Coretta Scott King

Coretta Scott King (1927 – 2006) was an American author, activist, and human rights champion. A classical concert singer and graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, she married Martin Luther King Jr. in 1953, actively participating in the Montgomery bus boycott, organizing Freedom Concerts, and speaking out against the Vietnam War well before her husband did.

Following Martin's assassination in 1968, Coretta led the sanitation workers' march in Memphis and established the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. She waged a tireless fifteen-year legislative campaign that led to the creation of the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday, signed into law in 1983. In her later decades, she was a pioneering African American civil rights leader in publicly defending gay and lesbian equality and demanding international sanctions against South African apartheid.