Introduction
The Life of Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott Smith James was born on April 27, 1927, in Heiberger, Alabama, the third of four children of Obadiah and Bernice Scott. Her family lived on a farm that it had owned since the end of the American Civil War, as Southern society transitioned from a slavery economy to an interaction of free people. Her family was not very wealthy, but her father was the first black man in the neighborhood to purchase a truck. The children did have to pick cotton during the Great depression to help bring in money, but her father kept working to improve his family's financial situation, running a barber shop out of their home. He also purchased a lumber mill, which did well enough to attract interest from a white logger. When Scott would not sell him the mill, his white neighbors ended up burning the mill down (Vivian). From the very beginning, the lessons of Coretta Scott's life included the hate that comes with racism.
In interviews, Coretta remembered that she did not fit into typical female stereotypes as a child. She wrestled boys, climbed trees and even threatened one of her male cousins with an axe. Some feedback from her siblings prompted her to act more ladylike as she entered adolescence and adulthood. She would find a sort of irony in her later involvement in nonviolent protest despite her early physical energy (King). Even though Coretta's parents had no formal education, they wanted all four of their children to receive a full college education. Coretta's mother once said, “My children are going to college, even if it means I only have but one dress to put on” (King). The Scott children spent their elementary years in a one-room schoolhouse and attended high school at the Lincoln Normal School, a nine-mile bus ride from their home. The bus driver was none other than Coretta's mother, who drove all of the local black teens to school.
In 1945, Coretta Scott graduated from Lincoln as the valedictorian. While in high school, she had sung in the chorus, played piano and trumpet, and taken part in school musicals. Given some of the events in her early life, Coretta could have chosen to keep to herself and just work hard to get through school. However, it is clear that she felt a natural instinct to lead others. The role that her mother played in ensuring that she and her peers made it to school surely inspired her to take full advantage of all of the opportunities available to her.
After high school, Coretta left Alabama far behind, enrolling at Antioch College, located in Yellow Springs, Ohio, following her older sister Edythe. Antioch College had established the Antioch Program for Interracial Education, which sought out non-white students to receive full scholarships to bring diversity to the traditionally white campus. Edythe was Antioch's very first black student (King). At Antioch, Coretta studied music under the first non-white person to chair an academic department in a traditionally white college, Walter Anderson. Her past experiences of racial discrimination inspired her to join political activity on campus, entering the civil rights struggle almost as soon as she came to college. She joined the school's Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committees and Antioch's chapter of the NAACP. When she sought to earn her teaching certificate in the Yellow Springs public schools, the school board refused to allow her to finish her second year. The Antioch College administration permitted her to work in the laboratory school at the university to complete her requirements.
Coretta's life changed when she earned a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, to study singing. While studying under Marie Sundelius at that institution, she met Martin Luther King, Jr. (Schulke). At this point in her life, Coretta was known as much for her singing as she was for her work with the civil rights struggle, and she blended music into her work for the civil right struggle at time. When Time chose Martin Luther King, Jr. as its Man of the Year in 1964, the article referred to Coretta as a “talented young soprano” (Schulke). The lesson for leaders from this part of her life is that she continued to pursue her own dreams, in the form of singing, as well as making her world a better place. While attempting to gain a school teaching certificate would give her a backup career if singing did not work out for her, which was also an intelligent decision, when she won the chance to pursue her dream by studying with the very best teachers in music, she grabbed that chance, refusing to settle until it would become necessary. Taking advantage of every opportunity that comes your way and doing everything you can with those opportunities is quite often what separates leaders from others.
On June 18, 1953, Coretta Scott married Martin Luther King, Jr. The ceremony took place on the lawn of her childhood home, and Martin Jr.'s father performed the ceremony. Coretta had the traditional vow of obedience removed from the ceremony, which is common today but was fairly unusual at that point in time. After receiving her degree in piano and voice from the New England Conservatory, she and Martin moved to Montgomery, Alabama. Martin was to become the pastor of a Baptist church, and it was not long before the couple found themselves in the midst of the Montgomery bus boycott, and Martin became the leader of the growing protest movement. As the boycott went on, Coretta “came to the realization that [they] had been thrust into the forefront of a movement to liberate oppressed people, not only in Montgomery but also throughout the country, and this movement had worldwide implications” (King).
As the civil rights movement grew in the 1950s and 1960s, Coretta played a crucial role. Martin wrote that he felt indebted to his wife for her sacrifices, love and loyalty. The two did spar a bit over her public involvement in the movement. Martin wanted Coretta to direct her energies toward nurturing their four children, but Coretta wanted a larger leadership role in public within the movement. She took a visible part in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and actively pursued civil rights legislation. Her work to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 borught her the most visibility. When Martin was arrested for attempting to integrate a lunch counter at a department store, President John F. Kennedy called her on the telephone to discuss it. Shortly afterward, Attorney General Robert Kennedy arranged for Martin's release from jail. When Martin was assassinated in 1968, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis met with Coretta at the funeral. Because Martin's death left a vacuum at the top of the civil rights movement, Coretta approached Josephine Baker, then a famous African-American activist and entertainer, to take the reins. Baker demurred because she thought her twelve adopted children were “too young to lose their mother” (Baker and Bouillon). This inspired Coretta to take the role of leadership on herself.
While Martin had focused on racial discrimination in the civil rights movement, she broadened her focus to move far ahead of the society of her day, including women's rights, LGBT rights, worldpeace, economic issues and other causes in her advocacy. The journalist Mike Wallace visited her home at Christmas in 1968 to see how the family was faring in the first holidays after marin's assassination. Her viewpoint was that she hoped for redemption in the wake of her husband's untimely death (Wallace).
Coretta wasted no time moving forward in cementing Martin's legacy and continuing to move forward in promoting social change. She founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, serving as its CEO and president from the first day until she passed the leadership role to her son. She published her memoirs, My Life With Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1969.
Many people in Coretta's position would have been intimidated by the violence and hatred that confronted her and Martin as they strove to make the world a better place. It is a testament to the leadership skills of this couple that they refused, instead insisting that they would make the world a better place for everyone, not just those who happened to look the right way.
As one would not expect, Coretta did not retire from the public eye after the death of her husband. While she was also operating the King Center, she also continued to pursue a number of other causes. Each year, she attended a commemorative worship service at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church to commemorate the birthday of her fallen husband on January 15, fighting for years to establish it as a national holiday. She kept fighting until 1986, when Congress and President Reagan approved legislation making his birthday a federal holiday. She attended the signing of the legislation (Reynolds).
As more public awareness grew about the apartheid situation in South Africa, Coretta became more vocal about her longstanding opposition to this discriminatory form of government, taking part in several sit-in protests in Washington that led to demonstrations across the United States against the racial policies of the South African government. She went to South Africa in 1986 to meet with Winnie Mandela, the wife of Nelson Mandela, who was still in prison for his political beliefs. While in the country, she refused to sit down with the then-South African president Pik Botha or even the moderate Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi. When Coretta returned to the United States, she asked President Reagan to institute economic sanctions against South Africa (Terkel).
Apartheid was by no means Coretta's only emphasis during this time period. Some historians consider her more devoted to the pacifist cause than her husband had been, and her desire for world peace prompted her activism in her early days at Antioch College. In 1957, Coretta had been one of the founders of The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, now known as Peace Action. While Martin was in New York City, speaking at the anti-Vietnam War protest organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, she was speaking for world peace in San Francisco. She was also a vocal opponent of the 2003 Iraq invasion (Terkel).
Coretta was ahead of her time in her views regarding LGBT equality. In a speech at Chicago's Palmer House Hilton on April 1, 1998, she urged the civil rights community to engage in the struggle against anti-gay bias and homophobia. She argued that “homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood” (Schulke). There has been some unwillingness in the religiously conservative African-American community to embrace the LGBT equality movement, but Coretta would have none of this, urging this community to support those who receive discrimination for their orientation just as she had urged other communities to support the civil rights movement decades before. Her most famous appeal connecting the civil rights movement to LGBT rights came in November 2003, at the beginning session of the 13th annual Creating Change Conference. She said, “I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay peoplebut I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King, Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people” (Schulke). In 2003, she invited members of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to join the observance of the March on Washington's 40th anniversary, also the time of the famed “I Have a dream” speech. This was the first invitation of an LGBT rights group fo a significant event within the African-American community. On March 23, 2004, while addressing Richard Stockton College in New Jersey, she argued that same-sex marriage is an issue of civil rights, denouncing President George W. Bush's proposed amendment banning equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples. The progress that same-sex marriage has made in American society is due in no small part to the advocacy that the surviving pioneer of the civil rights movement engaged in on its behalf.
The fact that four U.S. Presidents and three of their wives attended Coretta's funeral, as well as future president Barack Obama, is a testament to the legacy of her life. Both during and after her life, she received many tributes and honors, including honorary degrees and awards honoring her work to advance the cause of women. The government of India even gave her the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2004. Her life was a story of a refusal to accept things as they were, because of the corrosive effects of any sorts of bias and hatred on the human soul. This brought her to protest in just about every major cause in the second half of the twentieth century, and the widespread response to her appeals showed the respect that people had for her. She never wavered from her core principles, which had to do with ensuring dignity and equal opportunity for all.
Conclusion
For those considering a career in the hospitality industry, the life of Coretta Scott King is a valuable example of turning a series of principles into an exemplary life. If you believe that hospitality is a career path for you, then you feel a natural affinity toward ensuring that other people receive the very best treatment when they are in your care. Whether it is a major issue, such as the cleanliness of a rom, or an issue that seems much more tangential, like a guest's ability to secure transportation to a destination or get a reservation at a particular restaurant, you have committed yourself to ensuring that your guest can do whatever it is that he wants to do. While he is in your care, your top priority is to ensure that he gets as many of his wishes as he can afford, and if there are situations where a guest needs help beyond what he has planned, you help him as much as possible to ensure that he leaves your care with a positive sense of self.
For people who want to spend a career helping others, the life of Coretta Scott King is filled with powerful examples. Whenever she had the chance to speak out for other people, she took advantage of it. If there were causes that needed her aid, she did not hesitate to attach her name to their advocacy, as long as their aims were in line with her core principles. There are those who said that she pushed her advocacy too far, helping people who were not living their lives in accordance with proper religious teachings. She had no patience for people who did not pursue compassion and tolerance in all their forms, referring to religious conservatives who urged her to stop advocating for LGBT justice as “misguided.” If you want people to respect you as a leader, whether you are in the hospitality industry or any other field, you must remain true to your beliefs, just as she did. Remaining true to principles often leads to conflict, but it is through this sort of conflict that we grow as a society.
Works Cited
Baker, Josephine and Joe Bouillon. Josephine. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
King, Coretta Scott. “Address, Antioch Reunion 2004.” The Antiochian Fall 2004.
Klingel, Cynthia F. Coretta Scott King. Chanhassen, Minnesota: Child's World, 1999.
McKinley, James C. “Mexico Closes Alternative Care Clinic Where Mrs. King died.” New York Times
4 February 2006.
McNamara, Melissa. “She is deeply Missed.” CBS News 7 February 2006.
Reynolds, Barbara A. “The Real Coretta Scott King.” Washington Post 4 February 2006.
Schulke, Flip. “Never Again Where He Was.” Time 3 January 1964.
Terkel, Amanda. “Lawmakers Press Pentagon Official on MLK War Claim.” Huffington Post 19
Turk, Ruth. Coretta Scott King: Fighter for Justice. Boston: Branden, 1997.
Vivian, Octavia B. Coretta: The Story of Coretta Scott King. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2006.
