Coretta Scott King, widow of slain civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., has died. She was 78. Last August Scott-King suffered a stroke that left her weakened on her right side, unable to walk, and barely able to speak.
News of her death came from former US Ambassador and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young this morning on the NBC show 'Today.' Asked how he found out about her death, Young said, "I understand she was asleep last night and her daughter tried to wake her up."
King had been recovering at home since her stroke. She was last seen in public when she made a surprise appearance at a fundraiser on what would have been her husband's 77th birthday earlier this month. She smiled from her wheelchair as she was greeted with a standing ovation and thunderous applause from a crowd of 15-hundred at the Salute to Greatness Dinner at the King Center.
Coretta Scott King played a major back-up role in the civil rights movement until the death of her husband, Martin Luther King, who was assassinated on a Memphis motel balcony on April 4, 1968, while supporting a sanitation workers strike in that city.
Coretta Scott was born April 27, 1927, on a farm in Heiberger, Ala. Though the family owned the land, it was often a hardscrabble life. The young Coretta, her sister, Edythe, and brother, Obie, all had to pick cotton during the Depression to help the family make ends meet.
An intelligent and hardworking student, Scott King played trumpet and piano, and graduated from Lincoln High at the top of her class in 1945. She followed her older sister to Antioch College in Ohio, where Edythe had been the first full-time black student to live on campus. At Antioch, Scott King majored in music and education. When she graduated, she decided she wanted to pursue music instead of teaching. She received a scholarship to study violin and voice at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she met her future husband, Martin Luther King Jr., who was studying theology at Boston University.
News of her death came from former US Ambassador and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young this morning on the NBC show 'Today.' Asked how he found out about her death, Young said, "I understand she was asleep last night and her daughter tried to wake her up."
King had been recovering at home since her stroke. She was last seen in public when she made a surprise appearance at a fundraiser on what would have been her husband's 77th birthday earlier this month. She smiled from her wheelchair as she was greeted with a standing ovation and thunderous applause from a crowd of 15-hundred at the Salute to Greatness Dinner at the King Center.
Coretta Scott King played a major back-up role in the civil rights movement until the death of her husband, Martin Luther King, who was assassinated on a Memphis motel balcony on April 4, 1968, while supporting a sanitation workers strike in that city.
Coretta Scott was born April 27, 1927, on a farm in Heiberger, Ala. Though the family owned the land, it was often a hardscrabble life. The young Coretta, her sister, Edythe, and brother, Obie, all had to pick cotton during the Depression to help the family make ends meet.
An intelligent and hardworking student, Scott King played trumpet and piano, and graduated from Lincoln High at the top of her class in 1945. She followed her older sister to Antioch College in Ohio, where Edythe had been the first full-time black student to live on campus. At Antioch, Scott King majored in music and education. When she graduated, she decided she wanted to pursue music instead of teaching. She received a scholarship to study violin and voice at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she met her future husband, Martin Luther King Jr., who was studying theology at Boston University.
