Coretta Scott King

== Civil Rights Movement ==
[[File:Martin Luther, Coretta Scott and Yolanda Denise King, 1956.png|thumb|right|King with her husband and daughter [[Yolanda King|Yolanda]] in 1956]]
On September 1, 1954, Martin became the full-time pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. King's devotion to the cause while giving up on her own musical ambitions would become symbolic of the actions of [[African-American women in the civil rights movement|African-American women during the movement]].<ref>Nazel, p. 69.</ref> The couple moved into the church's parsonage on South Jackson Street shortly after this. Coretta became a member of the choir and taught Sunday school, as well as participating in the Baptist Training Union and Missionary Society. She made her first appearance at the First Baptist Church on March 6, 1955, where according to E. P. Wallace, she "captivated her concert audience".<ref>Bagley, p. 108.</ref>

{{external media
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| video1 = [https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_151-542j679j5g "Interview with Coretta Scott King"] conducted for [[Eyes on the Prize]] in 1985. King discusses the [[Montgomery bus boycott]], the Albany campaign, and the Selma campaign.}}

The Kings' first child was born on November 17, 1955, and was named [[Yolanda King|Yolanda]] at Coretta's insistence.<ref>Bagley, p. 111.</ref> After Martin Luther King became involved in the [[Montgomery bus boycott]], Mrs. King often received threats directed towards him. In January 1956, she answered numerous phone calls threatening her husband's life, as rumors intended to make African Americans dissatisfied with Martin Luther King spread that he had purchased a Buick station wagon for her.<ref>Bagley, p. 125.</ref> Martin would give her{{who|date=April 2023}} the nickname "Yoki", and thereby, allow himself to refer to her out of her name. By the end of the boycott, the Kings had come to believe in [[nonviolent]] protests as a way of expression consistent with biblical teachings.<ref>Bagley, p. 144.</ref> Two days after the integration of Montgomery's bus service, on December 23, a gunshot rang through the front door of the King home while the King family were asleep. The three were not harmed.<ref>Garrow, p. 83.</ref> On Christmas Eve of 1955, King took her daughter to her parents' house and met with her siblings as well. Yolanda was their first grandchild. Martin joined them the next day, at dinner time.<ref>Bagley, p. 124.</ref>

On February 21, 1956, Martin Luther King said he would return to Montgomery after picking up Coretta and their daughter from Atlanta, who were staying with his parents. During Martin Sr.'s opposition to his son's choice to return to Montgomery, Mrs. King picked up her daughter and went upstairs, which he would express dismay in later and tell her that she "had run out on him". Two days later, Coretta and Martin Luther King drove back to Montgomery.<ref>Garrow, p. 65.</ref> Coretta took an active role in advocating for civil rights legislation.  On April 25, 1958, King made her first appearance at a concert that year at Peter High School Auditorium in [[Birmingham, Alabama]]. With a performance sponsored by the Omicron Lambda chapter of [[Alpha Phi Alpha]] fraternity, King changed a few songs in the first part of the show but still continued with the basic format used two years earlier at the New York gala as she told the story of the Montgomery bus boycott. The concert was important for Coretta as a way to continue her professional career and participate in the movement. The concert gave the audience "an emotional connection to the messages of social, economic, and spiritual transformation."<ref>Bagley, p. 150.</ref>

On September 3, 1958, King accompanied her husband and [[Ralph Abernathy]] to a courtroom. Martin was arrested outside the courtroom for "loitering" and "failing to obey an officer".<ref>Darby, p. 47.</ref> A few weeks later, King visited Martin's parents in Atlanta. At that time, she learned that he had been stabbed while signing copies of his book ''[[Stride Toward Freedom]]'' on September 20, 1958. King rushed to see her husband, and stayed with him for the remainder of his time in the hospital recovering.<ref>McPherson, p. 46.</ref> On February 3, 1959, Mr. and Mrs. King and [[Lawrence D. Reddick]] started a five-week tour of India. The three were invited to hundreds of engagements.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/india-trip|title=India Trip (1959)|access-date=December 3, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191211144903/https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/india-trip|archive-date=December 11, 2019|url-status=live}}</ref> During their trip, Coretta used her singing ability to enthuse crowds during their month-long stay. The two returned to the United States on March 10, 1959.<ref>Darby, p. 51.</ref>

===House bombing===
On January 30, 1956, Coretta and Dexter congregation member Roscoe Williams' wife Mary Lucy heard the "sound of a brick striking the concrete floor of the front porch." Coretta suggested that the two women get out of the front room and went into the guest room, as the house was disturbed by an explosion which caused the house to rock and fill the front room with smoke and shattered glass. The two went to the rear of the home, where Yolanda was sleeping and Coretta called the First Baptist Church and reported the bombing to the woman who answered the phone.<ref>Garrow, pp. 59–60.</ref> Martin returned to their home, and upon finding Coretta and his daughter unharmed, went outside. He was confronted by an angry crowd of his supporters, who had brought guns. He was able to turn them away with an [[impromptu]] speech.<ref>Burns, p. 134.</ref>

A white man was reported by a lone witness to have walked halfway up to King's door and thrown something against the door before running back to his car and speeding off. Ernest Walters, the lone witness, did not manage to get the license plate number because of how quickly the events transpired.<ref>Gibson Robinson, p. 131.</ref> Both of the couple's fathers contacted them over the bombing. The two arrived nearly at the same time, along with her Martin Luther King's mother and brother. Coretta's father Obie said he would take her and her daughter back to Marion if his son-in-law did not take them to Atlanta. Coretta refused the proclamation and insisted on staying with her husband.<ref>Garrow, p. 61.</ref> Despite Martin Sr. also advocating that she leave with her father, King persisted in leaving with him. Author Octavia B. Vivian wrote "That night Coretta lost her fear of dying. She committed herself more deeply to the freedom struggle, as Martin had done four days previously when jailed for the first time in his life." Coretta would later call it the first time she realized "how much I meant to Martin in terms of supporting him in what he was doing".<ref>Vivian, p. 20.</ref>

===John F. Kennedy phone call===
Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed on October 19, 1960, in a department store. After being released three days later, he was sent back to jail on October 22 for driving with an Alabama license while being a resident of Georgia and was sent to jail for four months of hard labor. After his arrest, Mrs. King believed he would not make it out alive and telephoned her friend [[Harris Wofford]] and cried while saying "They're going to kill him. I know they are going to kill him." Directly after speaking with her, Wofford contacted [[Sargent Shriver]] in Chicago, where presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, was campaigning at the time and told Shriver of King's fears for her husband. After Shriver waited to be with Kennedy alone, he suggested that he telephone King and express sympathy.<ref>O'Brien, p. 485.</ref> Kennedy called King, after agreeing to the proposal.<ref name=":0" />

Sometime afterward, [[Robert F. Kennedy]] obtained King's release from prison. Martin Sr. was so grateful for the release that he voted for Kennedy and said: "I'll take a Catholic or the devil himself if he'll wipe the tears from my daughter-in-law's eyes."<ref>Goduti, p. 39.</ref> According to Coretta, Kennedy said "I want to express my concern about your husband. I know this must be very hard on you. I understand you are expecting a baby, and I just want you to know that I was thinking about you and Dr. King. If there is anything I can do to help, please feel free to call on me." Kennedy's contact with King was learned about quickly by reporters, with Coretta admitting that it "made me feel good that he called me personally and let me know how he felt."<ref>Matthews, p. 171.</ref>

===Kennedy presidency===
Mr. and Mrs. King had come to respect President Kennedy and understood his reluctance at times to get involved openly with civil rights.<ref>Bagley, p. 192.</ref> In April 1962, Coretta served as a delegate for the [[Women Strike for Peace|Women Strike for Peace Conference]] in Geneva, Switzerland.<ref>McCarty, p. xiii.</ref> Martin drove her to the hospital on March 28, 1963, where King gave birth to their fourth child [[Bernice King|Bernice.]] After King and her daughter were due to come home, Martin rushed back to drive them himself.<ref>McPherson, p. 56.</ref>
After Martin Luther King's arrest on April 12, 1963, King tried to make direct contact with President Kennedy at the advisement of [[Wyatt Tee Walker]] and succeeded in speaking with Robert F. Kennedy. President Kennedy was with his father [[Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr]], who was not feeling well.<ref>Mahoney, p. 247</ref> In what has been noted as making Kennedy seem less sympathetic towards the Kings, the president redirected Mrs. King's call to the White House switchboard.<ref name=Branch736>Branch, p. 736.</ref>

The next day, President Kennedy reported to King that the FBI had been sent into Birmingham the previous night and confirmed that her husband was fine. He was allowed to speak with her on the phone and told her to inform Walker of Kennedy's involvement.<ref>Fairclough, p. 77.</ref> She told her husband of her assistance from the Kennedys, which her husband took as the reason "why everybody is suddenly being so polite."<ref>Schlesinger, p. 328.</ref> Regarding the [[March on Washington]], Coretta said, "It was as though heaven had come down."<ref>Willis, p. 166.</ref> Coretta had been home all day with their children, since the birth of their daughter Bernice had not allowed her to attend Easter Sunday church services.<ref>McPherson, p. 57.</ref> Since Mrs. King had issued her own statement regarding the aid of the president instead of doing as her husband had told her and report to [[Wyatt Walker]], this according to author [[Taylor Branch]], made her portrayed by reports as "an anxious new mother who may have confused her White House fantasies with reality."<ref name=Branch736 />

Coretta went to a Women Strike for Peace rally in New York, in the early days of November 1963. After speaking at the meeting held in the National Baptist Church, King joined the march from [[Central Park]] to the [[United Nations Headquarters]]. The march was timed to celebrate the group's second anniversary and celebrated the successful completion of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Coretta and Martin learned of [[John F. Kennedy assassination|John F. Kennedy's assassination]] when reports initially indicated he had only been seriously wounded. Coretta joined her husband upstairs and watched [[Walter Cronkite]] announce the president's death. King sat with her visibly shaken husband following the confirmation.<ref>Bagley, p. 181.</ref>

===FBI tapes===
{{Main|FBI–King suicide letter}}

[[File:HHH-CKS-MLK-1964.jpg|thumb|right|Coretta Scott with [[Martin Luther King Jr.|her husband]] and Vice President-elect [[Hubert Humphrey]] on December 17, 1964]]
The FBI planned to [[FBI–King suicide letter|mail tapes]] of her husband's alleged affairs to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference office since surveillance revealed that Coretta opened her husband's mail when he was traveling. The FBI learned that Martin Luther King would be out of office by the time the tapes were mailed and that his wife would be the one to open it.<ref>(Gentry, pg. 572–573.)</ref> [[J. Edgar Hoover]] even advised to mail "it from a southern state."<ref>Gentry, p. 572.</ref> Coretta sorted the tapes with the rest of the mail, listened to them, and immediately called her husband, "giving the Bureau a great deal of pleasure with the tone and tenor of her reactions."<ref>Gentry, p. 575.</ref> Martin Luther King played the tape in her presence, along with [[Andrew Young]], [[Ralph Abernathy]] and [[Joseph Lowery]]. Publicly, Mrs. King would say "I couldn't make much out of it, it was just a lot of mumbo-jumbo."<ref>Dyson, p. 217.</ref> The tapes were part of a larger attempt by J. Edgar Hoover to denounce King by revelations about his personal life.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The FBI's Ugly Obsession With Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.|url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/the-fbis-ugly-obsession-with-dr-martin-luther-king-jr/|access-date=2021-01-23|website=[[Amanpour & Company]]|language=en-US}}</ref>

=== Johnson presidency ===
Most prominently, perhaps, she worked hard to pass the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]]. King spoke with [[Malcolm X]] days before his assassination. Malcolm told her that he was not in Alabama to make trouble for her husband, but instead to make white people have more appreciation for King's protests, seeing his alternative.<ref>{{cite book |title=Malcolm X: Rights Activist and Nation of Islam Leader |url=https://archive.org/details/malcolmxrightsac0000robi |url-access=registration |first=Tom |last=Robinson |page=[https://archive.org/details/malcolmxrightsac0000robi/page/54 54] |publisher=Abdo |year=2014 |isbn=978-1-61783-893-4 |access-date=November 9, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200802073131/https://archive.org/details/malcolmxrightsac0000robi |archive-date=August 2, 2020 |url-status=live }}</ref> On March 26, 1965, King's father joined her and her husband for a [[Selma to Montgomery marches|march that would later end in Montgomery]]. Her father "caught a glimpse of America's true potential" and for the called it "the greatest day in the whole history of America" after seeing chanting for his daughter's husband by both Caucasians and African Americans.<ref>Bagley, p. 30.</ref>

Coretta Scott King criticized the sexism of the [[Civil Rights Movement]] in January 1966 in ''New Lady'' magazine, saying in part, "Not enough attention has been focused on the roles played by women in the struggle. By and large, men have formed the leadership in the [[civil rights]] struggle but&nbsp;... women have been the backbone of the whole civil rights movement."<ref name="books.google.com">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gwVbfvfYEZkC&q=rosa+parks+%22You've+said+enough%22&pg=PA408 |title=Civil Rights History from the Ground Up: Local Struggles, a National Movement |isbn=9780820338651 |access-date=May 13, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150315091240/http://books.google.com/books?id=gwVbfvfYEZkC&pg=PA408&lpg=PA408&dq=rosa+parks+%22You've+said+enough%22&source=bl&ots=rOsSH_BAPw&sig=boOoZWgenR2iHSw50Ots6duyqcc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aK2kUojKF6_gsATI5IH4Aw&ved=0CFMQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=rosa%20parks%20%22You've%20said%20enough%22&f=false |archive-date=March 15, 2015 |url-status=live |last1=Crosby |first1=Emilye |year=2011 |publisher=University of Georgia Press }}</ref> Martin Luther King Jr. himself limited Coretta's role in the movement, and expected her to be a housewife.<ref name="books.google.com"/> King participated in a Women Strike for Peace protest in January 1968, at the capital of Washington, D.C., with over five thousand women. In honor of the first woman elected to the House of Representatives, the group was called the [[Jeannette Rankin]] Brigade. Coretta co-chaired the Congress of Women conference with Pearl Willen and Mary Clarke.<ref>Bagley, p. 213.</ref> At some point in his activities, Martin suggested that the people working with him should organize a "sex party".<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |date=September 8, 2011 |title=Jacqueline Kennedy on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. |url=https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Jacqueline_Kennedy/jacqueline-kennedys-feelings-martin-luther-king-jr-revealed/story?id=14478321 |access-date=2023-12-24 |website=[[ABC News]] |language=en}}</ref>