01 Feb 06
By Alvin BennCoretta Scott King may have attained international fame during her 78 years, but she never forgot the tiny crossroads community in rural Alabama where she grew up.
It's where her devoted parents taught her to hold her head high and keep everything in proper perspective.
The little family plot where Obie and Bernice Scott lie side by side describes the way friends said they
looked at life and its challenges.
"They Loved, They Served, They Kept The Faith," reads the inscription on the stone.
Their daughter would marry a man who became the most famous civil rights figure in the country. In addition to raising four children, she carved out a niche of her own -- becoming the family's second civil rights icon.
Her death Tuesday did not shock many in her home county because they were aware of her strokes and heart problems. What they preferred to do was remember a remarkable woman.
"She was a stately lady, a lady with a lot of class," former Marion Mayor Ed Daniel said Tuesday afternoon. "She carried herself with so much dignity and grace."
Daniel, who will be 70 in a few months, taught and coached at Lincoln Normal School where Coretta Scott attended as a girl. She had graduated by the time he arrived at the all-black school, but he was as impressed by her as her classmates were.
Her marriage to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. took her away from Heilberger, but she came home as often as she could through the years.
It was a way for her to renew her roots and her love for her parents.
Obie Scott was a successful businessman who owned a lumber yard and ran a country store next to the family home. He also was one of the first black members of the Perry County Board of Education.
Bernice Scott kept a low profile as she took care of the house and left everything else up to her husband.
They lived long, productive lives. Obie Scott died in 1998 at the age of 99 -- three years after his wife, who died at the age of 91.
Religion was important to the King family and they regularly attended Mount Tabor AME Zion Church, just a few feet from their house.
Segregation was a way of life for the couple during most of their lives, but they did not back away from a movement that would change the fabric of the country.
"(Obie Scott) may not have been involved in the struggle as deeply as some on a day-to-day basis, but he definitely was there from a support point of view," Daniel said. "It was also a good place for her daughter and son-in-law to come and visit."
After her husband's assassination in 1968, Coretta Scott King picked up the civil rights mantle he left behind.
During the 1970s, the Voting Rights Act that the Kings helped to create brought about significant political and racial changes in Perry and surrounding counties in Alabama's Black Belt.
White politicians who had controlled elective offices in mostly black counties were replaced by black candidates who were able to vote once discriminatory practices were removed by federal law.
One beneficiary was Christine Jackson, who is Perry County's tax assessor. She has a vivid memory of meeting Coretta Scott King "on the courthouse square."
"She was a great asset to Perry County and we're grateful to have known her," she said. "I also got to know her parents. They were very nice."
On the other end of the courthouse, Perry County Circuit Clerk Mary Cosby Moore remembered Mrs. King just as Daniel did when he learned of her death.
"She was quiet and classy," said Moore, who became the county's first black circuit clerk. "There was just something about her that made her so special."
Orbituary
The assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 brought his wife, Coretta Scott King, to the forefront of the civil rights movement.
Mrs King dedicated her life to the continuation of his work for racial equality and non-violent protest.
She worked to preserve his message through The King Center in Atlanta and fought for a national holiday in her husband's memory.
Born in 1927, Coretta Scott grew up on a farm in Marion, Alabama.
Music was a major part of her life. After graduating in music and education in Ohio, she went to study singing in Boston, where she met her future husband.
Bus boycott
They married in 1953 and three years later moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where the young Martin Luther became active in the civil rights movement.
She raised four children, the first of whom was born in November 1955, only a few days before King led the boycott of Montgomery's segregated buses that began when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat.
As her husband became more prominent, Mrs King supported his work and accompanied him when he spoke, sometimes speaking if he was not available. In 1959 the couple spent a month travelling in India visiting sites associated with Mahatma Gandhi.
But it was after Martin Luther King's death in 1968 that she stepped fully onto the public stage, determined to continue her husband's work.
She said in her autobiography, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr, that she felt compelled to carry on the civil rights movement.
"Because his task was not finished, I felt that I must re-dedicate myself to the completion of his work," she wrote.
Campaign against apartheid
A year after her husband's death, she founded the Atlanta-based Martin Luther King Jr Center for Nonviolent Social Change to act as a focal point for his legacy. The centre contains exhibits on King and holds his speeches in an archive, as well as working to educate people on his beliefs.
Mrs King also campaigned for a national holiday to mark his January birthday, which has been observed annually on the third Monday in January since 1986.
She was involved with international issues and campaigned against apartheid. In 1985 she was arrested with three of her children for protesting outside the South African embassy in Washington.
In later years Mrs King suffered from ill health but marked the 20th Martin Luther King day at a public dinner on 14 January.
Coretta Scott King played a key role in the civil rights movement after the death of her husband and worked hard to ensure his message continues to be remembered and celebrated.
