 |
| Author | Post |
|---|
MrSnap
Co-Admin Clerk
| Joined: | Nov 16th, 2005 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 1500 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: |    |
|
Posted: Jan 31st, 2006 07:25 PM |
|
Coretta Scott King Dies at 78
(CBS/AP) Coretta Scott King, the widow of slain civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has died, five months after suffering a stroke and heart attack. She was 78.
"We appreciate the prayers and condolences from people across the country," the King family said in a statement. The family said she died overnight.
While she stood by her husband during the '50s and '60s, she also became a powerful civil rights advocate in her own right after his assassination in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968.
President Bush, in a written statement, called King "a remarkable and courageous woman, and a great civil rights leader." He said her "lasting contributions to freedom and equality have made America a better and more compassionate nation."
Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, appearing on CBS News' The Early Show called King the "the mother of the movement" her husband spearheaded.
"We have benefited so much from their leadership and their inspiration," Kennedy said.
"She was a great woman who bore suffering with dignity," the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a longtime friend of the Kings and former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, told the Early Show.
King worked to keep her husband's ideology of equality for all people at the forefront of the nation's agenda. She goaded and pushed for more than a decade to have her husband's birthday observed as a national holiday, then watched with pride in 1983 as President Reagan signed the bill into law. The first federal holiday was celebrated in 1986.
She became a symbol of her husband's struggle for peace and brotherhood, presiding with a quiet, steady, stoic presence over seminars and conferences on global issues.
"I'm more determined than ever that my husband's dream will become a reality," King said soon after his slaying, a demonstration of the strong will that lay beneath the placid calm and dignity of her character.
She was devoted to her children and considered them her first responsibility. But she also wrote a book, "My Life With Martin Luther King Jr."
One of her crowning achievements was the creation of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, CBS News correspondent Alison Harmelin reports.
King saw to it that the center became deeply involved with the issues she said breed violence — hunger, unemployment, voting rights and racism.
"The center enables us to go out and struggle against the evils in our society," she often said.
After her stroke, King missed the annual King holiday celebration in Atlanta earlier this month, but she did appear with her children at an awards dinner a couple of days earlier, smiling from her wheelchair but not speaking. The crowd gave her a standing ovation.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/31/national/main1259542.shtml
|
|
|
Current time is 12:30 PM | |
|
|
|
|
