Coretta Scott King: 1927-2006
Atlanta Journal Constitution
By ERNIE SUGGS
Published on: 01/31/06
It would have been easy to label Coretta Scott King just a wife, but it would have missed the mark.
Before she married the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Alabama-born Coretta Scott had established herself as politically and socially conscious young woman. Formally educated in Ohio and Boston, she was an anti-war activist who rallied fellow students against violence and was a delegate to a political convention. She was an accomplished classical singer.
During the civil rights movement, she marched alongside her husband and sang to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization he co-founded.
After her husband's death in 1968, Coretta King emerged as an important activist in her own right. She founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and led the fight to make her husband's birthday a national holiday. Yet she also was known as a loving mother who reared four children alone. She instilled in them a reverence for the ideals their father espoused, as well as an independence to chart their own courses, even if it challenged long-standing ideals of who or what they should be.
She became an international advocate for peace and human rights. She met with presidents and world leaders and was arrested fighting against apartheid. And well into her 70s, she traveled the globe to speak against racial and economic injustice, promote the rights of the powerless and poor, and advocate religious freedom, full employment, health care, educational opportunities, nuclear disarmament and AIDS awareness.
Coretta Scott King, 78, of Atlanta, died late Monday at a holistic hospital in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, about 17 miles south of San Diego, family members said. Willie A. Watkins Funeral Home on Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard is in charge of arrangements, which at this point are incomplete.
"Mrs. King's lasting contributions to freedom and equality have made America a better and more compassionate nation," President Bush said Tuesday in a prepared statement. "Laura and I were fortunate to have known Mrs. King, and we will always treasure the time we spent with her. We send our condolences and prayers to the entire King family."
Mrs. King suffered a debilitating stroke and heart attack in August.
Despite her physical struggles — friends and family members said her last days were painful — she made a surprise appearance last month during the King Center's annual Salute to Greatness awards dinner in downtown Atlanta.
She was wheeled into the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, triggering a standing ovation. She smiled, waved and kissed family members, but she did not speak.
It would be her last public appearance.
For many, Coretta King was the closest thing possible to African-American royalty, from the regal way she carried herself to how others perceived her. Her image froze in the public's consciousness thanks to a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken at her husband's funeral. Beneath her black veil, she seemed dignified and stoic even as she consoled her grief-stricken 5-year-old daughter, Bernice.
But for a public figure, she was an intensely private person. She picked her friends carefully and didn't not venture out in public without being swamped by admirers.
That, said some who didn't know her, made her appear aloof, but friends say Coretta King was warm, kind and considerate, someone who loved to laugh, never said a bad thing about anybody, and spent hours on the phone late into the night, talking with friends and family.
On Tuesday, Lynn Cothren, her special assistant for 23 years, recalled those late-night phone conversations.
"We've had so many, and it's one of the things I've missed since she had the stroke. We had talked a week or so before her stroke," said Mr. Cothren. "When we got on the phone together, it would be late. All the time I worked with her, the best time for us to talk was when the phones weren't ringing."
Mr. Cothren said their last conversation came a few weeks before her stroke. It lasted three-and-a-half or four hours.
"It had been a while since our last three-hour conversation. We talked about everything," Mr. Cothren said. "We talked about the world and this unjust war that we're in. She asked about my partner. We talked about events in her life. In one of the last conversations, she was telling me about what a tremendous time she had at Oprah's party and the beautiful earrings she got. We talked about everything.
Because of her status as a civil rights figure, she would receive dozens of calls from people traveling through Atlanta who wanted to talk with her.
Although she was one of the most recognizable women in the world, she did her own grocery shopping and bought her pantsuits off the rack. After her coif was feathered and flipped during an "Oprah" TV show makeover in May of 2003, she reverted to the traditional curls she had worn for decades.
Winfrey's friendship changed her life in her later years. In 2003, Coretta King moved out of the Vine City home she had shared with her husband and into two 39th-floor condo units at Park Place in Buckhead, bought by Winfrey.
Before her stroke, Coretta King normally began her day at 7 a.m. with prayer, meditation and exercise.
To link Coretta King's life to that of her husband's is inevitable, especially in light of the work she had done to protect, maintain and enhance his legacy. While his 1968 assassination brought an end to their marriage after only 15 years, Coretta King never remarried and spent her last 38 years creating her own legacy.
Immediately after her husband's death, she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, eventually locating it on Atlanta's historic Auburn Avenue in the neighborhood where he grew up.
She also worked for more than 15 years to get her husband's birthday established as a national holiday. Celebrated on the third Monday in January, King Day is the only national holiday honoring an individual American.
YOUNG CORETTA
Coretta Scott was born April 27, 1927, in Marion, Ala., to Bernice McMurry Scott and Obadiah Scott, who farmed his own land and owned a truck, which he used to haul logs and timber for the local sawmill. Bernice Scott was a homemaker. Marion's rural setting exposed Coretta King to the injustices of racism and segregation. Although her family was not poor, she joined hired hands picking cotton in the fields of rural Marion.
"If you made four or five dollars in the course of a season, that was pretty good money in those Depression days. I remember one special year when I made seven dollars picking cotton," Coretta King wrote in her 1969 autobiography, "My Life With Martin Luther King Jr." "I was always very strong, and I made a very good cotton picker. Martin used to tease me about it, years later, saying that was why he had married me. He would say, 'If you hadn't met me, you'd still be down there picking cotton!"
She also knew hardship. While white neighbors rode a bus to a nearby school, she walked five miles to the one-room Crossroads School for blacks.
"When I was very young and growing up, I was protected from the extreme hardships of segregation though I was always aware of being deprived of the rights to which I was entitled," Coretta King wrote.
But she did well in school, excelled in music, and became the valedictorian of Lincoln High School's class of 1945. She accepted a scholarship to the Quaker-influenced Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and quickly took an interest in the civil rights movement.
She joined both the Antioch chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the college's Race Relations and Civil Liberties committees. In 1948, she was a delegate to the founding convention of the Young Progressives organization.
"From the first, I had been determined to get ahead, not just for myself, but to do something for my people and for all people," Coretta King wrote in her 1969 autobiography, "My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr."
"She was very politicized early on in her life," said Digby Diehl, a California writer who was collaborating with Coretta King on her unpublished memoirs. "She was far more politically aware than her husband was at that time when they met. I think he became very sophisticated and very aware."
After graduating from Antioch in 1951 with a degree in music, she accepted a scholarship to continue her musical training at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.
MEETING THE KING
In Boston, she met Martin Luther King Jr., a young Boston University theology student studying for his doctorate.
Martin King asked a mutual friend for her phone number. When he called her, he identified himself as, "M.L. King Jr."
Upon meeting for lunch the next day, Coretta King wrote, "My first thought was, 'How short he seems,' and the second was, 'How unimpressive he looks.' "
Things quickly changed over lunch.
"I still remember everything I was wearing that day... Martin looked at me very carefully. At the time, I was wearing bangs that had a natural wave, and my hair was long. He liked that and said so," she wrote. "In those few minutes I had forgotten about Martin being short and had completely revised my first impression. He radiated charm. When he talked, he grew in stature. ... I knew immediately that he was special."
They were married on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parent's house in a ceremony conducted by his father.
After Coretta King received a degree in voice and violin at the New England Conservatory, the young couple moved to Montgomery in September 1954 when Martin Luther King Jr. was named pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
Having traveled the country and studied in Boston, Coretta King was noteager to return South, especially to Alabama.
"Having come from a town in Alabama only about 80 miles from Montgomery, I knew the situation there only too well," she wrote. "I knew, from my own life, that in this city, living in its memories of its glory as the first capital of the Confederacy, the stifling hood of segregation at its worst soon would drop over us. I also felt that Montgomery would offer me little opportunity or challenge in pursuing my musical interests."
Within 15 months of their arrival, the couple—now with an infant daughter, Yolanda— found themselves thrust into events that led to the modern civil rights movement.
On Dec. 1, 1955, seamstress Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a city bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott. At 26, the movement chose Martin Luther King Jr. as its leader.
Coretta King has said it was an exciting time for the young couple because they were leading a life of purpose.
On the evening of Jan. 30, 1956, while Martin Luther King Jr. was speaking at Ralph David Abernathy's First Baptist Church, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the family home in Montgomery.
In her autobiography, Coretta King wrote that she was sitting in her house with a friend and daughter Yolanda when they heard a loud thump on the porch. She had been anticipating an attack and tried to run to the back of the house.
"We moved fast—not through the hall, which would have taken us near the sound, but straight back through the guest bedroom," she wrote. "We were in the middle of it when there was a thunderous blast. Then smoke and the sound of breaking glass."
She, the friend and baby Yolanda narrowly escaped injury.
"I think Coretta Scott King is the quintessential woman that has been far underrated in terms of her contributions," the Rev. Al Sharpton said Tuesday. "People talk about Dr. King, but it was Dr. King and Coretta King. When they bombed the house it was Coretta's house. She was home. He wasn't even there."
CIVIL RIGHTS
Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership in Montgomery catapulted him to national prominence and made him the de-facto leader of black America throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Often Coretta King, in her cat glasses, was right by his side at marches and rallies, including the March on Washington and the Selma-to-Montgomery march.
In 1957, she and her husband traveled to Ghana to mark that country's independence. In 1958, they traveled to Mexico and witnessed the wide gulf — similar to that in America — between extreme wealth and desperate poverty. In 1959, the couple spent a month in India on a pilgrimage of sites associated with Mahatma Gandhi.
In 1964, she was by her husband's side in Oslo, Norway, when he received the Nobel Peace Prize. She said they were both surprised that he got the award. He donated all of the money from the prize to civil rights groups.
"One of the things that amazed me about Mrs. King as we worked ... was what a great influence she was on her husband and how much of a participant she was in every aspect of his work while he was alive and how remarkably she picked up the mantle when he was assassinated," said Mr. Diehl, the writer. "She's always extremely deferential to him and has always given him complete credit for all the things he did, and I'm sure she would not want any suggestion that she was the power behind the throne, but she was a very strong participant behind the scenes. That's been a lifetime habit of hers, the things she did behind the scenes."
But in the 1960s, as her husband grew in stature, so did Coretta King.
She conceived and performed a series of critically acclaimed Freedom Concerts, combining poetry, narration and music to tell the story of the civil rights movement and raise funds for the SCLC.
Mrs. King's contemporary, Dorothy Height, who was chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women, said it was at one Mrs. King's Freedom Concerts — at Town Hall in New York City — that she first met her and heard her sing.
"It was the first time I got the chance to know her. She did a beautiful concert and I think all of us were very proud to be a part of it. And it was right in the middle of our civil rights activities," Mrs. Height said.
Coretta King served as a Women's Strike for Peace delegate to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1962, and spoke out against the Vietnam War before her husband did.
Mrs. King has said that her anti-war views were rooted in her religious beliefs and that she became an activist in college.
"It is my faith that first made me a good candidate for pacifism," she once said. "There were a number of young men who became conscientious objectors. We organized ourselves as students in support of them."
Later, it was Martin King's stance on the Vietnam War that started some shifting of political opinion against him, as critics and some supporters argued that he should remain focused solely on civil rights.
She was a liaison to international peace and justice organizations even before her husband took a public stand against the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. In June 1965, she addressed an anti-war rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
On her husband's last birthday, Jan. 15, 1968, while he was in Atlanta planning the Poor People's Campaign, she was at an anti-war rally in Washington.
But much of her time was spent as a mother. While her husband traveled the country, she often remained home with their children — Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott and Bernice Albertine.
LIFE AFTER DEATH
On April 4, 1968, having just returned from taking daughter Yolanda Easter shopping, Coretta King was informed that her husband had been shot in Memphis while helping sanitation workers.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson called her and urged her to quickly fly to Memphis.
Coretta King wrote that while she was shocked, she was not all together surprised: "It hit me hard ... that the call I seemed subconsciously to have been waiting for all our lives had come."
When she arrived at the Atlanta airport, her husband's secretary and Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen told her he'd died.
"Of course, I already knew. But it had not yet been said, " she wrote. "I had been trying to prepare myself to hear that final word, to think and accept—I was trying to make myself believe that Martin was dead."
On Tuesday morning, Jackson recalled that he was careful not to tell Mrs. King that her husband was dead to protect her before she traveled to Memphis.
But he said that by then, after all they had gone through, she was ready and prepared for the news of his death. He didn't tell her, but she already knew.
"Their home had already been bombed, he was stabbed in New York, bricked in Chicago. He was the object of hate," the Rev. Jackson said. "So she was aware of his circumstances as his companion, a wife and a mother. Her shoulder was his pillow. Her ears were his listening post."
In the days following Dr. King's death — and the day before his funeral — Mrs. King did make it to Memphis, where she led a march of 50,000 people through the streets.
When she returned to Atlanta, she was captured for the world in the single-image of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Moneta J. Sleet.
Where at the beginning of their journey as a couple, she held her oldest child, Yolanda, while their home was bombed, now she was quietly holding their youngest, Bernice. The black veil hardly masks her grief.
"She was a mixture of regal bearing and grace and an uncompromising freedom fighter," said the Rev. Sharpton, adding that people often had a hard time reconsiling her two sides. "They saw her in her regality and aura and didn't realize that in her heart was a woman who believed what her husband fought for. She didn't walk behind her husband, she walked beside him."
After her husband's death, she devoted her energy to fulfilling his work.
She became an international figure of peace, justice and tolerance, meeting with religious figures such as Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu. She was invited by President Bill Clinton to witness the historic handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat at the signing of the Middle East Peace Accords. She stood with Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg when he became South Africa's first democratically elected president.
In 1974, as co-chair of the Full Employment Action Council, she formed a broad coalition of more than 100 religious, labor, business, civil and women's rights organizations dedicated to a national policy of full employment and equal economic opportunity. In 1983, she brought together more than 800 human rights organizations to form the umbrella group, Coalition of Conscience; in 1985 Coretta King and three of her children were arrested at the South African embassy in Washington for protesting against apartheid; in 1987, she helped lead a national Mobilization Against Fear and Intimidation in Forsyth County; in 1988 she served as head of the U.S. delegation of Women for a Meaningful Summit in Athens, Greece; and in 1990, she was co-convener of the Soviet-American Women's Summit in Washington.
Only months after her husband's death, she created the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change as a living memorial to his life and dream.
In 1981, after more than a decade of fund-raising and temporary housing, the center, with her husband's crypt as its centerpiece, opened to the public. It is within the 23-acre national historic site that includes Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthplace and Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he and his father were pastors.
As founding president, chair and CEO of the King Center, Coretta King worked to provide local, national and international programs in an attempt to train thousands of people in her husband's philosophy and methods.
The King Center remained her standing legacy. Although she turned over the day-to-day leadership of the center to her son Dexter Scott King in 1995, she remained on the center's board of trustees. Martin King III became president of the King Center in January 2004.Added the Rev. Sharpton: " Let's be clear, it was Coretta King who kept [Rev. King's] legacy pure and in front of this nation. It was her who kept this vision alive and I think America owes a tremendous debt to her that has not been fully paid."
THE HOLIDAY
Perhaps Coretta King's greatest legacy will be her successful campaign to establish the third Monday in January as a holiday honoring her husband, the country's only national holiday recognizing an American citizen.
"When Martin was assassinated, I called her to get her approval to get the Martin Luther King Holiday bill, because I didn't want to do it without her knowledge and support and she agreed," U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) said in an interview last August. Four days after Dr. King's death, he submitted the first legislation to commemorate the Rev. King's birthday. "She was very instrumental in getting the holiday approved. Only she could do that."
President Ronald Reagan opposed the King holiday on fiscal grounds, arguing that giving federal workers a 10th annual holiday would cost the government about $225 million in lost wages alone. But he signed it into law Nov. 2, 1983.
"All right-thinking people, all right-thinking Americans are joined in spirit with us this day as the highest recognition this nation gives is bestowed on Martin Luther King Jr.,'' Coretta King said in remarks delivered after Mr. Reagan handed her the pen he used to sign the legislation. ''He symbolized what was right about America, what was noblest, and what was best. His non-violent campaign brought about redemption, reconciliation and justice.''
The first national observance of the holiday took place in 1986 and his birthday is now marked by annual celebrations in more than 100 countries. At the first official celebration of the holiday on Jan. 20, 1986 at Ebenezer, then-Vice President George Bush stood in for President Reagan. Rosa Parks, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D- Mass.) also attended.
"I don't think people give her enough credit for doing something very few people have done," Clayborne Carson, director of the King Papers Project at Stanford University, said in August. "If she hadn't been as dedicated and energetic as she was, the King Center wouldn't exist and the King holiday wouldn't exist."
In 2005, Coretta King's legendary drive and stamina started to wane. A heart condition slowed her down and led to at least three strokes. The last one, which struck her on Aug. 16, severly weakened the right side of her body and left her unable to speak. Among her first words during recovery was "I love you," whenever she saw any of her children.
Even before she recovered her speech, she could do one of the things she truly loved - sing.
Even in good health, Mrs. King could have stayed out of the leadership roles, but that was not her choice, said activist Dick Gregory.
"She could have said 'I paid my dues.' She could have said, 'I lost my husband, my children lost a father.' But she didn't and that is why she has been so blessed," Mr. Gregory said in an interview following Mrs. King's stroke in August.
"I believe that there is a plan and a purpose for each person's life and that there are forces working in the universe to bring about good and to create a community of love and brotherhood," Mrs. King wrote in her 1969 autobiography, "My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr." "Those who can attune themselves to these forces — to God's purpose — can become special instruments of His will."
But even as the world heralded her husband's achievements with a Nobel Prize in 1964, Mrs. King had different thoughts.
"Of course, I was pleased, but at the same time I was pondering. Why? Why was Martin's contribution considered of international importance," she wrote. "What was the deeper meaning of all this — some meaning that we were not yet able to understand? For this was not just a prize for civil rights, but for contributing to world peace. Though we were very happy, both Martin and I realized the tremendous responsibility that this placed on him.
"This was, of course the greatest recognition that had come to him, but we both knew that to accomplish what the prize really implied, we still had a long way to go. It was a great tribute, but an even more awesome burden. I felt pride and joy, and pain too, when I thought of the added responsibilities my husband must bear; and it was my burden too."
When the Kings returned to Atlanta, city leaders held a banquet in Martin Luther King Jr.'s honor at the Dinkler Plaza Hotel. It would be one of the first times that blacks and whites of all classes in Atlanta openly mingled and ate together at such a major event. At the end of the evening, the group of 1,500 held hands and sang "We Shall Overcome."
"It was tremendously moving—the spirit of it," Coretta King wrote. "We had overcome a major barrier for a southern city. We felt, for that night at least, it was really 'black and white together' in Atlanta."
Coretta King received honorary doctorates from more than 60 colleges and universities; wrote three books and a nationally syndicated column; and has served on and helped found dozens of organizations, including the Black Leadership Forum, the National Black Coalition for Voter Participation and the Black Leadership Roundtable.
The Coretta Scott King Award is presented annually by the American Library Association to a black author and a black illustrator for their outstanding inspirational and educational contributions published during the previous year.
"She was a real activist. She had one of the most keen, aggressive social political minds that I have ever talked to. She was really committed to world peace, really committed to racial equality, really committed to civil disobedience and non-violence. She was not just the woman she went home to. She was the one who shaped his ideas and activism and she single-handedly maintained his legacy," said the Rev. Sharpton.
Survivors include two daughters, Yolanda Denise King of Los Angeles and the Rev. Bernice Albertine King of Atlanta, and two sons, Martin Luther King III of Atlanta and Dexter Scott King of Malibu, Calif. She is also survived by a sister, Edythe Bagley of Cheney, Pa., and a brother, Obie Scott of Tuscaloosa, Ala.
From what I have seen, this memorial has turned into another political convention.
I don't know how our president had the courage to sit through this crappola!
God Bless President Bush.
I was only able to catch the early part of the funeral, but I was already fearing that it would turn into yet another Democrat funeral/Bush bash/polical rally. I hope it does not, but it probably will--despite of, or perhaps especially because of, the presence of President Bush in the audience.
"You cannot legislate it away. But I cannot stand people invoking the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife while giving the impression that so little has changed since the abolition of slavery or the civil rights movement"
MLK wasn't just about black people voting and ending segregation. He was shot organizing a union. A union to improve the lives of poor people. His fight continues.
Funny how this parallels the Paul Wellstone Memorial some years back. Our President has the grace and courage to sit and take it because he has the characteristics that his opponents so sorely lack - compassion, courage, and ethics. Whether the political goons on the left know it or not, they continue to come across as bitter, hateful and increasingly irrelevant... that's why they keep turning up the volume. It's all they have left...
Funny how this parallels the Paul Wellstone Memorial some years back. Our President has the grace and courage to sit and take it because he has the characteristics that his opponents so sorely lack - compassion, courage, and ethics. Whether the political goons on the left know it or not, they continue to come across as bitter, hateful and increasingly irrelevant... that's why they keep turning up the volume. It's all they have left...
*Sigh*
Honestly these people...
Wow! You bring up a good point about reverse discrimination. Does no one realize that it's not the color of skin but the size of one's bank account that keeps us apart today.
As far as the Wellstone Memorial - take a look at it again, out of all the speeches that night, only one person made an anti-republican remark. However the right wing dominated media would never want that to come out.
Once again, I saw the Democrats getting in their
swipes, at this honorable funeral. They all did
their best at talking about themselves most of the
time, which is usual for them, no matter what occasion. Carter mostly gets under ones skin, he
with that everlasting 'smirk on his face'...Then,
we had Kennedy, getting great applause, as if he
were the "Freedom for the blacks-gatekeeper"..he,
blathers on and on and on, and never met a camera
he didn't like either. Of course, the Clinton's
went into their "joint sharing of the cameras"...
The Black Rev.? Joe Somebody, who talked about
WMD's, though he put it into a humorous vane, was
equally disrespectful of President Bush, who had
to show them ALL, what class is about. I think it
was the pitiful Carter, who spoke of FBI wiretaps
that proves, this is one bitter, camera-seeking,
moron, who was one of the first President's who
gave the impression, that we couldn't fight our way out of a paper bag...when they held Americans
hostage, and President Carter, right along with them. He is and was, a poor excuse for a leader,
and like Clinton, he is "looking to rewrite history and ressurect their poor President's image. Shameful....using this funeral, to 'score
points'....but then again, Donks have no shame.
Wellstone cost Mineesota a Senator, not matter what "danimal" says. That was as much over the top as you can get
Until today. Ex-Democrat President's have no class. Ever notice a ex-Republican trying to step in on a current Democrat President? Jimmy Carter is a national disgrace, we are only in this position with Iran because of his lack of balls and common sense - which is a trait of being a Liberal
I don't like to be crude but in this case there is no alternative. Carter is the most moronic ass I've ever heard or seen in my nearly 70 years on this earth. Leftists like him and his ilk with their phony air of righteousness are without a doubt the most undignified, vile and unmannered fools currently roaming among us.
We should be reminded of the lawless surveillance and blackmail of the King family. Its part of this legacy.
danimal - you're absolutely right! Not EVERYONE waxed political during the Wellstone event, just as not EVERYONE at Mrs. King's funeral waxed political. In both instances, however, those that chose to cross the boundary of appropriateness did so with no compulsion, with naked abandon, and with malice in their hearts. As the left hovers on the abyss of irrelevance, they take whatever occasion presents itself to bash our President as they shout their grievances to their audience. As sad and inappropriate as it is, in doing so, they show the true nature of their politics. Just as the Dems behaved so badly in the State of The Union Address, some of them have made the decision that this type of behavior will be the norm, instead of the exception.
Do their accusations or causes have any merit? Perhaps. My only concern, and what brings digust to me, is that a funeral is not the place to air or state those grievances and/or causes. It makes about as appropriate as putting on makeup while you're sitting in church, listening to a sermon.
On the other hand, given the behavior of the Left-leaning Democrats over the past five years, why should this divisive and recriminating speech come as any surprise to anyone? I guess I should consider them to be well-behaved in that they didn't invite Cindy Sheehan to come and speak her mind as well!!
On the other hand, the eulogy delivered by Rev. Bernice King, was stunning and well delivered. Although some political issues were touched upon, they were tastefully and forcefully couched in the context of religion and morality. Whenever she did reference national policy, militarism, etc., she didn’t attack our leaders or our institutions. Instead, she phrased her concerns in such as way as to point toward healing and service to others.
“…We’ve got to cease from our divisions. We’ve got to cease from our politicking. We’ve got to cease from the exploitation and the insecurities, because God is not looking for another MLK or Coretta Scott King. The old has passed away. There is a new order that is emerging. And in this new birth, God is going to raise up a remnant of people who are determined to position themselves that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdom of the Lord, our Savior.…” Rev. Bernice is one classy lady.
Goodbye Coretta. Rest in Peace.
The democRATS once again prove they are the party of
TREASON
SODOMY
INFANTICIDE
and nothing more.
Lowery was despicable, Carter was beneath contempt. Although, I did like the comment about the Kings being wiretapped. What he didn't say was that it was on the order of Bobby Kennedy.
Really, should anyone be surpised? The problem that Repubicans/conservatives have is that they still believe that funerals are supposed to be solemn ceremonies where the person in the casket is eulogized. Democrats understand that this is the ideal opportunity to throw red meat to the home crowd. This is the way it will be from now on. Sad to say...
danimal....right wing dominated MEDIA!!!!!!!!!!!!Are you certifibly insane?
Vero
Jimmy Carter is a true man of character, a humanitarian, who follows the real Christian teachings. President Carter is admired around the World. Unfortunately, for the American people, your President Bush is considered a joke; albeit, a dangerous joke. He may claim to be a man of God, but he sure doesn't act like it.
Bush's obsession with Iraq has made the World far less safe place. He was determined to invade Iraq even though there were no Iraqi terrorists
involved on 911.
America was a better place when Jimmy Carter was President. War is not always the answer, especially one based on lies, lies, and more lies.
President GW Bush has class! Taking the high road is impossible for the democrats. "IF any of them had a brain they would regret their words".
dbogdan I like the way you said it:
Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter is making a political speech at the funeral, rather than a eulogy. Jimmy Carter is a disgrace to this country.
Yeah, I know I cringe every time this former President teaches Sunday School at his Georgia church. What a horrible man! And you say the *Left* is overcome with hatred. Geez..
Can't the dems, at least make believe, that they have class. Just for 5 minutes. The funeral was supposed to be about Mrs. King. It was not about the dems, even though they think everything is about them. I was embarrassed by what I saw. Jimmy carter, the worst president in history, is a joke. God bless you President Bush for showing them know what it means to have class to have character.
I see where Carter mentioned the wire tap issue...and Ted Kennedy was there as well...Yet no one mentioned that JFK (Teddy's brother) was the one who actually ordered the wiretaps on MLK. Funny how that escapes their little tirade
Once again our Dear President is given an opportunity to shine as a beacon in the night! And so he did, and so will be his legacy. God bless George W.Bush!
Wow! You bring up a good point about reverse discrimination. Does no one realize that it's not the color of skin but the size of one's bank account that keeps us apart today.
As far as the Wellstone Memorial - take a look at it again, out of all the speeches that night, only one person made an anti-republican remark. However the right wing dominated media would never want that to come out.
Posted by: danimal at February 7, 2006 04:13 PM
Two things danimal, #1 the color of your skin is not your choice, but in this country-today, how much is in your pocket book is your choice! Not a good comparison, at all!
However the right wing dominated media would never want that to come out.
#2. Bwahahahaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaa! The right wing dominated media! Your killin me man, I'm literaly rolling!............ Thanks for the laugh, it's been a long day trying to fill up the pocket book, I needed that!!!
I agree that a funeral is not the place for politics.
Two things danimal, #1 the color of your skin is not your choice, but in this country-today, how much is in your pocket book is your choice! Not a good comparison, at all!
Bearman - I don't think the money in your pocket is always your choice. Poverty is a cycle. Say what you will, but once you're in it, it's very hard to get out.
As far as the right wing media - lets remember the 1990's, when a stained dress trumped the taliban and Al Qaeda in the news. How many FBI man hours were wasted listening to Lewinski while terrorists were learning how to crash planes into buildings????
BTW - bearmanUSMC, thanks for your service to our country.
I agree that a funeral is not the place for politics.
Two things danimal, #1 the color of your skin is not your choice, but in this country-today, how much is in your pocket book is your choice! Not a good comparison, at all!
Bearman - I don't think the money in your pocket is always your choice. Poverty is a cycle. Say what you will, but once you're in it, it's very hard to get out.
As far as the right wing media - lets remember the 1990's, when a stained dress trumped the taliban and Al Qaeda in the news. How many FBI man hours were wasted listening to Lewinski while terrorists were learning how to crash planes into buildings????
How many news stations sat silent while the Supreme Courtremoved the power of the vote from teh people and handed the presidency to Georgie?
BTW - bearmanUSMC, thanks for your service to our country.
Anyone see in the evil mainstream media the standing ovation after the Reverand's statement that there were no weapons of mass destruction, but there is a weapon of misdirection?
I sure didn't, damned liberal media.
I don't even know how you respond to the behavior of the liberals at this woman's funeral.I never thought they would stoop so low.Now,I know there is no low they can't reach.
You know,I don't know George Bush personally but I wish I did.I think he is a great man.And despite what Mrs. Clinton thinks,history WILL see him that way.
You know at Mrs. Kings funeral the black preacher was going on and on about poor people and how the money being spent on the war in Iraq could be used to help the poor.How millions are uninsured....blah,blah,blah...And I thought when are us hard working white folks going to finally stand up to poor folks and say ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!
The only difference between the haves and the have nots is the ability of the haves to get up and go to work everyday,to plan pregnancies,to stay off drugs,to stay off the streets.
Why should the burden of poor decision making and poor life choices always fall on the backs of the rich people.For instance....Say your a young black female who got pregnant at say 16.She already made her first poor decision by having unprotected sex.But we'll forgive her first mistake,we all make mistakes when were young.So now she has baby one.She probably decided to drop out of school, since you don't get paid for going to school how will you pay a sitter.So now she has to get welfare so she will be able to take the baby to a doctor and provide some food.Well it's the middle of the month now,the check is gone the stamps are gone and she still has two more weeks until the first of the month.She sees that the baby is hungry and goes to the free store or a soup kitchen or something.It's a rough life,but apparently it's not rough enough because she meets another loser and gets pregnant again,the daddy is a loser just like baby one's daddy but that's ok she don't need daddy she just needs big brother.Life is even rougher for her and the kids now,but not rough enough she get's pregnant again and again and again.Now here is the million dollar question.If the mother of these kids doesn't care enough about them to change her behavior for the sake of her kids then why should the rich white people.They are not our kids.I mean at what point do we say you take responsiblity for your own actions in life.You know why there were so many blacks left in New Orleans because the white people knew better than to wait for big brother to come and save their babies.....That's what parent's are supposed to do.I would have grabbed my babies and started walking out of New Orleans.Can't they see,the liberals want them to always be down and out so they can blame Republicans.Don't they get it after all these years?...The liberal policies are not working for you guys.Jump over to the sky is the limit party and finally start taking control of your own minds and start being responsible for your own way in life.
You know my employer offers health insurance.Of course you have to pay for it but it's not that expensive and it's a really good plan.Half of us employees pay for it and the other half will not.Some people don't want to pay one dime of their own healthcare.It's ridiculous.There should be a law,if your employer provides it you should have to pay for it.Up to a certain percentage of your weekly pay.Somethings gotta give.I mean the health care crisis we are having is that people want to go to the doctor for runny noses and hangnails and they don't want to pay one red cent.Come on people have some pride and pay your own way in life.
Aravosis over at the Daily Kos nailed it:
"A party that doesn't have a single African-American member of Congress has no right lecturing black people about knowing their place."
Amen. So STFU
"A party that doesn't have a single African-American member of Congress has no right lecturing black people about knowing their place."
Damn straight.
Which reminds me, how many soldier's funerals has Bush attended recently? I guess the liberal media is failing to live up to its name.
And another thing. Earlier today, Americablog discovered the story of an injured American soldier in iraq who was forced to pay for his own lost body armor. Within 3 hours the members of the site had raised $5000 to pay for this soldier's $700 body armor and are giving all the money to him.
No publicity, they just did it. That is the definition of good.
"Aravosis over at the Daily Kos nailed it:"
Would this be the same KOS who told American's that was burnt, drugged through the streets and hung on bridges in Iraq "screw em" ?
psst we have Condi, Powell, Martinez in more important postitions than lowly house reps who depend on blacks being held down instead of being lifted up to get re-eelcted wow ! you must be so proud
Which African-American has the Dems EVER put in as either a Sec of State, even once, much less twice. I sort of couldn't find that in google.
Seeing the Forest linked with Swiftboating King's Funeral - Here It Comes!
It's too bad Seeing the Forest doesn't know the meaning of the term "Swiftboating." If they did, they wouldn't use it.
To "Swiftboat" actually means to reveal a hidden truth that a person wishes and hopes to remain hidden.
Timeline of Black Republican History
1862 President Abraham Lincoln is the first president to meet with a group of black leaders
1864 The Republican National Convention makes the abolition of slavery a plank in its platform
1868 Oscar J. Dunn becomes Lieutenant Governor in Louisiana
P.B.S Pinchback and James J. Harris become the first African-American delegates to the Republican National Convention, held in Chicago
1870 Hiram R. Revels is elected to fill U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Jefferson Davis
Joseph H. Rainey, South Carolina, becomes the first African-American Congressman
Alonzo J. Ransier is elected Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina before being elected to the U.S. Congress in '72
1871 Robert B. Elliot chairs South Carolina delegation to the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia
1872 John R. Lynch is elected Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives; he will be elected to US Congress in 73
1875 Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi becomes the first African-American elected to a full term in US Senate
1884 John R. Lynch is the first African-American to preside over the Republican National Convention; gives the keynote address
1901 President Theordore Roosevelt invites Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House
1920 The Republican National Convention declares that African-Americans must be admitted to all state and district conventions
1954 President Dwight Eisenhower appoints J. Ernest Wilkins as Assistant Secretary of Labor
1960 Jackie Robinson, the first black Major League Baseball player, endorses Nixon for President
1966 Edward W. Brooke (R-MA) is the first African-American elected to U.S. Senate by popular vote
1968 Arthur A Fletcher is appointed Assistant Secretary of Labor; he will be a candidate for Chairman of the Republican National Committee in '76 and appointed Chairman of the US Commission on Civil Rights in '90
1975 President Gerald Ford appoints William T. Coleman Secretary of Transportation
James B. Parsons is named Chief Judge of the US District Court in Chicago, the first African-American to hold such a position
1980 NAACP President Benjamin Hooks is invited to address the Republican National Convention
1981 President Ronald Reagan appoints Clarence Pendleton, Jr, as Chairman of the US Civil Rights Commission
1982 President Reagan appoints Clarence Thomas as Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
1989 President George H.W. Bush appoints Louis Sullivan as Secretary of Health and Human Services
President Bush appoints General Colin L. Powell as Chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff
President Bush appoints Condolezza Rice as Director of the National Security Council
1990 Gary Franks is elected to US Congress (CT)
1991 President Bush appoints Clarence Thomas to U.S. Supreme Court
1998 U.S. House of Representatives elects J.C. Watts (R-OK) to be Chairman of the House Republican Conference
2001 President George W. Bush appoints General Colin L. Powell as the Secretary of State; Roderick R. Paige as the Secretary of Education; Condoleezza Rice as Advisor of the National Security Council; Alphonso Jackson as the Deputy Secretary to Housing and Urban Development; Claude Alien as the Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services; Leo S. Mackay, Jr, as the Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs; Larry D. Thompson as the Deputy Attorney General; and Stephen A. Perry as Adminstrator of General Services Adminstration
Amen. So STFU
Posted by: DeeCee48 at February 7, 2006 08:20 PM
ummmmmm......... NO, & bite me hippy! I wouldn't expect anything less from a room full of civil rights activists of whom think that Bush bombed the levees! And Daily KOS, you've got to be kiddin me. They haven't gotten anything right since..... they started their website!
Hey, AC/DeeCee0.48IQ, was anyone in this blog, with the exception of you, quoting morons at KOS, lecturing black people about "knowing their place?" Didn't think so, son, so why don't you STFU?
Which reminds me, how many soldier's funerals has Bush attended recently? I guess the liberal media is failing to live up to its name.
Which reminds me, how old is the soldier's funeral rhetoric? Goin' on three years. So, Efp, did you cut-and-paste this from your collection of oldies? Or was three years ago prior to your being able to read, so you think this silliness is original? Which is it, moron?
Carter was the first ex-president to start slamming sitting presidents. He and Slickie Blue-Dress Willie are the only two so far. Don't expect Bush to do the same; he's above such behaviour.
Also, Carter was the first president to score a triple-double: double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates, and double-digit unemployment. All Clinton ever did was double-dribble...
To "Swiftboat" actually means to reveal a hidden truth that a person wishes and hopes to remain hidden.
...things like selling missiles to Iran.
"Carter was the first ex-president to start slamming sitting presidents."
Not even close. John Quincy Adams slammed James K. Polk for starting an illegal was with Mexico. Plus ca change...
Hey Shortz on Brains...You should know a bit more
about history...It was ROBERT KENNEDY that issued
the wiretaps on MLK. Too bad, Kennedy didn't see fit to mention that today and apologize while he was up there bloviating, as usual. It is proven,
by the way of history, that President Bush, has had more black people in power positions in the administration than anyone prior. Including the
Black President Clinton-who has those people so
conned, it isn't even funny....and Hellery.
keefer:
I'm not your son. If I was I'd probably kill myself. I was adressing the racist tone of the post.
Can you do anything but call people names like a girly man?
bearman,
The comment from Daily Kos was an opinion.Whereas your statement that "a room full of civil rights activists of whom think that Bush bombed the levees!" seems to be a representation of fact. Which of course you cannot prove. So I'd be afraid of calling the pot,er, black, kettle.
I got to watch Jimmy Carter spew his hatred after seeing images of that Iranian maniac president seated at some goverment function in Tehran. Thanks, Jimmy, for all you've done...to put westersn civilization on the brink.
what a moron. Please, for the love of God, Jimmy, stick to building homes for the less fortunate. At least all you can do there is smash a thumb with a hammer.
Bob,
I hope you wasted a lot of time compiling your list, since"
a) 2001 is five years ago.
b) The Republican Party has been hijacked by neocons and bears little relationship to the Republican Party of the past. Abraham Lincoln must be rolling over in his grave.
c) My original point stands. There are no Republican black congresmen.
Finally, anyone want to take a crack at why the Main Stream Media that is so liberal didn't show Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery's statement and the prolonged standing ovation he received? Why we didn't see any close ups of Bush 43 squirming?
"Our country and our leaders have forgotten Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that one day his children would "live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.""
Unfortunately, many have forgotten (or have not taken the time to learn) that this ALONE was not MLK's dream. It's a small excerpt of the speech that doesn't accurately portray the entire message. It doesn't honor Coretta Scott King's memory (or MLK's) to micharacterize such an important message.
From that march on Washington speech (the "I have a dream speech"), MLK didn't just say that he wished that all men would not be judged by the color of their skin - he spoke against discrimination and unequal opportunity:
"One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we've come to our nation's capitoal to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promis that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned... But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation."
Towards the end of the speech, (in the "I have a dream portion") he also says:
"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of the creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"
and toward the end...
"I have a dream that one day "every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low; the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."
Four years later, in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech, MLK spoke about both non-violence (in terms of his opposition to the Vietnam war) and it's affect on social programs (especially on young black men who were being drafted for the war). He spoke about multiple reasons he was against the war, but tied the spending to the war to reductions in social programs that were targeted to help the poor (regardless of race, he noted that the poor were disproportionally affected by the war: "It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We are taking the black young men who had been cripped by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia or East Harlem... I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.").
MLK gave another reason for protesting the Vietnam war - he would argue for non-violence when campaigning for civil rights / social change... "But they asked, and rightly so, "What about Vietnam?" They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted...For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."
When Lowery and MLK formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, their motto was: "To save the soul of America".
MLK said that he felt that to ignore the war was to risk the soul of America.
MLK said that "I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and propety rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies... A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth...The Western arrogarnce of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just...A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just.""
MLK spoke about a call to a fellowship of man, our loving one's neighbor (and this was in the time of the Vietnam war): "This call for worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all makind...This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love on another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love...If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that his spirit will become the order of the day."
Issues about discrimination, opportunities for the poor or people of color, war and non-violent approaches to social change, etc. - these are the legacies of MLK AND Coretta Scott King. To mischaracterize them is unfortunate.
I want to thank all my GOP friends, I have finally understood what you have been trying to tell me, and Gosh, I feel like a damn fool for believing the hate that KOS has been preaching. It is great to finally grow up
Jim Meeker,
Maybe the "courageous and classy" Mr. Bush wouldn't be raked over the coals in situations like this if he had the courage to face his detractors in open forums that weren't crowd-screened and scripted .
) The Republican Party has been hijacked by neocons and bears little relationship to the Republican Party of the past.
Fatal Mistake by dc48, you are preaching the wrong message dc, most true conservatives(republicans) and as you libs put it neocons are quite upset at the departure of this administration from true conservatism, fortunately it seems the administration is coming back around and spending a little more time on OUR agenda! When you say the republican party has been highjacked by neocons, it sounds like what your really saying is the democratic party has been highjacked by leftwing loony's like yourself, which bears alot of truth!
Abraham Lincoln must be rolling over in his grave.
c) My original point stands. There are no Republican black congressmen.
That seems a bit rascist dc48, are you sure you belong to the right party? Oh wait, that's right you are a democrat.
Posted by: DeeCee48 at February 8, 2006 12:23 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, anyone want to take a crack at why the Main Stream Media that is so liberal didn't show Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery's statement and the prolonged standing ovation he received?
Probably cause they are smart enough to realize that he was preaching to the choir, and that Bush even showing up was out of class, not politics! Now answer me this!
Why we didn't see any close ups of Bush 43 squirming?
Now answer me this! Why would the big, bad G.B. with nothin to lose and nothin to gain show up at this funeral to squirm?
Posted by: DeeCee48 at February 8, 2006 12:30 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Come on DC48 you can do better than this, can't you?
Dick Morris
"Far away from the speeches of Jesse Jackson, the demands of Al Sharpton and the ranting of Louis Farrakhan, a quiet revolution is taking place in the role African-Americans play in politics," New York Post columnist Dick Morris writes.
"In the very heartland of the nation -- in Pennsylvania and Ohio -- the Republican Party is getting set to nominate black candidates for governor in the coming elections. In a nation that has not a single African-American governor -- not one -- from either party, this is its own little revolution," Mr. Morris said.
"These are not throwaway candidates in states where the GOP has no chance of victory. These are real candidates, chosen when there were plenty of white alternatives, that are en route to their party's nomination, with real chances to win.
"In Pennsylvania, former football great Lynn Swann stands poised to be designated as the Republican candidate at next week's State Convention. The former wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers, now enshrined in the Hall of Fame, is seeking fame of another sort, trying to be the state's first black governor.
"In Ohio, a key swing state, Ken Blackwell, the Republican secretary of state, is running for the gubernatorial nomination in a state Republicans can win. In Maryland, Lt. Gov. Michael Steele is seeking the open Senate seat.
"Add these men to the possibility that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice might heed Laura Bush's advice and run for president, and a revolution may be in the making."
read the whole thing
I am on the Ken Blackwell bandwagon here in Ohio. Ken will be the new governor of Ohio.You cannot get more conservative than Ken. He was the sole reason the one woman/one man rule for marriage was put on the ballot in 2004and passed in rather large numbers.
GOP is the party that African-Americans are starting to take another look at, If the Dems lose just 5% of the 92% that voted for Kerry, then say goodbye to the White House and the Senate forever
Ken Blackwell
Ohio 2006
iraqo,
And just what purpose would "facing his critics" serve?
The President of the United States should allow himself to be questioned by people who think he had a hand in 9/11, let bin Laden go on purpose, lied to get us into Iraq and is doing everything at the behest of Haliburton/Likud?
No, Iraqo, what the classy and courageous President Bush needs to do is keep doing what he is doing - the hate-filled and spiteful critics are as nothing in the long term...
In a nation that has not a single African-American governor -- not one -- from either party, this is its own little revolution," Mr. Morris said.
I didn't realize that. so all that yak from KOS is just that, yak.
Democrats are in trouble and they know it.
As a follow up to Bob's post above about what the Republican's have done for blacks I thought it only reasonable that we repost the historical record of what the democrats have done for blacks, in case you missed it. This was previously supplied by Lug. It is suggested reading for all and recommended to copy and send to your democrat friends to remind them of the historical roots of their party:
An In-depth Look Into The Love Affair Between Blacks & Democrats
In his 100-page brief, Perryman concludes that the past racist policies and practices that were initiated against African Americans by the Democratic Party - were no different than the policies and practices that were initiated by the Nazi Party against the Jews. In both situations millions of lives were destroyed (physically, mentally and economically).
In his brief, Perryman told the court:
*That in an effort to impede and or deny African Americans the same constitutional rights afforded to all American citizens, the Democratic Party established a pattern of practice by promoting, supporting, sponsoring and financing racially bias entertainment, education, legislation, litigations, and terrorist organizations from 1792 to 1962 and continued certain practices up to 2002.
*The Democrat’s 210 years of racist practices and cover ups not only negatively affected the entire Black Race; but these practices infected our entire nation with the most contagious and debilitating social disease known to mankind, racism. With landmark litigation, racist legislation and profane defamation, Democrats spent substantial amounts of money to produce racist campaign literature and to support racist entertainment (i.e. Jim Crow minstrel shows, stage plays “The Klansman,” and movies, “The Birth of a Nation”), all in an effort to prove to the world that African Americans were a racially inferior group that should be treated and classified as “property” and not as “citizens”.
*During the past 21 decades the Democrats successfully disguised and concealed their horrific acts against the African Americans by operating and committing these acts under the following aliases: “the Confederacy,” “Jim Crow,” “Black Codes,” the “Dixiecrats” and the “Ku Klux Klan.” Congressional records, historical documents, and the letters and testimonies from several brave black citizens revealed that these groups weren’t separate independent organizations, but were actual auxiliaries, divisions and/or the legislative efforts of the Democratic Party. The debates on the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 further revealed that these auxiliaries were committed to use every means possible to carry out the Democrat’s racist agenda of “White Supremacy,” including: lynchings, murders, intimidation, mutilations, decapitations and racially bias legislation and adjudication.
.
Perryman said, “To conceal the truth of their racist past (and as part of their effort to deceive the public), the Democratic Party made a conscience decision not to mention or disclose their true and complete history. (See exhibit 1). On their official website they failed to disclose that as a Party:
· Democrats opposed the Abolitionist
· Democrats supported slavery and fought and gave their lives to expand it
· Democrats supported and passed the Fugitive Slave Laws of 1793 & 1854
· Democrats supported and passed the Missouri Compromise to protect slavery
· Democrats supported and passed the Kansas Nebraska Act to expand slavery
· Democrats supported and backed the Dred Scott Decision
· Democrats supported and passed Jim Crow Laws
· Democrats supported and passed Black Codes
· Democrats opposed educating blacks and murdered our teachers
· Democrats opposed the Reconstruction Act of 1867
· Democrats opposed the Freedman’s Bureau as it pertained to blacks
· Democrats opposed the Emancipation Proclamation
· Democrats opposed the 13th , 14th, and 15th Amendments to end slavery, make black citizens and give blacks the right to vote
· Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866
· Democrats opposed the Civil Right Act of 1875 and had it overturned by U.S. Supreme Court
· Various Democrats opposed the 1957 Civil Rights Acts
· Various Democrats argued against the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts
· Various Democrats argued against the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Acts
· Various Democrats voted against the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act
· Democrats supported and backed Judge John Ferguson in the case of Plessy v Ferguson
· Democrats supported the School Board of Topeka Kansas in the case of Brown v The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas.
· Southern Democrats opposed desegregation and integration
· Democrats started and supported several terrorist organizations including the Ku Klux Klan, an organization dedicated to use any means possible to terrorize African Americans and those who supported African Americans.”
Congressional records reveal that there wouldn’t be a question of Reparations today had Democratic President Andrew Johnson signed Senate Bill 60 (in 1866) which would have given each African American family 40 acres and a mule. Instead, Johnson vetoed the Bill and continued to block other key pieces of legislation that were designed to bring about equality for African Americans.
Perryman further argues that:
During the past 200 years, our government operated under a two party system which directed, developed and determined the policies of our country. Whatever the government did or did not accomplish (particularly as it pertained to African Americans), was directly related to which political party was in power at the time.
On April 29, 1861 Democratic President Jefferson Davis told his Democratic Confederate Congress that: “Under the supervision of the superior race, their [blacks’] labor had been so directed not only to allow a gradual and marked amelioration of their own condition, but to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and population under the social system of the South... [which made the South one of the 16th wealthiest places in the world]; and the productions in the South of cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable, had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourth of the exports of the whole United States and had become absolutely necessary to wants of civilized man….”
Seven years later during the 1868 Presidential campaign, the Democratic Party’s campaign poster read: “This is a White Man’s Country - Let the White Men Rule.”
At the turn of the century (1913) Democratic Senator Ben Tillman said, “We reorganized the Democratic Party with one plank, and the only plank, namely, that this is a white man’s country, and white men must govern it.” From 1792 to 2002 (a period of 210 years), the Democratic Party carried out their proud tradition of white man rule by never electing a black man to the United States Senate from their party.
From 1792 to 1962 the Democratic Party was more commonly referred to as the Party of White Supremacy. This was the period when most of the damage was done to African Americans (economically, physically, socially and mentally). It was during this period that the Democrats exhausted every effort to promote slavery, destroyed Reconstruction and introduced Black Codes, Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan.
The chronicles of history reveals that the Institution of Slavery and Jim Crow Laws weren’t promoted, protected and preserved by prominent individuals or by the federal government. They were promoted, protected and preserved by one political party and that party was the Democratic Party. Without their powerful political support, the institution of slavery and segregation would have ended long before 1865 and 1965.
The big question they had during the era of slavery was, whether or not a law or a person's actions violated the Constitution. The goal of the Democrats was to never allow the Constitution to be amended to include blacks as citizens. They wanted the freedom to treat African Americans as property (not as humans), without federal interference (this was their primary reason for fighting for their so-called States Rights). This was also the reason why Democrats were opposed to adding the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution and why they praised and supported the Dred Scott Decision. Republicans rushed to have these Amendments added to the Constitution while the states that were under Democrat control were still separated from the Union. Republicans knew they would have a difficult time getting these Amendments passed if the Democrats from the Southern States came back and joined their congressional (Democrat) counterparts in the North.
During era of slavery and Reconstruction the Democrats were primarily interested in what they could do to Blacks, not what they could do for Blacks. From 1792 to 1962 the Democrats as a party, did not support or pass one law that was designed to give African Americans equality (in 170 years). With the exception of Truman’s efforts to integrate the military, every law that was introduced and passed by Democrats during this period was designed to hurt blacks, none were passed to help blacks. Perryman said, “Had the Democrats attempted to pass these same types of laws in 1864 that they claim credit for in 1964, the laws in 1964 would not have been necessary. Instead, in 1866 they passed Black Codes, in 1875 they passed Jim Crow Laws and in 1894 they passed the Repeal Act to repeal various pieces of previously passed Civil Rights legislation that were designed to give African Americans equality.
Perryman is quick to point out that the Democratic Party of today is not the same party of yesterday. However, like in the case of Michael Skakel (the Kennedy nephew who killed Martha Moxley), the Democrats like Michael Skakel must pay for their past actions. Perryman said, “The Skakels and the Moxleys were best friends and neighbors, but when the Moxleys learned that it was Skakel who murdered their daughter in 1975, they did not excuse his action because of the long term friendship. They made him pay, even though it was 25 years later. The same applies to the current relationship between the Blacks and Democrats. The Democrats should not expect Blacks to ignore the Democrat’s past racist practices, simply because of the current friendship.”
Perryman’s research and 100-page brief include the works of our nation’s top history and law professors including African American Historian, Professor John Hope Franklin, Princeton’s History Professor James McPherson, Professor Hebert Donald of Harvard, Professor Allen Trelease of North Carolina, and Professor Bernard Schwartz of New York University’s School of Law, plus congressional records and documentaries from PBS and the History Channel.
Posted by: Lug at January 27, 2006 07:21 PM
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Makes you proud to be a democrat doesn't it moonbats???
I was totally sickened by the King funeral today. This great woman deserved better than what she got. It was a Bush Bashing event & I hope her children will say something about it. I hope everyone will work ten times as hard to get another Republican elected in 2008...the Dems leaders are no longer the party of the working people. It was disgusting how they treated Pres Bush today and I hope they all go where Mrs. King didn't..if you know what I mean.
Huh, I didn't realize there wasn't a black Governor out there. Then agian, are there any Asian Governors? Native American? Indian?
Why do we care? Seriously, it shouldn't matter yet it is constantly brought up. *Sigh*
The Dems prove once again they will stoop at nothing to try to discredit Bush. I give Bush every credit for appearing at a function that he must have known would have turned partisan.
What an ugly bunch of people the Dems can be. As much as the Dems are reviled on our side, I can not imagine a GOP person ripping a Dem at a funeral function where the Dem appeared in good faith and as a positive gesture. It is fair to do a comparison of this behavior, the Dems show they are the weaker of the two parties with this comparison. Congratulations to the GOP.
Colmes and crew are on their show tonight daring Hannity that they will win the next election, blah blah. The last thing I want is for classless BS like these Dems and their supporters in power in this country any more until they change their ways. When the likes of Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman are common with the Dems once more, I will consider supporting the Dems, and I would vote for Zell tomorrow if he ran for something I could vote for. But with idiots like Dean, Gore, Jimmy Carter, Michael Moore and Kerry, I'll never support these scum ever again. I voted Dem twice in my life in 8 elections, both times winners with Clinton (which I regret now), especially the 96 vote. I am so proud that I did not vote for Jimmy Carter in my first pres election as a 20 year old. I agree this man is an embarrassment to the United States; he only gets a voice in the MSM since he was president before. I will not rue the day he leaves this world, the Iran garbage started under his watch and his incompetence led to much we are still dealing with today with Iran. If he showed firm leadership back then, much of the Islamofascism would have been nipped early. Yes I am holding Carter largely responsible for the war on terror. If Iran was suppressed effectively back then, those that have rotten thinking like the terrorists would have been knocked down before they thought they had any momentum. And back then, Europe was much younger than they are today and would have been more forthright in confronting these scum.
No doubt in my mind Carter was the worst president in my lifetime and perhaps the 20th and 21st centuries so far. And once more he was the one president that got in over my vote, and I am proud of that record.
I would say it is appalling to rip the president at a funeral, but since it is the Dems we are discussing, it is expected of these damn lowlifes. I look forward to their future election defeats and humiliations.
Coretta Scott King: 1927-2006
Atlanta Journal Constitution
By ERNIE SUGGS
Published on: 01/31/06
It would have been easy to label Coretta Scott King just a wife, but it would have missed the mark.
Before she married the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Alabama-born Coretta Scott had established herself as politically and socially conscious young woman. Formally educated in Ohio and Boston, she was an anti-war activist who rallied fellow students against violence and was a delegate to a political convention. She was an accomplished classical singer.
During the civil rights movement, she marched alongside her husband and sang to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization he co-founded.
After her husband's death in 1968, Coretta King emerged as an important activist in her own right. She founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and led the fight to make her husband's birthday a national holiday. Yet she also was known as a loving mother who reared four children alone. She instilled in them a reverence for the ideals their father espoused, as well as an independence to chart their own courses, even if it challenged long-standing ideals of who or what they should be.
She became an international advocate for peace and human rights. She met with presidents and world leaders and was arrested fighting against apartheid. And well into her 70s, she traveled the globe to speak against racial and economic injustice, promote the rights of the powerless and poor, and advocate religious freedom, full employment, health care, educational opportunities, nuclear disarmament and AIDS awareness.
Coretta Scott King, 78, of Atlanta, died late Monday at a holistic hospital in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, about 17 miles south of San Diego, family members said. Willie A. Watkins Funeral Home on Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard is in charge of arrangements, which at this point are incomplete.
"Mrs. King's lasting contributions to freedom and equality have made America a better and more compassionate nation," President Bush said Tuesday in a prepared statement. "Laura and I were fortunate to have known Mrs. King, and we will always treasure the time we spent with her. We send our condolences and prayers to the entire King family."
Mrs. King suffered a debilitating stroke and heart attack in August.
Despite her physical struggles — friends and family members said her last days were painful — she made a surprise appearance last month during the King Center's annual Salute to Greatness awards dinner in downtown Atlanta.
She was wheeled into the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, triggering a standing ovation. She smiled, waved and kissed family members, but she did not speak.
It would be her last public appearance.
For many, Coretta King was the closest thing possible to African-American royalty, from the regal way she carried herself to how others perceived her. Her image froze in the public's consciousness thanks to a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken at her husband's funeral. Beneath her black veil, she seemed dignified and stoic even as she consoled her grief-stricken 5-year-old daughter, Bernice.
But for a public figure, she was an intensely private person. She picked her friends carefully and didn't not venture out in public without being swamped by admirers.
That, said some who didn't know her, made her appear aloof, but friends say Coretta King was warm, kind and considerate, someone who loved to laugh, never said a bad thing about anybody, and spent hours on the phone late into the night, talking with friends and family.
On Tuesday, Lynn Cothren, her special assistant for 23 years, recalled those late-night phone conversations.
"We've had so many, and it's one of the things I've missed since she had the stroke. We had talked a week or so before her stroke," said Mr. Cothren. "When we got on the phone together, it would be late. All the time I worked with her, the best time for us to talk was when the phones weren't ringing."
Mr. Cothren said their last conversation came a few weeks before her stroke. It lasted three-and-a-half or four hours.
"It had been a while since our last three-hour conversation. We talked about everything," Mr. Cothren said. "We talked about the world and this unjust war that we're in. She asked about my partner. We talked about events in her life. In one of the last conversations, she was telling me about what a tremendous time she had at Oprah's party and the beautiful earrings she got. We talked about everything.
Because of her status as a civil rights figure, she would receive dozens of calls from people traveling through Atlanta who wanted to talk with her.
Although she was one of the most recognizable women in the world, she did her own grocery shopping and bought her pantsuits off the rack. After her coif was feathered and flipped during an "Oprah" TV show makeover in May of 2003, she reverted to the traditional curls she had worn for decades.
Winfrey's friendship changed her life in her later years. In 2003, Coretta King moved out of the Vine City home she had shared with her husband and into two 39th-floor condo units at Park Place in Buckhead, bought by Winfrey.
Before her stroke, Coretta King normally began her day at 7 a.m. with prayer, meditation and exercise.
To link Coretta King's life to that of her husband's is inevitable, especially in light of the work she had done to protect, maintain and enhance his legacy. While his 1968 assassination brought an end to their marriage after only 15 years, Coretta King never remarried and spent her last 38 years creating her own legacy.
Immediately after her husband's death, she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, eventually locating it on Atlanta's historic Auburn Avenue in the neighborhood where he grew up.
She also worked for more than 15 years to get her husband's birthday established as a national holiday. Celebrated on the third Monday in January, King Day is the only national holiday honoring an individual American.
YOUNG CORETTA
Coretta Scott was born April 27, 1927, in Marion, Ala., to Bernice McMurry Scott and Obadiah Scott, who farmed his own land and owned a truck, which he used to haul logs and timber for the local sawmill. Bernice Scott was a homemaker. Marion's rural setting exposed Coretta King to the injustices of racism and segregation. Although her family was not poor, she joined hired hands picking cotton in the fields of rural Marion.
"If you made four or five dollars in the course of a season, that was pretty good money in those Depression days. I remember one special year when I made seven dollars picking cotton," Coretta King wrote in her 1969 autobiography, "My Life With Martin Luther King Jr." "I was always very strong, and I made a very good cotton picker. Martin used to tease me about it, years later, saying that was why he had married me. He would say, 'If you hadn't met me, you'd still be down there picking cotton!"
She also knew hardship. While white neighbors rode a bus to a nearby school, she walked five miles to the one-room Crossroads School for blacks.
"When I was very young and growing up, I was protected from the extreme hardships of segregation though I was always aware of being deprived of the rights to which I was entitled," Coretta King wrote.
But she did well in school, excelled in music, and became the valedictorian of Lincoln High School's class of 1945. She accepted a scholarship to the Quaker-influenced Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and quickly took an interest in the civil rights movement.
She joined both the Antioch chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the college's Race Relations and Civil Liberties committees. In 1948, she was a delegate to the founding convention of the Young Progressives organization.
"From the first, I had been determined to get ahead, not just for myself, but to do something for my people and for all people," Coretta King wrote in her 1969 autobiography, "My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr."
"She was very politicized early on in her life," said Digby Diehl, a California writer who was collaborating with Coretta King on her unpublished memoirs. "She was far more politically aware than her husband was at that time when they met. I think he became very sophisticated and very aware."
After graduating from Antioch in 1951 with a degree in music, she accepted a scholarship to continue her musical training at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.
MEETING THE KING
In Boston, she met Martin Luther King Jr., a young Boston University theology student studying for his doctorate.
Martin King asked a mutual friend for her phone number. When he called her, he identified himself as, "M.L. King Jr."
Upon meeting for lunch the next day, Coretta King wrote, "My first thought was, 'How short he seems,' and the second was, 'How unimpressive he looks.' "
Things quickly changed over lunch.
"I still remember everything I was wearing that day... Martin looked at me very carefully. At the time, I was wearing bangs that had a natural wave, and my hair was long. He liked that and said so," she wrote. "In those few minutes I had forgotten about Martin being short and had completely revised my first impression. He radiated charm. When he talked, he grew in stature. ... I knew immediately that he was special."
They were married on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parent's house in a ceremony conducted by his father.
After Coretta King received a degree in voice and violin at the New England Conservatory, the young couple moved to Montgomery in September 1954 when Martin Luther King Jr. was named pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
Having traveled the country and studied in Boston, Coretta King was noteager to return South, especially to Alabama.
"Having come from a town in Alabama only about 80 miles from Montgomery, I knew the situation there only too well," she wrote. "I knew, from my own life, that in this city, living in its memories of its glory as the first capital of the Confederacy, the stifling hood of segregation at its worst soon would drop over us. I also felt that Montgomery would offer me little opportunity or challenge in pursuing my musical interests."
Within 15 months of their arrival, the couple—now with an infant daughter, Yolanda— found themselves thrust into events that led to the modern civil rights movement.
On Dec. 1, 1955, seamstress Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a city bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott. At 26, the movement chose Martin Luther King Jr. as its leader.
Coretta King has said it was an exciting time for the young couple because they were leading a life of purpose.
On the evening of Jan. 30, 1956, while Martin Luther King Jr. was speaking at Ralph David Abernathy's First Baptist Church, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the family home in Montgomery.
In her autobiography, Coretta King wrote that she was sitting in her house with a friend and daughter Yolanda when they heard a loud thump on the porch. She had been anticipating an attack and tried to run to the back of the house.
"We moved fast—not through the hall, which would have taken us near the sound, but straight back through the guest bedroom," she wrote. "We were in the middle of it when there was a thunderous blast. Then smoke and the sound of breaking glass."
She, the friend and baby Yolanda narrowly escaped injury.
"I think Coretta Scott King is the quintessential woman that has been far underrated in terms of her contributions," the Rev. Al Sharpton said Tuesday. "People talk about Dr. King, but it was Dr. King and Coretta King. When they bombed the house it was Coretta's house. She was home. He wasn't even there."
CIVIL RIGHTS
Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership in Montgomery catapulted him to national prominence and made him the de-facto leader of black America throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Often Coretta King, in her cat glasses, was right by his side at marches and rallies, including the March on Washington and the Selma-to-Montgomery march.
In 1957, she and her husband traveled to Ghana to mark that country's independence. In 1958, they traveled to Mexico and witnessed the wide gulf — similar to that in America — between extreme wealth and desperate poverty. In 1959, the couple spent a month in India on a pilgrimage of sites associated with Mahatma Gandhi.
In 1964, she was by her husband's side in Oslo, Norway, when he received the Nobel Peace Prize. She said they were both surprised that he got the award. He donated all of the money from the prize to civil rights groups.
"One of the things that amazed me about Mrs. King as we worked ... was what a great influence she was on her husband and how much of a participant she was in every aspect of his work while he was alive and how remarkably she picked up the mantle when he was assassinated," said Mr. Diehl, the writer. "She's always extremely deferential to him and has always given him complete credit for all the things he did, and I'm sure she would not want any suggestion that she was the power behind the throne, but she was a very strong participant behind the scenes. That's been a lifetime habit of hers, the things she did behind the scenes."
But in the 1960s, as her husband grew in stature, so did Coretta King.
She conceived and performed a series of critically acclaimed Freedom Concerts, combining poetry, narration and music to tell the story of the civil rights movement and raise funds for the SCLC.
Mrs. King's contemporary, Dorothy Height, who was chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women, said it was at one Mrs. King's Freedom Concerts — at Town Hall in New York City — that she first met her and heard her sing.
"It was the first time I got the chance to know her. She did a beautiful concert and I think all of us were very proud to be a part of it. And it was right in the middle of our civil rights activities," Mrs. Height said.
Coretta King served as a Women's Strike for Peace delegate to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1962, and spoke out against the Vietnam War before her husband did.
Mrs. King has said that her anti-war views were rooted in her religious beliefs and that she became an activist in college.
"It is my faith that first made me a good candidate for pacifism," she once said. "There were a number of young men who became conscientious objectors. We organized ourselves as students in support of them."
Later, it was Martin King's stance on the Vietnam War that started some shifting of political opinion against him, as critics and some supporters argued that he should remain focused solely on civil rights.
She was a liaison to international peace and justice organizations even before her husband took a public stand against the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. In June 1965, she addressed an anti-war rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
On her husband's last birthday, Jan. 15, 1968, while he was in Atlanta planning the Poor People's Campaign, she was at an anti-war rally in Washington.
But much of her time was spent as a mother. While her husband traveled the country, she often remained home with their children — Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott and Bernice Albertine.
LIFE AFTER DEATH
On April 4, 1968, having just returned from taking daughter Yolanda Easter shopping, Coretta King was informed that her husband had been shot in Memphis while helping sanitation workers.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson called her and urged her to quickly fly to Memphis.
Coretta King wrote that while she was shocked, she was not all together surprised: "It hit me hard ... that the call I seemed subconsciously to have been waiting for all our lives had come."
When she arrived at the Atlanta airport, her husband's secretary and Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen told her he'd died.
"Of course, I already knew. But it had not yet been said, " she wrote. "I had been trying to prepare myself to hear that final word, to think and accept—I was trying to make myself believe that Martin was dead."
On Tuesday morning, Jackson recalled that he was careful not to tell Mrs. King that her husband was dead to protect her before she traveled to Memphis.
But he said that by then, after all they had gone through, she was ready and prepared for the news of his death. He didn't tell her, but she already knew.
"Their home had already been bombed, he was stabbed in New York, bricked in Chicago. He was the object of hate," the Rev. Jackson said. "So she was aware of his circumstances as his companion, a wife and a mother. Her shoulder was his pillow. Her ears were his listening post."
In the days following Dr. King's death — and the day before his funeral — Mrs. King did make it to Memphis, where she led a march of 50,000 people through the streets.
When she returned to Atlanta, she was captured for the world in the single-image of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Moneta J. Sleet.
Where at the beginning of their journey as a couple, she held her oldest child, Yolanda, while their home was bombed, now she was quietly holding their youngest, Bernice. The black veil hardly masks her grief.
"She was a mixture of regal bearing and grace and an uncompromising freedom fighter," said the Rev. Sharpton, adding that people often had a hard time reconsiling her two sides. "They saw her in her regality and aura and didn't realize that in her heart was a woman who believed what her husband fought for. She didn't walk behind her husband, she walked beside him."
After her husband's death, she devoted her energy to fulfilling his work.
She became an international figure of peace, justice and tolerance, meeting with religious figures such as Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu. She was invited by President Bill Clinton to witness the historic handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat at the signing of the Middle East Peace Accords. She stood with Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg when he became South Africa's first democratically elected president.
In 1974, as co-chair of the Full Employment Action Council, she formed a broad coalition of more than 100 religious, labor, business, civil and women's rights organizations dedicated to a national policy of full employment and equal economic opportunity. In 1983, she brought together more than 800 human rights organizations to form the umbrella group, Coalition of Conscience; in 1985 Coretta King and three of her children were arrested at the South African embassy in Washington for protesting against apartheid; in 1987, she helped lead a national Mobilization Against Fear and Intimidation in Forsyth County; in 1988 she served as head of the U.S. delegation of Women for a Meaningful Summit in Athens, Greece; and in 1990, she was co-convener of the Soviet-American Women's Summit in Washington.
Only months after her husband's death, she created the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change as a living memorial to his life and dream.
In 1981, after more than a decade of fund-raising and temporary housing, the center, with her husband's crypt as its centerpiece, opened to the public. It is within the 23-acre national historic site that includes Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthplace and Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he and his father were pastors.
As founding president, chair and CEO of the King Center, Coretta King worked to provide local, national and international programs in an attempt to train thousands of people in her husband's philosophy and methods.
The King Center remained her standing legacy. Although she turned over the day-to-day leadership of the center to her son Dexter Scott King in 1995, she remained on the center's board of trustees. Martin King III became president of the King Center in January 2004.Added the Rev. Sharpton: " Let's be clear, it was Coretta King who kept [Rev. King's] legacy pure and in front of this nation. It was her who kept this vision alive and I think America owes a tremendous debt to her that has not been fully paid."
THE HOLIDAY
Perhaps Coretta King's greatest legacy will be her successful campaign to establish the third Monday in January as a holiday honoring her husband, the country's only national holiday recognizing an American citizen.
"When Martin was assassinated, I called her to get her approval to get the Martin Luther King Holiday bill, because I didn't want to do it without her knowledge and support and she agreed," U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) said in an interview last August. Four days after Dr. King's death, he submitted the first legislation to commemorate the Rev. King's birthday. "She was very instrumental in getting the holiday approved. Only she could do that."
President Ronald Reagan opposed the King holiday on fiscal grounds, arguing that giving federal workers a 10th annual holiday would cost the government about $225 million in lost wages alone. But he signed it into law Nov. 2, 1983.
"All right-thinking people, all right-thinking Americans are joined in spirit with us this day as the highest recognition this nation gives is bestowed on Martin Luther King Jr.,'' Coretta King said in remarks delivered after Mr. Reagan handed her the pen he used to sign the legislation. ''He symbolized what was right about America, what was noblest, and what was best. His non-violent campaign brought about redemption, reconciliation and justice.''
The first national observance of the holiday took place in 1986 and his birthday is now marked by annual celebrations in more than 100 countries. At the first official celebration of the holiday on Jan. 20, 1986 at Ebenezer, then-Vice President George Bush stood in for President Reagan. Rosa Parks, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D- Mass.) also attended.
"I don't think people give her enough credit for doing something very few people have done," Clayborne Carson, director of the King Papers Project at Stanford University, said in August. "If she hadn't been as dedicated and energetic as she was, the King Center wouldn't exist and the King holiday wouldn't exist."
In 2005, Coretta King's legendary drive and stamina started to wane. A heart condition slowed her down and led to at least three strokes. The last one, which struck her on Aug. 16, severly weakened the right side of her body and left her unable to speak. Among her first words during recovery was "I love you," whenever she saw any of her children.
Even before she recovered her speech, she could do one of the things she truly loved - sing.
Even in good health, Mrs. King could have stayed out of the leadership roles, but that was not her choice, said activist Dick Gregory.
"She could have said 'I paid my dues.' She could have said, 'I lost my husband, my children lost a father.' But she didn't and that is why she has been so blessed," Mr. Gregory said in an interview following Mrs. King's stroke in August.
"I believe that there is a plan and a purpose for each person's life and that there are forces working in the universe to bring about good and to create a community of love and brotherhood," Mrs. King wrote in her 1969 autobiography, "My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr." "Those who can attune themselves to these forces — to God's purpose — can become special instruments of His will."
But even as the world heralded her husband's achievements with a Nobel Prize in 1964, Mrs. King had different thoughts.
"Of course, I was pleased, but at the same time I was pondering. Why? Why was Martin's contribution considered of international importance," she wrote. "What was the deeper meaning of all this — some meaning that we were not yet able to understand? For this was not just a prize for civil rights, but for contributing to world peace. Though we were very happy, both Martin and I realized the tremendous responsibility that this placed on him.
"This was, of course the greatest recognition that had come to him, but we both knew that to accomplish what the prize really implied, we still had a long way to go. It was a great tribute, but an even more awesome burden. I felt pride and joy, and pain too, when I thought of the added responsibilities my husband must bear; and it was my burden too."
When the Kings returned to Atlanta, city leaders held a banquet in Martin Luther King Jr.'s honor at the Dinkler Plaza Hotel. It would be one of the first times that blacks and whites of all classes in Atlanta openly mingled and ate together at such a major event. At the end of the evening, the group of 1,500 held hands and sang "We Shall Overcome."
"It was tremendously moving—the spirit of it," Coretta King wrote. "We had overcome a major barrier for a southern city. We felt, for that night at least, it was really 'black and white together' in Atlanta."
Coretta King received honorary doctorates from more than 60 colleges and universities; wrote three books and a nationally syndicated column; and has served on and helped found dozens of organizations, including the Black Leadership Forum, the National Black Coalition for Voter Participation and the Black Leadership Roundtable.
The Coretta Scott King Award is presented annually by the American Library Association to a black author and a black illustrator for their outstanding inspirational and educational contributions published during the previous year.
"She was a real activist. She had one of the most keen, aggressive social political minds that I have ever talked to. She was really committed to world peace, really committed to racial equality, really committed to civil disobedience and non-violence. She was not just the woman she went home to. She was the one who shaped his ideas and activism and she single-handedly maintained his legacy," said the Rev. Sharpton.
Survivors include two daughters, Yolanda Denise King of Los Angeles and the Rev. Bernice Albertine King of Atlanta, and two sons, Martin Luther King III of Atlanta and Dexter Scott King of Malibu, Calif. She is also survived by a sister, Edythe Bagley of Cheney, Pa., and a brother, Obie Scott of Tuscaloosa, Ala.
I'm a registred democrat. Moderate on some issues, very conservative on others. Not liberal on anything. I was truly disgusted by the actions of President Carter today. it seems that these days, the democrats that are receiving the most spotlight are very far left and dont represent the mainstream. im not sure how much longer im going to remain one. I dont agree with all of President Bush's policies, but I think hes doing a good job for the most paret.
The kind of sludge thrown around at poor Ms. King's funeral was right up there with Nagin's "chocolate New Orleans" speech, as far as I'm concerned. Democrats are such morons.
I like how u just add your little tidbits about the funeral to make your case sound interesting and worht reading.
"I'm a registred democrat. Moderate on some issues, very conservative on others. Not liberal on anything. "
So you're a conservative. No surprise you don't like what Coretta stood for.
Mark :
"Facing his critics" , if he has nothing to be afraid of , would allow Mr. Bush to address all those points you have brought up and bury them in the minds of the fence-sitters out there who could swing the next election . His believability polls are going south , which of course means nothing while he's in office , but obviously "trust" is a buzzword that we'll be hearing a lot more of in future elections.
Danimal
Are you serious...you say only one person made an anti-Republican comment at the Wellstone event.
That's like saying "look at the Rodney King beating, the other guy in the car who listened to the cops nothing happened to him, only to Rodney who refused to get on the ground when they told him too."
Gee, do we ever hear that from the media? Of course not.
The Wellstone event was a joke and totally politicized. Yesterday was another embarrassment of "tolerance" on the part of the left.
Hey DeeCee48, congradulations did you realize that you personally are the reason that abortion is and will always be legal, thanks bubba!