the Kings turned their attention to Birmingham, Alabama, which had been named by a black newspaper as the “worst city in America” for racial injustice. Their fourth and final child, Bernice, was born on March 28th, and the very next day Martin drove to Birmingham to take part in protests he’d helped organize. Coretta was asked if she felt abandoned or neglected because of his quick departure, and her answer is that quote, “for the most part, Martin and I shared values. I knew he loved his family, but we both had a higher calling and purpose that was much larger than the fulfillment of our own desires. As much as I loved Martin, I knew he belonged not just to me but to his calling. It had to be his first priority.” end quote
Martin was arrested in Birmingham on April 12, which was Good Friday. Coretta waited for a day but had received no word from him. She was still recovering from her complicated pregnancy and birth and couldn’t leave her house in Atlanta, and she was desperate to hear if Martin was ok. She placed a call to the White House and eventually spoke to President Kennedy. Kennedy sent the FBI to check on Martin and assured Coretta that he was all right.
A few months later, the march on Washington was organized, where Martin gave his famous “I Have A Dream” speech. Coretta was disappointed she couldn’t march, but she was right there with Martin on the platform.
It was during this time that the (FBI) was extensively monitoring Martin and the king family. They hoped to discredit him personally and undermine his reputation in order to disrupt the civil rights movement. Allegations included ties to Communism, tax evasion, and multiple affairs with other women. Coretta addresses this in her memoir and she wrote, “all I can speak for is what I know. I don’t have any evidence, and I never had a gut feeling that told me he had strayed. I never experienced any feelings of being rejected…i’m not saying that martin was a saint. I never said he was perfect. Nobody is perfect. But as far as I'm concerned our marriage was a very good marriage and it was like that all the way to the end.”
I know this episode is about Coretta. But it’s impossible to separate her from her love of Martin. She wrote, “for fourteen years, I had been with Martin in the thicket of controversy. My husband and I had been emotional twins. He thought of me as so close I was only a heartbeat away. I was his confidante. He was my best friend. I was his best student. He was the icing on my cake, the cream in my coffee. We could finish each other’s sentences, feel each other’s sounds, and share each other’s jokes.”
Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered on April 4, 1968. But Coretta could not dissolve into her grief. Her children were her first priority, and she focused her energy on them as she and others around her organized the funeral. Coretta had to answer the impossible questions that we all ask after death, especially children. Her youngest daughter wanted to know how her daddy was going to eat and what a spirit is.
In the days and weeks and months after his death, Coretta adjusted to her new life as a single mother. Despite her own sadness, she made herself get out of bed in the morning to be there for her children. She was determined not to let them see her break down, because then they might lose their way. Each of her children struggled with the loss of their father, especially since he met such a violent end, and Coretta was committed to helping them through this period of turmoil.
But while she identified as a mother first, she was also fiercely determined to keep her husband’s mission alive and secure his legacy. Coretta was a social justice activist before she married, and she remained committed to the civil rights movement after her husband's death.
Thousands of requests for Coretta to speak and to accept awards in his name poured in from across the globe. Eventually she realized she needed to decide what to focus her activism on. Coretta’s immediate concern was speaking out against the vietnam war and fighting for livable wage and better conditions for workers.
Four days after his assassination, Coretta flew to Memphis to lead a worker’s march that Martin had organized. She recognized that economic justice was intertwined with racial equality. She actively supported labor unions and workers' struggles for fair wages, safe working conditions, and collective bargaining rights. Her involvement in worker's rights was in line with her broader commitment to social justice, as she believed that all forms of oppression were interconnected.
She also became more vocal in women’s rights. At that same speech, she specifically addressed the women in the audience, saying “the woman power of this nation can be the power which makes us whole and heals the rotten community, now so shattered by war and poverty and racism. I have great faith in the power of women who will dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to the task of remaking our society…” She was the first woman and single mother to deliver a class day address at Harvard University in June of 1968. She believed that the fight for women's rights was an essential part of the broader battle for social justice. Coretta used her platform to speak out on issues such as equal pay, reproductive rights, and the role of women in leadership. Additionally, Coretta was an early pioneer for LGBTQ rights when President Jimmy Carter appointed her to serve as commissioner at the International Women’s Year Conference in 1977. She maintained the belief that, quote “discrimination is unacceptable in a democracy that protects the human rights of all its citizens. Racism, sexism, anti-semitism, and bit=gorty based on sexual orientation are all forms of intolerance that are unworthy of America as a democracy. If the basic right of one group can be denied, all groups become vulnerable.” end quote
Coretta was actively involved in global human rights issues as well. She served a brief ambassadorship in the United Nations, and she was a vocal critic of the Vietnam war. In fact, less than a month after Martin's death, she marched with protestors in Central Park for the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, where she addressed the crowd. She also joined the chorus of voices around the world in condemning the oppressive apartheid regime in South Africa. Coretta used her platform to draw attention to the injustices faced by Black South Africans and the need for international solidarity against apartheid. Her advocacy efforts helped raise awareness about the issue and contributed to the international pressure that ultimately led to the dismantling of apartheid and the establishment of a more equitable South Africa.
Establishing The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and securing the designation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a national holiday were monumental undertakings for Coretta Scott King. She faced numerous challenges and opposition along the way, including from people she had worked with for years. The creation of The King Center required fundraising efforts in the tens of millions and organizational work to preserve and promote her husband's legacy. Similarly, the push for Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a national holiday faced resistance from some quarters, with concerns ranging from the cost of an additional holiday to resistance rooted in racism. But hopefully it’s clear by now that Coretta was full of determination, unwavering commitment, and relentless advocacy, and her tireless efforts eventually led to the establishment of The King Center and the recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday, both of which stand as enduring tributes to her dedication and her husband's legacy in the fight for civil rights and social justice.
It’s nearly impossible to list all of the causes that Coretta supported, but I want to bring the focus back to her role as a mother. Remember, all of this was done while also raising four children as a single mother, and as a mother, she recognized that the struggle for civil rights was not just a political or social issue; it was also deeply personal. She firmly believed that a just and equal society should be one where families of all races could thrive. All of Coretta’s children grew up in the shadow of their father’s name, which carried both privilege and burden. They each spent time advocating or marching with Coretta in various ways, and they have all dedicated their lives to furthering the King principles of nonviolence, social justice, and spirituality. In fact, two of her children, daughter Bernice and son Martin Luther III were arrested alongside Coretta in 1985, while taking part in an anti-apartheid protest at the Embassy of South Africa in Washington, D.C. Coretta Scott King's motherhood was not separate from her activism; it was an integral part of it. She used her role as a mother to advocate for a more just and equal society for her children and all children.
So to wrap this up, Coretta Scott King was not just a remarkable civil rights leader and activist but also an extraordinary mother who used her motherhood as a source of strength and inspiration in her fight for justice and equality. She defied the traditional roles and expectations of her time, balancing her role as a mother with her commitment to the civil rights movement. Coretta's journey from her early life in racially segregated Alabama to becoming the wife of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a leader in her own right is a testament to her resilience and determination.
Throughout her life, Coretta faced immense challenges and personal sacrifices, from the bombing of her home as a young mother during the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the constant threat of violence against her family. Yet, she remained steadfast in her dedication to the civil rights cause and used her voice to advocate for change. Coretta's involvement in worker's rights, women's rights, anti-apartheid efforts, and her opposition to the Vietnam War showcased her commitment to global social justice. The King Center stands as much as a monument to her hard work and dedication as it does for Martin Luther King Jr.
As a mother, Coretta prioritized her children's well-being while also instilling in them the values of justice, equality, and nonviolence. Her role as a mother did not hinder her activism; instead, it fueled her determination to create a better world for her children and future generations. Coretta's legacy extends beyond her work in the civil rights movement; it encompasses her unwavering love for her family and her relentless pursuit of justice, making her a true icon of both motherhood and activism.
