"Freedom fighter" in her own right

ATLANTA — Coretta Scott King, who toiled tirelessly in the civil-rights movement and later to gain national recognition for her slain husband, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died early Tuesday in Mexico. She was 78.

Mrs. King never fully recovered from a stroke and heart attack last year. Though she was unable to speak or walk, she made her last public appearance Jan. 14 at an annual banquet to raise money for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Family members said she died in her sleep.

Mrs. King was suffering from advanced ovarian cancer when she arrived last week at the alternative medicine clinic where she died early Tuesday, clinic doctors said.

They gave the cause of death as respiratory failure, related both to the stroke she suffered about three months ago and the cancer they said was diagnosed last year.

Mrs. King, 78, checked into the Santa Monica Health Institute in the Mexican beach resort of Rosarito, 16 miles south of San Diego, on Thursday under another name. The doctors said they did not know who she was until her medical records arrived on Friday, and they never began any treatment because of her condition.

News of her death led to tributes to Mrs. King across Atlanta, including a moment of silence in the Georgia Capitol and piles of flowers placed at the tomb of her slain husband. Flags at the King Center — the institute devoted to the civil-rights leader's legacy — were lowered to half-staff.

After her husband's assassination in 1968, Mrs. King devoted her life to carrying out the slain civil-rights leader's legacy. She lobbied for a decade to make her husband's birthday a federal holiday, and in 1983 President Reagan signed the bill into law. Three years later, the nation observed the first King holiday.

She also founded the King Center, a teaching facility, archive and museum, as a tribute to her husband's work. Recently, the future of the financially struggling center has been in jeopardy as her four children fought publicly over its fate.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was with her husband when he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., said Tuesday that she understood that every time her husband left home, there was the chance he might not come back. Jackson pronounced her a "freedom fighter."

Mrs. King was born April 27, 1927, in Marion, Ala. Her father was a lumber worker and part-time barber. She once said she worked in the cotton fields all day on weekends so that she could stay late after school during the week to practice her music. She graduated from Antioch College in Ohio in 1951 with a degree in music.

A polished concert singer, Mrs. King met her future husband while working on a graduate degree at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Martin Luther King Jr., a budding young preacher, was a doctoral student at Boston University.

She recalled that on their first date he told her: "You know, you have everything I ever wanted in a woman. We ought to get married someday." Eighteen months later, in 1953, they did.

The couple moved to Montgomery, Ala., where he became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and helped lead the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott that Rosa Parks set in motion when she refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus. With that campaign, King began enacting his philosophy of nonviolent, direct social action.

Over the years, Mrs. King was with her husband in his finest hours. She was at his side as he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. She marched beside him from Selma, Ala., into Montgomery in 1965 on the triumphant drive for a voting-rights law.

Only days after his death, she flew to Memphis with three of her children to lead thousands marching in honor of her slain husband and to plead for his cause.

"I think you rise to the occasion in a crisis," she once said. "I think the Lord gives you strength when you need it. God was using us — and now he's using me, too."

Though she lived for years in her husband's shadow, Mrs. King was an invigorating influence in the civil-rights movement for more than half a century. When her husband could not attend an event, she stood in for him and spoke on his behalf. She was often seen marching beside him on the front, locked arm in arm, singing "We Shall Overcome."

"She is Mrs. Martin Luther King but as Coretta Scott King, she created a niche for herself," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who worked alongside King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Andrew Young, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a longtime King family friend, said she never lost her faith in nonviolence.

In her later years, Mrs. King was an outspoken critic of the Iraq war and supported many social causes, saying her husband had died fighting for the rights of all people. She also accused movie and TV companies, video arcades, gun manufacturers and toy makers of promoting violence.

Mrs. King became a symbol in her own right of her husband's struggle for peace and brotherhood, presiding with a quiet, stoic dignity over seminars and conferences.

Though many saw her as the "first lady of the civil-rights movement," she was criticized by some who believed she abandoned her husband's mission to improve life for the masses of poor and disadvantaged people. Some did not support the King Center early on, saying the money raised to build the multimillion-dollar center could have been better used on the poor.

While others in the movement were still trying to sort out how to replace the slain martyr, Mrs. King chose to focus her energy on preserving her late husband's legacy for generations.

She had harsh words for those who tried to imitate her husband's style, saying they were "stuck in emotional rhetoric."

She is survived by her four children, Yolanda, Martin III, Dexter and Bernice.