Coretta Scott King Events

1927 Apr 27 Coretta Scott Is Born
Coretta Scott was born April 27, 1927, in Heiberger, near Marion, Alabama. She spent her childhood on her parents' farm in Heiberger. The farm had been in the family since the Civil War, ...
1945 Coretta Scott Enrolls At Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio
Wanting a better life for their children, the Scotts sent all three to college. Coretta, who graduated at the top of her high school class in 1945, won a scholarship to study elementary e...
1952 Coretta Scott Meets Martin Luther King Jr.
"I always believed that there was a purpose for my life, and that I had to seek that purpose, and that if I discovered that purpose, then I believed that I would be successful in what I wa..." —Coretta Scott King
1953 Jun 18 Coretta Scott Marries Martin Luther King Jr.
When he proposed, she deliberated for six months before saying yes, and they were married in the garden of her parents' house on June 18, 1953. The 350 guests, elegant big-city folks from...
1955 Dec 1
to 1956 Dec 20
 Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its publi...
1959 Feb 9 Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King Travel To India
“It was wonderful to be in Gandhi’s land,” wrote the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a few months after returning from a monthlong visit to India in 1959. “I left India more convinced th...
1968 Coretta Scott King Founds The Martin Luther King Jr. Center For Nonviolent Social Change
Coretta Scott King started the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in the basement of the couple's home in the year following King's 1968 assassination. In 1981, th...
1968 Apr 4
6:01PM
 Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassinated at Lorraine Motel
In March 1968, Reverend King went to Memphis, Tennessee in support of striking African American sanitation workers. The workers had staged a walkout on February 11, 1967, to protest unequ...
1968 Apr 8 Coretta Scott King Leads Silent Memorial March For Martin Luther King Jr.
An assassin finally snuffed out Dr. King's life on April 4, 1968, while he led a strike of 1,300 black sanitation workers - the working poor of their day - to demand the right to have a u...
1969 Coretta Scott King Publishes 'My Life With Martin Luther King Jr.
In the years immediately following her husband's death, King was involved in many things. For example, in June of 1969 Coretta Scott King published her first biography, My Life with Marti...
1983 Nov 2 'Martin Luther King Jr. Day' Becomes a National Holiday
Coretta King’s most enduring contribution to American culture has been as chair of the Martin L. King Jr. Federal Holiday Commission. In the late 1970s the King Center collected six milli...
1985 Clayborne Carson Directs The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project
The King Papers Project's principal mission is to publish a definitive fourteen-volume edition of King's most significant correspondence, sermons, speeches, published writings, and unpubl...
1986 Coretta Scott King Travels To South Africa
During the 1980s, Scott King reaffirmed her long-standing opposition to apartheid, participating in a series of sit-in protests in Washington, D.C. that prompted nationwide demonstrations...
1998 Apr 1 Coretta Scott King Calls On Civil Rights Community to Join In Struggle Against Homophobia
"I've always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy," King told 600 people at...
1998 Apr 23 James Earl Ray Dies In Prison
In Atlanta, Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, issued a statement that said: ''This is a tragedy, not only for Mr. Ray and his family but also for the entire nation. America will ne...
2006 Jan 30 Coretta Scott King Dies
After suffering a stroke and mild heart attack in August 2005, Coretta Scott King died on 30 January 2006 while being treated at the Hospital Santa Monica in Mexico City. Her funeral serv...
2007 Aug 30 Uncovered Documents Show FBI Was Spying On Coretta Scott King
The American Civil Liberties Union today issued a call to change FBI spying guidelines after documents were released revealing that the FBI spied on Coretta Scott King, after the death of...