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 was doing. And I thought I had found that purpose when I decided that music was going to be my career -- concert singing. I was going to be trained as a concert singer at the New England Conservatory of Music. I studied voice the first year, and after I met Martin and prayed about whether or not I should open myself to that relationship, I had a dream, and in that dream, I was made to feel that I should allow myself to be open and stop fighting the relationship. And that's what I did, and of course the rest is history.”
— Coretta Scott King
Moving to Boston changed the course of Coretta Scott's life in more ways than one, for in 1952 a friend there introduced her to Martin Luther King Jr., an ordained Baptist minister who was attending Boston University's School of Theology. Although she has said that she never wanted to be the wife of a pastor, Scott warmed to the theology student's sincere passion for social justice and also fell for his distinctive line of flattery. King, for his part, admired Scott for standing up to his father, who wanted him to marry into one of Atlanta's leading black families. Scott bluntly told the imposing Daddy King that she, too, was from one of the finest families.
