But there’s something else, too. Liberated, independent women intimidate some men, and my daughters inherited these traits from me. They own their own things and there is little that a man could provide for them in that way. And many men like to feel they can provide things for you, like a home or a car. Men enjoy doing such things for women, but my girls knew Coretta, and Coretta was never a dependent woman. I had to learn to make it as a single parent at an early age. My daughters are just following the example of their mother.
How did I encourage this independence? Well, for example, I never bought my children cars; they bought cars when they could afford them. I never wanted to damage my children by letting them depend on me. My mother raised me the same way. I would remember her words: “I want you to have an education so you won’t have to depend on anybody, including a man.”
Similarly, I trust that my children—and my grandchildren, when they come—will remember what their parents, Martin and Coretta, taught them: to live their best lives, to forgive all quickly, to walk in faith, dignity, and love.
* * *
I HAVE LIVED a life beyond anything I ever imagined or thought possible for a child born in Nowhere, USA, into a race that was virtually disqualified from humanity and a gender condemned to silence. It is a life that, at the outset, felt like the slow, dragging gait of the mule trains that would pass my daddy’s house on their way to the work site. Neither man nor beast was in a hurry. No reason to rush, nothing new to expect. Just the same old steady clippity-clop, day after day. Then, unexpectedly, I was caught up by and thrust into a whirlwind, guided by a force beyond myself and shaped to a purpose I often did not understand until I had to fulfill it.
I was not a stranger to trouble. I had been born into troubled and twisted times in the South. Our family home was burned down by white terrorists. But that persecution did not stop my father from pursuing his dreams, and maybe it also planted a seed within me, gave me the strength that prepared me for the future. I understood that I might be killed if I continued alongside Martin and served as his partner in the movement. So I prayed to God for guidance; I asked Him to give me the strength to accept His will in my life, even if it meant my death.
In my struggle, I also had to learn how to be an activist and a concert artist, a public person in her own right, while also maintaining the roles of minister’s wife and mother to my four children. I hope that women can learn from both my mishaps and my successes.
Without Martin, I had to find the inner strength to go on. This is a lesson, too.
I have known great triumphs. With the help of many, I created the King Center to safeguard and champion Martin’s legacy to all the nations, as a mecca for spiritual growth and activism. We created a national holiday to commemorate Martin’s service and sacrifice, and to encourage others to follow in his footsteps. We spurred redevelopment in Atlanta, creating a citadel of diversity that helped attract the 1996 Summer Olympics and that continues to draw visitors from around the globe. I’ve met with presidents and prime ministers. I’ve met great spiritual leaders, including Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, and the Dalai Lama. I’ve put in time on picket lines in nonviolent protest campaigns for decent wages and working conditions from Memphis to South Carolina to Baltimore. I have spoken at some of the largest peace demonstrations in history, in New York City and Bonn, Germany. I participated in the miraculous transformation of an evil system of violence and bigotry that was sapping the humanity from white and black Americans alike. I stand now as a proud daughter of southern soil, a devoted citizen of the United States, an ambassador of goodwill to the world, and an architect of one of the greatest legacies known to humankind.
And along my journey, I found answers to the questions I often pondered when I was that little girl in Alabama: Who will I be? What is my purpose? The answers came little by little, crisis by crisis, trauma by trauma, like climbing Jacob’s ladder—“Every rung goes higher, higher.” If you have a purpose, you have to discover it. Once you discover that purpose, you must follow it. If it’s in line with God’s will, then I believe you will find fulfillment. When I wasn’t praying or in tune with God’s will and purpose, I wasn’t happy. In contrast, when I was in tune with the will and purpose of God, things may not have gone well, but I still felt good about what I was doing, and about myself.
My story is one of divine preparation. I was prepared to lead. I was called, and I was chosen. Looking back, I see it so clearly: Meeting Martin was prophetic. It was synergy. It was symphony. Our destinies fused, and we became two souls with one goal. Our union prepared both of us for something larger than either of us could ever have dreamed alone. We became agents of change and servants of one of the most enduring human rights struggles of the twentieth century and beyond.
Once I found my purpose, I was ready to die to hold on to it. I’ve never forgotten the motto of the first president of Antioch College, my alma mater: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
Marrying Martin and the movement perfected my journey of discovery, soothed my yearning to pour out the values and vision within my soul. The bombings, the murders, even the assassination of my husband only intensified my devotion and solidified my resolve that God had allowed me to be born at the right time in history, a time when the Spirit tracked down the willing, empowered the waiting, and magnified human outcomes far above what finite minds could conceive.
I want people to know that I was committed to leaving an eternal flame, built on love, that would never be extinguished. I wanted this flame to touch lives, communities, and nations. I wanted it to ignite and inspire. I wanted it to be an urgent call to community and public service.
Love is not a program, not a political party, not a race. It is a promise with a power all its own. The contributions of Martin and me, and of those behind and before us, are the greatest witnesses I can imagine to the power of love in action.
When it is time to end this journey, I will count it all joy.
Every heartbreak preceded a breakthrough; every thorn that pierced me positioned me for the next level of challenges. My story is a freedom song from within my soul. It is a story of struggle. It is about finding one’s purpose, a guide to overcoming fear and standing up for causes bigger than one’s self. It is a guide to discovery, a vision of how even the worst pain and heartaches can be channeled into human monuments, impenetrable and everlasting.
* * *
TODAY, THOUGH MANY dreams have been fulfilled down in the Valley, we have not yet reached the Mountaintop.
When all is said and done, is the vision of a Beloved Community that is part of the World House that Martin and I imagined together within reach?
Did we come close to picking up the pieces of the freedom movements scattered across a multiplicity of landscapes and building a model of sacred, special shelters for all people? Are we helping to create a foundation of help, hope, and healing?
Did we help others learn to work together to end the arms race, prevent environmental catastrophes, and dismantle systems that destroy others based on racial, sexual, or political differences? Are we closer to having a democracy infused with the values of diplomacy, trust, and respect for human life over unchecked militarism, greed, and political hegemony? Have we motivated others to become activists rather than spectators, to take on campaigns to feed the hungry, save the children, and fight poverty and economic exploitation in every nation? Have we inspired others to reach out from within their own comfort zones and build bridges of relationships across economic, political, and class lines?
While these may be the right questions, there are no easy answers. And I don’t think my generation is the right one to judge. How do you assess a work when its harvest comes from the invisible, the martyred, and the nameless, people who allow those of us with names to be viewed as the leaders of our shared revolution?
All I know is that the hour is late, and there is still so much unfinished business. The Dream is a work that is very much i
n progress. I believe my husband’s prophetic words are worth repeating and remembering as we go forward: “We have a choice today. Nonviolent coexistence or violent annihilation (within and without our nation). This may be mankind’s last chance to choose between chaos and community.”
I am counting on the next generation to pick up the still-broken pieces of society on humanity’s Jericho Roads and continue the struggle against poverty, greed, and militarism that Martin and I gave our lives to correct, for struggle is a never-ending process and freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation.
I believe future generations will have the courage, the love, and the faith to get this done. This is my hope, and this is my prayer.
Afterwords
ANDREW YOUNG
I have come to realize that much of the commitment Martin and I possessed came through our wives, both of whom grew up on the outskirts of Marion, Alabama. I grew up in New Orleans, and left for Howard University at fifteen. I was working in New York with the National Council of Churches when the sit-ins started. My wife, Jean, said to me, “It’s time to go back home.” I said, “We are at home.” And Jean said, “No, this is not home. We have to go back South.”
Now, I enjoyed my job, Jean was working on a master’s degree at Queens College, and we had two babies, with another on the way. Still, she insisted that we had to leave. “How am I going to do that?” I asked. “You start by handing in your resignation to this job and we put the house up for sale,” she said. I mean, that was a real show of commitment. As bad as things were, Jean was not going to abandon the South.
Coretta was not anxious to come back to the South. She had musical aspirations that were impossible to fulfill there. But after her home in Montgomery was bombed, her father and Daddy King came to take her and baby Yolanda away, and she would not budge. And Martin did not budge. If she had wavered, I doubt Martin would have stayed in Montgomery. There probably would not have been a Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Coretta was gracious, but stronger than the men around her ever wanted her to be. Remember, this was the fifties. We men thought we were going to rule the roost and our women would stay home, have babies, and bake cookies. Coretta wanted a family and a career. And she did achieve both, and excelled at both. She was a real hands-on mom, despite all the other assignments she took upon herself. I think her toughness came from her father. Her daddy, Obie, was one of the coolest men I have ever known. He was not polished, he was not articulate; he wasn’t a speaker. But he was a powerful, well-respected man who built up a business, watched white residents of Heiberger, Alabama, destroy it, and still had the strength to go on and start another business and not hate anybody.
People look at Coretta and Martin and expect their kids to be like them, but that often is not the case. The children have been through so much, and they have to find their own way. I would never expect my children to carry on what I’ve done. I wanted them to do what God called them to do. My daddy wanted me to carry on what he was doing. He was a dentist and a baseball player, the only sport I did not play. I didn’t want to go into that. That is why I’ve encouraged the King children to find their own identities, on their own. I told Martin III that he needed to go someplace in the backwoods of Latin America or Africa, someplace where nobody had ever heard of Martin Luther King Jr., and just get to know who he is and get in touch with his own spiritual understanding of life.
Andrew Young is an American politician, diplomat, and pastor from Georgia who has served as mayor of Atlanta, a congressman, and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He also served as president of the National Council of Churches USA, and was a supporter and friend of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
MAYA ANGELOU
I had worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as Dr. King’s lobbyist representative. Activist Bayard Rustin was then head of the northern office of the SCLC, and when he left, he suggested me for that position. There was a meeting of the SCLC board. A lot of people came. I told them if you want someone who has titles before or after his or her name, that’s one thing, but if you want someone to get the job done, I will be your best choice. I was young. I might do the same swaggering/brash/strutting thing again, some fifty years later, but I’d do it a little less.
At any rate, I was chosen for the job, and I got to meet Mrs. King. We just liked each other from the start. I was a southern woman, and she was a southern woman. We had the same attitude toward things, like being very respectful of elderly people, even when they were boring. That is really southern black. We were proud of doing certain things that we thought were feminine. We loved to cook, to dress nicely, to sing a little bit. She felt good about being a wife, a mother, and a spokesperson.
Dr. King was killed on my birthday, April 4, 1968. I was devastated. Coretta and I grieved together, literally falling into each other’s arms. And we remained that close the rest of her life. Coretta would come and stay with me occasionally at my home in Winston Salem, North Carolina. Once I shared a book with her that was written about sisters. “I have a sister and a brother that are blood relatives, but my chosen sister is Maya, who makes me laugh,” she’d say. She also used to say that Martin told her she didn’t laugh enough, and that she should go be around Maya.
I knew how to make her laugh. I’d sneak up on her and whisper something in her ear or tell her a joke. I couldn’t enjoy myself better than to catch her off guard; she would do her best to control herself, but she’d laugh. She was very kind, too, and that’s a quality I claim for myself. At least I mean to be. So we liked each other for that. Coretta was kind to those people others might look down upon, people who were uneducated or unlucky or unloved. She was serious about trying to be a good Christian. I mean acting it. Living it. Being it. Showing it. Sharing it. I will never stop missing her.
Coretta is more relevant today than ever. The fact that she married, then lost, the great love of her life, one of the most charismatic human beings in the world, a man who adored her, and was able to keep going after that and move us all to a higher level—that is courageous leadership. Coretta showed her womanliness, not just her humaneness. On one level, it’s very possible to become an old female who lives long enough by managing not to get run over by a truck. Then there’s a female who takes responsibility for creating something better in the time she has and the space she had to occupy. That is true greatness. And Coretta did that.
Maya Angelou was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. The author most famously of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among many dozens of honors.
JOHN CONYERS
What must be understood is that Coretta King doesn’t just have historical significance. She’s also a role model as a leader for today. She picked up the mantle of her husband and kept pushing it forward, so that people everywhere, in all nations, people of all races, could have a living model of how to create systemic change without violence, without bloodshed, without hate.
Throughout the sixties and seventies, when she was speaking out and lobbying for the King holiday bill, civil rights groups and black lawmakers were operating in a fiercely hostile climate. There were many who were not supportive of Martin Luther King Jr.’s activism, and they did not want to honor him or commemorate him in any way. Even in the African American community, there were people who vigorously disliked King. I introduced the King holiday bill in 1968—and I continued to introduce it for fifteen years. It was not signed into law until 1983.
Despite the hostility, Coretta kept going. She became the replacement for her husband. She was his copartner while he lived, and she continued as his partner after his death. At that time in the sixties, you have to remember what a standout and stand-alone woman she was. There were few black female leaders who were respected across gender, ethnic, and political lines.
Remember, we did not have a black woman in Congress until 1968, with the election of Ne
w York congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, although we’d elected a white woman, Jeannette Rankin, in 1916. Coretta’s reach was extensive, both horizontally and vertically.
The whole time, Coretta carried herself with such dignity. She was never involved in any kind of scandal. She carried great moral authority. We always felt she spoke for right at the right time. Her presence in political circles helped us men move beyond gendered traditions.
John James Conyers Jr. is the U.S. representative for Michigan’s Thirteenth Congressional District. He has been a member of Congress since 1965 and is currently its longest-serving member, making him the Dean of the House of Representatives. He is a founding member and dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, and in his more than fifty years of public service, he has been a major proponent of more than one hundred pieces of critical legislation, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, the Martin Luther King Holiday Act of 1983, the Motor Voter Act of 1993, the Alcoholic Beverage Labeling Act of 1988, and the Jazz Preservation Act of 1987. He was also the driving force behind the Help America Vote Act of 2002.
DR. BARBARA WILLIAMS-SKINNER
Coretta had a strong passion for what women were doing around the world, women such as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India, President Corazon Aquino of the Philippines, and Dolores Huerta, leader of the United Farm Workers Union. Mrs. King had her own following globally, way beyond the American civil rights movement.
For instance, she was very committed to the antiapartheid struggle. I went with her to Johannesburg and Soweto in the early eighties. We did small prayer groups, which was very dangerous. It was against the law for so-called Coloreds, Blacks or Indians to meet together in groups. Even the idea of doing the prayer sessions was radical; it was something not done in South Africa, but Coretta Scott King had the courage to do it anyway. Since she was such a high-ranking person, we went ahead and prayed for divine intervention to achieve racial equality. We quietly met in people’s homes. We always felt the peaceful resolution there was the result of those prayers.
My Life, My Love, My Legacy Page 39