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Honoring the Life and Accomplishments of Mrs. Coretta Scott King

Date: Feb. 1, 2006
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights


HONORING THE LIFE AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF MRS. CORETTA SCOTT KING -- (House of Representatives - February 01, 2006)

Mr. JEFFERSON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the passing of one of the strongest and most inspirational African-American women in our country's history: Mrs. Coretta Scott King.

Mrs. King was not the person referred to in the cliché ..... she was not the, ``good woman behind a great man.'' She was the determined, intelligent woman who stood right alongside him. When Coretta Scott married Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior, she had already led an impressive life of her own. She had already established herself as a role model. Coretta Scott graduated at the top of her high school class in Alabama, and was accepted at Antioch College in Ohio, and later at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She had a scholarship to the music school that covered her tuition, but she was not too proud to take a job cleaning stairwells to pay for her room and meals. It was in Boston when Coretta Scott met her future husband--Martin Luther King, Junior, and her journey as not only the wife--but the partner of a man who would change the way Americans lived, had just begun.

From the Montgomery bus boycott, to outbreaks of racial violence in the streets, to a bombing at the Kings' residence in 1956, Mrs. King stood by her and her husband's dreams of racial equality. And with the bad, came the good--Mrs. King was there for her Doctor King's uplifting sermons, his many trips abroad and his--``I Have a Dream'' speech on the National Mall.

After experiencing such a tumultuous, unpredictable life as the wife of a great civil rights leader, some thought Mrs. King would choose to lead a quiet life--leaving the spotlight after her husband's untimely death. Instead, Coretta Scott King chose to carry on her the fight. Until her health started to fail her last year, she continued to speak out against injustice, and promote fairness and equality among all men. To quote the late Mrs. King, ``Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.'' This is a fitting epithet for the great American, the First Lady of the Civil Rights Movement, Mrs. Coretta Scott King.

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