The Shared Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King

Photo credits: obits.eons.com/tribute/gallery

Note: This post is an edited version of the presentation I gave this Sunday at Groveland Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship in commemoration of Martin Luther King Day.

Tomorrow, on the third Monday of Jan., we will officially celebrate Martin Luther King Day. It’s fitting that we also remember Martin’s wife, Coretta Scott King, who died just two years ago on Jan. 30, 2006.

More than six years post 9/11 in the shadow of the Iraq War and in the midst of a sometimes contentious presidential campaign, we do well to consider the shared legacy of Martin and Coretta, who were partners not only in their marriage, but also in their dedication to the greater cause of human rights that we Unitarian-Universalists emphatically subscribe to in the first two of our seven principles: 1) the inherent worth and dignity of every person; and 2) justice, equality and compassion in human relations.

In the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, non-violence was the hallmark of the Kings’ leadership in the civil rights movement. Under their leadership, the movement achieved one important milestone after another:

1957: Martin Luther King, Jr., Charles K. Steele, and Fred Shuttlesworth established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

1963: Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the nation’s capital where 250,000 people attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

1964: President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin.

1964: Martin Luther King, Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize.

1965: Congress passed the Voting Rights Act making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote.

1967: President Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court Justice.

1968: President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.

After Martin’s death from an assassin’s bullet in April of 1968, Coretta Scott King continued to provide essential support and leadership to the civil rights movement, while simultaneously fighting to preserve her husband’s legacy, and it was through her efforts that Martin Luther King Day became a national holiday in 1986.

Coretta outlived Martin by nearly four decades, and news coverage of her death in 2006 made a deep impression on me that I’ve not forgotten. It revealed a compelling life story, one that should jar us out of any delusion that terrorism was unknown in the United States before Sept. 11, making even more remarkable Martin and Coretta’s decision to overcome evil with good through following the path of non-violence.

Consider the following: Coretta was still a child on Thanksgiving Eve, 1942, when she saw the Scott family home burned to the ground by whites.

In 1956, Martin Luther King, Jr. was speaking at Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church when whites bombed the King home; Coretta and their infant daughter were inside.

As noted earlier, Coretta was widowed when Martin, at the age of 39, was gunned down in Memphis, Tenn.

A few months after Coretta’s death just two years ago, civil rights activist Jo Freeman paid tribute to her on the August 26th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment to the Constitution giving women the right to vote.

Freeman had known Coretta personally. She became Coretta’s full-time assistant in 1966 prior to Martin’s death. She recalled that "Coretta had two full-time jobs and was searching for a third: her first job was as the wife of a minister and the mother of four children; the second was being the wife of a public figure."

Freeman said, “Many wives of public figures prefer to provide support from behind, but Mrs. King embraced a public role as well. She had trained as a professional singer with the expectation of a concert career and put her talents to good use giving concerts to raise money for civil rights. She also made speeches and appeared at public functions when called upon.”

But what impressed Freeman most about Coretta was that all of the above was not enough. “She wanted to be her own person…Martin’s prominence made that difficult for Coretta, who had already begun to branch out with her own causes such as participating in a 1962 disarmament conference in Geneva with Women's Strike for Peace.”

After Martin’s death, Coretta assumed his mantle, becoming his permanent representative. Freeman says that Coretta’s vision, like Martin’s, had always been greater than the need for racial justice: “Over time she … spoke out on issues that hadn't even been contemplated during the heyday of the civil rights movement. She understood the need for women's rights to be seen as human rights, and not only spoke at feminist events but served on the National Organization of Women’s Advisory Board.

“She was not afraid to buck conventional wisdom even within the black community and did so by supporting the rights of lesbians and gays to marry, a particularly controversial position within the black church.”

Freeman tells us: ‘“If picking up Dr. King's mantle, in the end, was something of an impossible task, both of them described a relationship that was truly a partnership. "I think on many points she educated me," Dr. King once said.

“And Coretta never veered from the conviction, expressed throughout her life, that his dream was hers as well. "I didn't learn my commitment from Martin," she once told an interviewer. "We just converged at a certain time."

After Coretta’s death, Barbara A. Reynolds, a long-time friend of Coretta, remarked: “As we celebrate the life of Coretta Scott King, let us celebrate her as she saw herself: a woman of substance, a partner in ‘the dream,’ a freedom fighter in her own right who institutionalized the memory of Dr. King for all people for generations to come.”’

The commitment of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King to the cause of equal rights for all humanity continues to speak to us in 2008. On the one hand, Americans can celebrate a presidential campaign unusual for the diversity of the candidates who have participated so far, including Barack Obama, an African-American; Bill Richardson, a Hispanic; Mitt Romney, a Mormon, and Hillary Clinton, a woman. Candidates also offer a diversity of age from Obama at 46 to John McCain at 71.

We most certainly celebrate the diversity among our candidates – Democrats have spoken of an embarrassment of riches - but on the other hand, we have cause for grief. It’s saddening to read an article comparing the frequency of misogynist attacks against Hillary Clinton to the number of racist slurs against Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign. This tells us what a long way Americans have yet to go to overcome the twin evils of misogyny and racism in a nation some continue to describe as “a shining city on a hill,” begging the question, for whom?

Jonathan Tilove, author of the article mentioned above, observes:
“In the coming months, America will decide whether to elect its first female president. And amid a techno-media landscape where the wall between private vitriol and public debate has been reduced to rubble, Sen. Hillary Clinton is facing an onslaught of open misogynistic expression.

“Step lightly through that thickly settled province of the Web you could call anti-Hillaryland,” Tilove warns, “and you are soon knee-deep in "bitch," "slut," "skank," "whore" and, ultimately, what may be the most toxic four-letter word in the English language.

In all fairness, it must also be noted that for Obama, racism has not been the only evil he has faced in this campaign. Religious bigotry has also reared its ugly head to plague both Obama, a member of the United Church of Christ, and Mitt Romney, a member of The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I believe it was Republican candidate Huckabee who asked if Mormons were Christians.

An out of state friend of mine has contacted me twice in recent weeks for help in responding to email attacks accusing Obama of being a Muslim and challenging his loyalty to this nation. In response, I’ve done the necessary research and sent my friend material for effective rebuttal. It's the Unitarian-Universalist thing to do. As noted earlier, numbers one and two of our seven principles emphasize the inherent worth and dignity of every person and justice, equality and compassion in human relations.

In addition to racism, misogyny, and religious bigotry, we’ve also been exposed to ageism in the 2008 campaign. At the age of 68, I wince when I come across a reader’s comment in the blogosphere referring to Hillary Clinton as an old hag and airily dismissing the efforts made by my generation - which incidentally includes Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King - on behalf of human rights in the 60s and 70s.

Our struggles helped make possible the advances members of the present generation now appear to take for granted, and we still have a ways to go. For example, it’s no secret that women still earn less than men for work of equal value.

As we mark Martin Luther King Day tomorrow, we are reminded that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited all kinds of discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin; Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects individuals against employment discrimination on the basis of gender as well.

Passed three years later, The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older from employment discrimination based on age.

The Civil Rights Act and The Age Discrimination in Employment Act have been in force for over forty years. As the 2008 presidential campaign has unfolded; however, it has become tragically apparent that vestiges of the evils of all forms of discrimination continue to linger in the hearts of too many American citizens. As faithful Unitarian-Universalists, inspired by the example set by Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, we have our work cut out for us.