My Life, My Love, My Legacy

by Coretta Scott King

  Gosh, that’s a great idea, I thought. Martin would like that.

  This meant finding the mule and the wagon. Hosea Williams was very good at handling creative situations of this kind. He searched around and actually found a wagon outside an antique store. But this was the day before the funeral, and the store was closed; they couldn’t ask the owner for it, so they borrowed it. (Of course they took it back!)

  Next, Hosea and the others found some mules on a farm outside Atlanta. I was elated about the mule and wagon carrying Martin because he’d been so excited by the idea of taking mule trains from Mississippi through Jackson, on through Alabama and Georgia and into Washington. The mule, which was used in farming, symbolized poverty and the desperate plight of the poor in this country.

  There was much debate about the eulogy. Christine, Edythe, and Martin’s secretary, Dora McDonald, had joined me at our home to discuss it. We fought back tears and an overwhelming feeling of grief as we tried to decide who would preach it. Christine told me that no one could do it better than Martin himself had months before, at Ebenezer.

  “Every now and then I think about my own death,” he had told the congregation. “Tell them not to talk too long,” he said, but added his hope that they would say that “Martin Luther King tried to give his life to serving others. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace—I was a drum major for righteousness—and all the other shallow things will not matter.”

  I had a copy of the recording which I had listened to with my sister only a few months before. I listened to it again at two in the morning, before the homegoing service. The rightness of using it fell upon me.

  Early on the morning of the funeral, I greeted a steady stream of mourners, from Hollywood celebrities to neighborhood residents, at our home. At one point, I looked up and saw that someone had escorted Jacqueline Kennedy back to my bedroom, where I was receiving a few guests. I had felt deeply for her when her husband was assassinated only five years earlier. Her visit inspired me; I had always admired the grace and dignity she exemplified in the aftermath of President Kennedy’s death. Her strength and courage helped lift and hold a nation together. I will never forget that, on the day of JFK’s funeral, she invited a group of children upstairs at the White House to celebrate John John’s birthday with a party. That was her way of trying to create a normal life for her children.

  Likewise, I didn’t want my children to get caught up in the tragedy of their father’s death or the aftermath of the riots that followed. I wanted them to go on living as normally as possible. The way Jackie conducted herself helped me understand that I could get through this, too. I saw her as a model of what could be done.

  “Oh, how nice of you to come,” I told her. “You have been a great inspiration for me. I know how difficult this must be for you.”

  I extended my hand. I have a tendency to hug people, and I wanted to embrace her, but I could see that was not what she wanted. In fact, I could feel the tension in our handshake. She was very formal. Maybe she did not feel she knew me well enough to be any different. She looked at me and said, in reference to the address I made after the march I had led in Memphis, “You speak so well.” I thanked her.

  At the funeral, my children each handled their grief differently. Yoki told me, “I was thinking about myself, and I don’t know what I would do if I were in your shoes.”

  My goodness, how mature she is for her twelve years, I thought. She’s lost her father, but she’s empathizing with me as the mother and the widow because she knows I’ve had to take care of everything in the family. She showed so much grace, and I was so proud of her. She cried a little at the funeral, but she never broke down and cried for days, like some kids can. In fact, none of the children did.

  I believe Marty was confused. He did not say much. It was like he didn’t know what to say. Dexter tried to express himself. “My daddy has gone to the heaven in the sky, but his spirit is alive,” he told me, but I could tell he was just repeating what he’d been told. The boys were too young to make sense of murder, death, and eternity.

  Little Bunny sat next to me during the homegoing service. It was April and very warm. At one point, she lay in my lap. We were captured in a Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph by Moneta Sleet Jr., for Ebony magazine. Another photograph from the funeral, captured by photographer Flip Schulke, appeared on the cover of Life magazine. The expression on my face in that photograph, which a reporter called the “Mona Lisa smile,” aptly captured my great sense of fulfillment: in the end, the service was so beautiful.

  When it came time for Martin’s taped voice to be played for his eulogy, the sound of her father’s voice confused Bunny. I believe she thought he was speaking from his casket. Over the years, she had to struggle with the fear of funerals and of death, of people coming back to life. Lots of children make these types of associations as they personalize death. With time, and after other experiences with death, she became able to manage those feelings, although she has never fully overcome them.

  When we came out of the church and into the sunlight, we saw tens of thousands of people standing in the streets, having listened to the service over loudspeakers. Together, we began our march from Ebenezer to Morehouse College for the memorial service. We marched because Martin had spent so much of his life marching for justice and freedom. We were awed and deeply grateful that more than 150,000 people marched with him. It was the most meaningful, inspiring march Martin ever led.

  I couldn’t march all the way from Ebenezer to Morehouse with the funeral procession, however; the effects of my fibroid tumor surgery lingered, and I didn’t want to overexert myself. I marched part of the way to Morehouse with the kids, and rode the rest of the way.

  We were almost at the college when Bunny asked me, “Mommy, how is Daddy going to eat?” I struggled with what to say; I thought about saying something like “Well, he’ll eat angel food cake,” but I couldn’t. I didn’t say anything, hoping that she would soon forget it and wouldn’t keep asking me questions.

  Finally, we made it to Morehouse. It was a long, hard way—the rush and press of so many people, the slow clop-clop of the mules. As our procession passed, the huge crowds fell silent. Some knelt in prayer.

  After the prayers and Scripture readings, Mahalia Jackson sang “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” which Martin had asked tenor saxophonist Ben Branch to play for him at a rally that would have taken place only hours after his assassination. Dr. Benjamin E. Mays spoke. Then it was time for the interment. A.D. had been escorting me throughout the day. As we reached the grave site, he turned to me and said, “Coretta, I can’t go any further with you.”

  I understood. The grave site was the hardest part. It’s such a separation. “Okay,” I said, but I knew I had to have someone with me. So I turned to Harry, who was by my side. “I would like you and my daddy to surround me as we go to the cemetery.”

  I had a terrible feeling about leaving Martin there. When we were readying ourselves to go home, Bunny asked, “What’s a spirit?”

  Helplessly, I asked my sister, Edythe, “How do you explain spirit to a five-year-old?” Then I said, “Bunny, you know people loved your daddy, and he loved them. He loved everybody.” I put my arms around her and said, “Bunny, I love you.” I thought that if I could just convey a feeling of warmth and security to her, maybe she would get the meaning of how your body can die but leave behind a loving spirit, which lives forever.

  That was the best I could do.

  In the deep sorrow of the day, I was comforted by the thought that, at the end, we had all done our best for Martin.

  “They may have killed the dreamer,” I thought, “but they will never kill his dream.”

  I vowed that I would carry that dream forward. I prayed that my children and all our supporters could see that my Martin’s spirit, strong and determined, would carry forth and his work would live on.

  SIXTEEN

/>   With a Prayer in My Heart, I Could Greet the Morning

  MARTIN IS GONE. He’s just … gone.

  How many times I must have repeated that to myself over and over and over. It was like the saying of it could somehow confirm this surreal new reality.

  There were times when I would open my eyes with the joyous expectation of Martin being there. Then it would hit me like a cold chill: He was not there, and he was never going to be there again. Never. I had to let him go. There is nothing like finality, the presence of an absolute absence.

  I never cried in public because I did not want to project an image of weakness or negativity. I wanted the public to know that the King family had the strength to love, to forgive, and to go on despite this great tragedy that had beset us. But when I was alone, the tears would roll down my cheeks in torrents. In our bedroom, the scent of his Old Spice cologne lingered in the lining of his best black pinstripe suit in the closet. In the bathroom, his toothbrush faced mine. There was the imprint on the sheets where he had lain, his shoes, some muddy and scuffed from marches, neatly lined up on racks. It all made Martin seem near—and yet so far away.

  We had talked about it, joked about it, prayed about it. He had prepared me, but when death actually arrived, the feeling of separation was overwhelming. Our bedroom was filled with emptiness. My nights were lonely. In church, the preachers often said that suffering would endure for a night, and joy would come in the morning. But, I assure you, morning does not return without a long passage through the lonely nights of heartache. Sometimes I felt that my joy would never return.

  For months, I tried to console myself with the knowledge that Martin was in a better place and was happy. I knew I was crying for myself, feeling sorry for myself. Martin wouldn’t want me to weep over him.

  I was no longer a wife, but I was still a parent—and a single parent at that. This was the motivating thought that kept me going. No matter what else I did, I had to be a mother first. I had to say to myself, “You are a mother first.” It took that kind of self-talk to get me out of bed in the morning. Sometimes I just wanted to stay there under the covers. But I could not break down. I did not want my children to see me out of control, because then they might lose their way. So I had my cry before I came out of my room, and then I opened the door with a forceful determination I had never known before. I did not just open it; I thrust it open. But it required determination that came from beyond myself.

  When I came out of my bedroom, I had to leave my feelings, my heartaches, and my anxieties behind. It almost felt like getting in character for one of my operatic performances. I had to step out of the fog of painful reality into a zone where I could perform as a mother and comfort others. Sometimes I paused at the door, my hand on the knob, making sure I had my emotions in check. Then, with a prayer in my heart and a smile on my face, I could greet the morning.

  While my first love was my children, I also understood that I had to spread myself across a great span, keeping my husband’s mission alive and institutionalizing his legacy. I had to keep it present, relevant. And I had to continue my own mission, working for world peace abroad and nonviolence here at home. In death as in life, we have to go on.

  For my children, the way was not easy. They each had to wrestle with and endure major problems. The loss of their father to an assassin’s bullet was catastrophic. The riots and the looting that followed were so at odds with our principles of nonviolence that they were deeply confused. All of them had questions. They could not understand why their father, the prophet of nonviolence, had met such a violent end. They wondered if that same fate would take me from them. For a time after the assassination, Bunny would pore through family photo albums and ask me who would be the next to die. Fears about death plagued her.

  I think my two oldest children, Yoki and Marty, handled the passing of their father a little better than Bunny because they had such strong, wonderful memories of Martin. Because she was only five years old when he was taken from her, Bunny was more deeply scarred and confused. I worried about what was going on deep down inside her because she was always the quietest of my children. After school, all the children would report on what they’d learned, but when it was Bunny’s turn, she’d often say, “I don’t have anything to share.”

  How do you get children to love and trust others when they have been confronted with such devastating loss? One thing that was very important to me as a parent was always to set a good example in front of my children. You cannot tell children to act one way and behave differently yourself.

  I have always tried to conduct myself in an honest and moral way, a commitment I made long before marrying Martin. As a Scott, I had high moral standards instilled in me at a young age. And basic concepts of honesty, love of neighbor, and helping others were ethics I tried to teach my children by the way I carried myself, the way I loved others, no matter how they treated me and the issues I championed. There were causes that I championed and others that Martin gave priority, but after his death, our causes, our callings, became one.

  In the months immediately following Martin’s death, thousands of requests poured in from all over the world, asking me to speak on behalf of Martin, accept awards in his name, and discuss issues that were important to me. Of course, I could not accept them all. I often felt overwhelmed, pulled in too many different directions. I engaged in constant prayer, calling upon God to guide me on the right path. I was in perpetual motion, trying to accept the many awards and recognitions.

  In January 1969, my friend and special assistant Bernita Bennette and I left for a trip to India. Before arriving in the country, we stopped over in Verona, Italy, where the government bestowed upon me the San Valentino (“Universal Love”) Award. I was the first black person and first non-Italian to receive this honor. We also stopped in Rome, where I had an audience with Pope Paul VI at Vatican City.

  In New Delhi, I accepted the Jawaharlal Nehru Award, which was being posthumously given to Martin in a ceremony at New Delhi University. While in India, I addressed university groups, rallies, and a group of so-called untouchables, thus building on the relationships Martin and I had established when we visited India in 1959.

  In March 1969, Bernita and I, along with my sister, Edythe, and sister-in-law Christine, traveled to London, where I became the first woman to preach a statutory service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Standing there in my academic gown and hat, upon the spot where Martin had preached en route to his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, I found myself deeply moved. The British Martin Luther King Jr. Foundation had invited me to London, and the insight I gained there into the ways other nations were institutionalizing my husband’s vision inspired me.

  During that time abroad, I could feel myself making progress in my inner healing. I talked not of sorrow but of the privilege of being able to follow that which was meaningful and fulfilling to me. I urged the British to address their own racial issues through the power of nonviolence. I also had an opportunity to speak and share my concerns with Mrs. Harold Wilson, wife of British prime minister Harold Wilson, at No. 10 Downing Street. And before leaving Europe, I rekindled my singing career, performing Freedom Concerts in England, Germany, and Holland.

  This rush of international invitations shortly after Martin’s death was a humbling reminder that our mission was respected on a global stage. I had long understood civil and human rights to be a global challenge. How could I look at the downtrodden (the untouchables in India, for example) and not connect them to the same forces that had attempted to develop a caste system at home? The principles of nonviolence and the creation of a Beloved Community, in which every individual would be respected and treated with dignity, resonated in every corner of the globe.

  But while I welcomed the opportunity to share our message, I could not keep my suitcase packed and continue on this sort of global trek forever. I had to settle down and focus, to find the place at which I could make the greatest difference to the human condition. I had an idea
of what I had to do as an institution builder, but with so much coming at me simultaneously, I had to reflect seriously on what course I would take as an activist working to shape public policy.

  At times, I felt my road ahead would be a lonely one. Martin had always had me, but now I had to go on without him. These feelings of loneliness, however, didn’t last long. All around me, I had a strong nexus of family and friends, including Edythe and her son, Arturo, who came to live with me for the two years after Martin’s death. Edythe even took a leave of absence from work. Christine, a professor at Spelman College, her husband, Isaac, and Martin’s brother, A.D., and his wife, Naomi, were also staunch sources of support. Of course, I had my own mother and father and Daddy and Mama King, all powerhouses of love. And there were my friends, like Cecil and Frances Thomas, from my Lincoln Normal days, and Fran Lucas from my Antioch days, and Robert and Lettie Green, friends since the early 1960s. Harry Belafonte had continuously been a financial help as well as an adviser, and Andrew Young also pitched in as a surrogate father.

  So I never had to walk alone, despite those nagging feelings in the early years that this would be my path.

  As I sorted out the five-year to-do list that would carry me through 1968 and into the mid-1970s, I realized that my priorities would shift from time to time. However, I believed my immediate concerns had to include continuing my campaign against the Vietnam War and fighting for livable wages and better conditions for workers, the cause Martin gave his life for in Memphis.

  I had long been a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, and Martin had made many enemies when he came forward in April 1967 at Riverside Church in New York City to oppose that war; much of the black clergy and, especially, many white Americans thought he had overstepped the bounds of his civil rights mandates that day. But in the aftermath of Martin’s death, I gained another perspective that further fueled my opposition to the Vietnam War, and not just to that war, but to all future military conflicts. First of all, the war generated a climate of violence that too easily poisoned our national life and sickened our national character. Night after night, the horrors of war, such as the napalming of innocent civilians, were brought into our living rooms through the national news. Children saw other children horribly killed. The frequency of war, the grossness of its horrors, and the instant communication of them are among the elements that pepper our culture with violence, and create an insensitivity to it. If we as a culture become numb to the sight of bombers destroying the inhabitants of whole villages and towns, then surely it becomes psychologically easier for a small group or an individual to plan the assassination of one man.