Here in the United States, we are celebrating “Martin Luther King Jr. Day” on Monday, January 19, 2015, and this annual event has brought memories flooding back to me. For back in 1969, one of my first interviews as a new journalist with Billy Graham’s London newspaper, The Christian, was with Coretta Scott King.
It was many months after the murder of her husband on April 4, 1968, when Dr. King was killed by a bullet from the gun of James Earl Ray, as he was standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
We talked in the home of Canon John Collins, a Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral for 33 years, just before Mrs. King was about to become the first woman to preach at a statutory service at the massive cathedral.
Coretta Scott King plays the piano for her children; Photo Courtesy of Dan Wooding.
As I watched her four children scamper around the house — just like any other children of their age — I thought of the pain they must all have been through.
I looked at Mrs. King and asked if she was worried about suffering the same fate as her husband.
“I have lived with the threat so long now I hardly think about it,” she said her eyes ablaze. “I must do what I must do!”
She glanced across the room at her four children, and added, “My children are with me in this.”
Shortly afterwards, Mrs. King stood in the same carved pulpit in St. Paul’s Cathedral where her husband preached five years earlier.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Story was recently told by the movie Selma:
“Many despair at all the evil and unrest and disorder in the world today,” she said, “but I see a new social order and I see the dawn of a new day.”
Coretta Scott King continued with the work of her late husband until her death on January 30, 2006 at the age of 78. She worked tirelessly for racial equality after he was assassinated and fought successfully for a national holiday in memory of him. She also founded The King Center in Atlanta to preserve his legacy.
Speaking in 2003 on the 40th anniversary of her husband’s best known speech, Mrs. King urged the crowds to follow the peaceful path he preached.
Just like her husband, she also had a dream!
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