Coretta Scott King Dies at 78

Tim Gratz · February 1, 2006

From AP Services:

Coretta Scott King, known first as the wife of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., then as his widow, then as an avid proselytizer for his vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change, died Monday at a hospital in Mexico. She was 78.

The primary cause of death was "insufficient cardio-respiratory," which simply means her heart and breathing stopped, said Dr. Carlos Guerrero Tejada, who certified her death. The underlying causes were cerebral vascular disease and ovarian cancer, according to the death certificate.

Mrs. King died at Hospital Santa Mónica in Rosarito, Mexico, about 16 miles south of San Diego. She was admitted to the hospital last Thursday, said her sister, Edythe Scott Bagley. Mrs. Bagley said Mrs. King's body would be returned to her home, Atlanta, for entombment next to her husband, whose crypt is at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center there.

Mrs. King had been in failing health after a stroke and a heart attack last August. She appeared at a dinner honoring her husband on Jan. 14 but did not speak.

Andrew Young, a former United Nations ambassador and longtime family friend, said at a news conference yesterday morning that Mrs. King died in her sleep.

"She was a woman born to struggle," Mr. Young said, "and she has struggled and she has overcome." Mrs. King rose from rural poverty in Heiberger, Ala., and became an international symbol of the civil rights movement of the 1960's. She was an advocate for women's rights, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and other social and political issues.

In 1952, she was studying music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston when she met a young graduate student in philosophy, who, on their first date, told her: "The four things that I look for in a wife are character, personality, intelligence and beauty. And you have them all." A year later she and Dr. King, then a young minister from a prominent Atlanta family, were married, beginning a remarkable partnership that ended with Dr. King's assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968.

Mrs. King did not hesitate to pick up his mantle, marching before her husband was even buried at the head of the striking garbage workers he had gone to Memphis to champion. She went on to lead the effort for a national holiday in his honor and to found the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change in Atlanta, dedicated both to scholarship and to activism.

In addition to dealing with her husband's death, which left her with four young children, Mrs. King faced other trials and controversies. She was at times viewed as chilly and aloof by others in the civil rights movement. The King Center was criticized as competing for funds and siphoning energy from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which Dr. King had helped found. In recent years, the center had been widely viewed as adrift, characterized by squabbling within the family and a focus more on Dr. King's legacy than on continuing his work. Many allies were baffled and hurt by her campaign to exonerate James Earl Ray, who in 1969 pleaded guilty to her husband's murder, and her contention that Ray did not commit the crime.

More often, however, Mrs. King has been seen as an inspirational figure, a woman of enormous spiritual depth who came to personify the ideals Dr. King fought for.

"She'll be remembered as a strong woman whose grace and dignity held up the image of her husband as a man of peace, of racial justice, of fairness," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr. King and then served as its president for 20 years. "I don't know that she was a civil rights leader in the truest sense, but she became a civil rights figure and a civil rights icon because of what she came to represent."

Coretta Scott was born April 27, 1927, the second of three children born to Obadiah and Bernice Scott. She grew up in a two-room house that her father had built on land that had been owned by the family for three generations.

The family was poor, and she grew up picking cotton in the hot fields of the segregated South or doing housework. But Mr. Scott hauled timber, owned a country store and worked as a barber. His wife drove a school bus, and the whole family helped raise hogs, cows, chickens and vegetables. So, by the standards of blacks in Alabama at the time, the family had both resources and ambitions beyond the reach of most others.

Some of Coretta Scott's earliest insights into the injustice of segregation came as she walked to her one-room schoolhouse each day, watching buses of white children stir up dust as they passed. She got her first sense of the world beyond rural Alabama when she attended the Lincoln School, a private missionary institution in nearby Marion, where she studied piano and voice and had her first encounters with college-educated teachers, and where she resolved to flee to a world far beyond rural, segregated Alabama.

(MORE FOLLOWS)

Edited February 1, 2006 by Tim Gratz

John Simkin · February 1, 2006

Your article missed out the fact that Coretta Scott King remained opposed to everything that right-wing Republicans believed in. She was a strong opponent of the Vietnam War. Like her husband, she supported a redistributive tax system and universal health care. It was of course while Martin Luther King was campaigning on behalf of low paid workers that he was assassinated.

Coretta Scott King was also a strong opponent of South African racism. In fact, she was arrested and briefly imprisoned for protesting against Ronald Reagan’s refusal to impose sanctions on South Africa.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/st...1699170,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story...1699074,00.html

Tim Gratz · February 2, 2006

In 1998 Mrs. King visited Sunset Key, a remarkable island located in the Key West harbor andoperated by the Hilton chain. The entire island had been rented out for the birthday celebration of Oprah Winfrey.

Michael Collins Piper · February 15, 2006

Several years ago an all-star tribute to comic and civil rights activist (and Warren Commission critic) Dick Gregory was held at the Kennedy Center.

Thanks to my friend (and Rush to Judgment author) Mark Lane, a longtime friend of Gregory (whom I've met on several occasions), I was able to get a VIP seat at the event at which Mark was one of the featured speakers paying tribute to "Greg."

Another of the speakers was Coretta Scott King.

I can tell you that when she was introduced (alongside DC Mayor Marion Barry, incidentally), the applause was thunderous and although I've been present when other big "historic" folks have been introduced, I do have to say that Coretta's quiet, dignified presence was nonetheless overwhelming and the warmth of the crowd in assembly was unlike anything I've ever experienced.

It's kind of interesting, by the way, that the late Dr. King was a victim of the illicit spying activities of the Anti-Defamatino League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, the same contemptible group that falsely accused me of being a "Holocaust Denier." The San Francisco Weekly, a progressive journal, reported on April 28, 1993

"During the civil rights movement, when many Jews were taking the lead in fighting against racism, the ADL was spying on Martin Luther King and passing on the information to J. Edgar Hoover, a former ADL employee said. 'It was common and casually accepted knowledge,' said Henry Schwarzschild, who worked in the publications department of the ADL between 1962 and 1964.'They thought King was sort of a loose cannon,' said Schwarzschild. 'He was a Baptist preacher and nobody could be quite sure what he would do next. The ADL was very anxious about having an unguided missile out there.'"

It turns out, though, that the ADL was also engaged in heavy-duty spying on other Black civil rights leaders, not just King—including no less than Dick Gregory.

The 1995 release of previously classified FBI documents relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Warren Commission investigation which followed unveiled other ADL intrigue against "Greg."

There are at least two documents citing ADL actions aimed at Gregory. Document #124-10027-10233 is dated Febuary 2, 1965. It is from the Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta office of the FBI to FBI Director Hoover. It reads as follows:

Enclosed herewith is a 5 page document received on 2/1/65 from SHERMAN HARRIS, Investigator, Anti-Defamation League, 41 Exchange Place, Atlanta, Georgia. HARRIS stated that the enclosed document reflects results of an interview by an ADL employee in Miami, Florida with Negro comedian DICK GREGORY.

HARRIS did not reveal the name of the ADL employee in Miami who interviewed GREGORY. He stated that the charges made by GREGORY as reflected in the enclosed document are so ridiculous that he is embarrassed that an ADL employee would forward the material to the Atlanta Regional Office.

He stated he was furnishing this material to the Bureau so that the Bureau will be aware of the activities of GREGORY in this regard. He requested that no one outside the Bureau be advised that he had furnished the Bureau this material.

So, on the one hand, while the ADL official, Harris, told the FBI that he was “embarrassed” that one of his associates had even passed the “ridiculous” information on to the ADL’s regional office, he was nonetheless still passing it on to the FBI so that it would be aware of Gregory’s activities. Note also the fact that the ADL asked that the FBI keep quiet about the fact that the ADL was providing the spy data to the federal agency. That, of course, would have been quite embarrassing to the ADL, which was then—as now—busy masquerading as an ally of Black activists in the civil rights movement.

Why was the ADL keeping tabs on Gregory? It involved much more than the fact that he was an outspoken black figure. The evidence shows that the ADL was also concerned about Gregory’s effort to dig out the truth about who really killed President John Kennedy—and why.

That Gregory’s JFK inquiries were of interest to the ADL is quite revealing. Why the ADL was monitoring an independent investigation of the JFK assassination is a question that the ADL would prefer never be asked or answered.

The second declassified FBI document sheds light on how the ADL was reporting back to the FBI on Gregory’s JFK assassination inquiries.

Document #124-10027-10232 is dated Feb. 5, 1965 and evidently refers to the same ADL surveillance of Gregory referred to in the previously referenced Feb. 2, 1965 document. It is a memorandum from “A. Rosen” to “Mr. Belmont” (two top-level FBI officials in Washington).

The memo describes how on Feb. 1, 1965, the aforementioned ADL investigator in Atlanta, Sherman Harris furnished information to the FBI that Harris had received from an unidentified ADL employee in Miami who had, in turn, gleaned information from Gregory (described as “the rabble rousing Negro comedian”) when the ADL employee spoke with Gregory on January 18, 1965.

The FBI summary of the ADL investigator’s report to the FBI read in part:

"In the letter to Harris, it was reported Gregory stated that the assassination of President Kennedy was masterminded by J. Edgar Hoover and [Texas oilman] H. L. Hunt. Gregory allegedly tried to substantiate these charges by displaying photostatic copies of affidavits and fallacious and misleading press releases and public statements. The ADL employee noted Gregory did not display any concrete facts to support his charges according to employee.

"Gregory claimed the Warren Commission had two reports on the assassination and knew of [Hoover’s] and Hunt’s participation; however, they did not release the true facts as 'chaos' would result. Gregory alleged [Hoover] was one of the plotters due to a falling out with the Kennedys and the former Attorney General had been appointed to 'watch over him' and slowly 'ease him out' of the FBI.

"Gregory claimed to have positive proof H. L. Hunt financed the Black Muslims but such proof was 'confidential.' Gregory also alleges the FBI has him under constant surveillance and will someday in the near future put an end to his life. Further, that prior to the assassination President Johnson was aware of the plot but was powerless to stop it because to do so would admit the FBI and the 'intelligence hierarchy' controlled the country."

That the ADL was spying on Dr. King (and on "Greg") and giving the data to the FBI is very revealing indeed. This is a truly loathesome group, as this evidence demonstrates.

And it's probably worth mentioning, by the way---and this is something that a lot of people don't know about -- but in some of his early pro se filings appealing his conviction of killing Dr. King, James Earl Ray that when his "handler" Raul gave him a contact number in New Orleans, Ray determined that the number was of "an agent of a Mideast orgaization distressed because of King's reported, forthcoming, before his death, public support of the Palestinian Arab cause." Later Ray referenced this in his testimony before the House Assassinations Committee.

Since Mrs. King and the King family believed in James Earl Ray's innocence, they were undoubtedly privy to this information themselves. And since Dr. Pepper in his book, AN ACT OF STATE says that Jack Ruby and "Raul" were commonly linked to an arms smuggling network involving an Israeli Mossad official, this is all kind of interesting. But people might suggest that this is "anti-Semitic" for daring to mention this, of course.

It seems pretty likely that the group Ray was referring to was indeed the Anti-Defamation League whose New Orleans office was run by "Bee" Botnick who called himself a "super communist hunter" and who specialized in infiltrating not just "right wing" hate groups but also "left wing" and student and pro-Castro groups.

Botnick was fast pals with New Orleans private detective and CIA man Guy Bannister and it is known, by the way, that the ADL often contracted out its "fact finding" through private detective agencies.

Darn! I wonder if, by chance, Botnick ever threw any fact finding work to his good friend Banister with whom he shared a zeal for hunting Reds?

Tim Gratz · February 22, 2006

True or false, Piper:

Your mentor Willis Carto is a racist as well as an anti-semite. He once wrote that "only a few Americans are concerned about the ultimate niggerification of the United States".

I await your reply, Piper.

Tim Gratz · February 24, 2006

For Piper to be writing about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. is outrageous given his association with Don Black, who has prepared this web-site devoted to promoting hatred of the late Dr. King:

http://www.martinlutherking.org/

Tim Gratz · February 24, 2006

Here is what Piper's friend Don Black wrote about Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Well friends, he is not a legitimate reverend, he is not a bona fide PhD, and his name isn't really "Martin Luther King, Jr." What's left? Just a sexual degenerate, an America-hating Communist, and a criminal betrayer of even the interests of his own people.

And he also wrote that the FBI investigation "also revealed King to be a despicable hypocrite, an immoral degenerate, and a worthless charlatan."

Do you agree with those statements, Piper? If not, do you renounce Don Black?

Edited February 24, 2006 by Tim Gratz

John Simkin · February 24, 2006

Well friends, he is not a legitimate reverend, he is not a bona fide PhD, and his name isn't really "Martin Luther King, Jr." What's left? Just a sexual degenerate, an America-hating Communist, and a criminal betrayer of even the interests of his own people.

The tactic of far-right Americans calling liberals "American-hating Communists" has a long tradition. In fact, some right-wingers do it on this Forum.

Tim Gratz · February 24, 2006

John, sorry, it is the friend of the fascist you allowed to join the Forum that is spewing the hatred toward the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. And it was the President who I revere and you condemn who signed the bill making Martin Luther King Day a national holiday, a proposal condemned by the associates of your member MCP.

You seem more interested in spewing ridicule on me, a conservative democrat, than condeming the views of the one member of this Forum who is TRULY a fascist.

I am proud to be one of the members who has led the opposition to Piper's despicable views. Your colleague Andy Walker rightly finds Piper's views as despicable as do Len Colby, John Dolva and myself.

Your own silence on this issue has been curious indeed.

You know what I think: you are so resistent to my scenario that castro played a part in the assassination of JFK that you would rather implicitly endorse the scenario of MCP, even if it means you have to ignore his despicable racism and anti-semitism. THAT is why your wrath is directed toward me, not him.

And if you mean to imply that I have called a liberal an American hating Communist you are a xxxx!! In fact, you once posted that I had repeatedly called people Communists and the only proof you could come up with was that I posted that Buchanan was a Communist whose statements could not be trusted.

The members can assess who is credible here, and who really gives a darn about racial hatred and injustice.

Edited February 24, 2006 by Tim Gratz

John Simkin · February 24, 2006

Your own silence on this issue has been curious indeed.

Are you implying that I am a fascist as well? Robert and Mark have already dealt with your attempt at smear tactics. Go back to protecting George Bush and the CIA. It is more dignified than your pathetic attempts to show you are a liberal on civil rights. Where were you when it mattered? A supporter of the status quo and defender of CIA and Republican illegal actions. As you are now.

Tim Gratz · February 24, 2006

Well, John, I guess I could hardly call you a Communist and a Fascist at the same time, could I?

I do not think it is a smear tactic to note your silence on the Piper issue.

Let us put it this way: I would think it fair to say that those who have registered their opposition to the views of Piper and his buddies probably have a greater sense of outrage at the racist, murderous policies they endorse than those who have remained silent.

And the members can judge my sincerity in detesting racism and anti-semitism. I would not have spent the time researching Piper's associates, etc. if I did not really care about the issue.

You would rather, as your post implies, condemn George Bush and the CIA than a Hitler-lover like Piper.

That does not make you a fascist but it certainly demonstrates a rather strange priority in making moral judgments. I note Piper shares your loathing for Bush. Perhaps that is why you stay silent on his loathsome views.

P.S. Everything I say about you is, IMO fair (well of course it would be in my own opinion). That being said, I must at least commend you for being willing to let me engage in this rather vigorous debate with you on your own Forum.

Edited February 24, 2006 by Tim Gratz

Michael Collins Piper · February 24, 2006

I'll bet Tim Gratz doesn't have ANY black friends.

I wonder when the last time there was that a black person ever entered Tim Gratz's home---if ever.

This past weekend I spent about four hours helping a recently unemployed and now unfortunately homeless black friend of mine (who has spent weeks house-sitting for me when I have been traveling abroad) apply for rental assistance and working out problems relating to his situation.

The family of my African-American god-child would find Tim Gratz a real hoot.

And for your information, Missuh Gratz, you might be interested to know that Dick Gregory was going to appear as a character witness for Willis Carto in the lawsuit against Carto by Holocaust survivor Mel Mermelstein and testify to the effect that whatever Carto may have written or said in the past that in all of his personal dealings with Carto that he did not believe Carto to be a racist.

So what are you going to say about Dick Gregory?

Tim Gratz is not only an eggregious shameful xxxx, he is also . . . well, I won't use that language here.

But Gratz is a xxxx.

Tim Gratz · February 25, 2006

Piper wrote:

I'll bet Tim Gratz doesn't have ANY black friends.

I wonder when the last time there was that a black person ever entered Tim Gratz's home---if ever.

Well, Piper, you are as wrong about THAT as you are about everything else.

An old friend of mine, with whom I still communicate occasionally, is Kwame Salter, the founder of the African American Studies Dept at the University of Wisconsin, a man I had encouraged to run for political office.

When I moved to Key West my closest friend became my neighbor Walter Thoms, a neighbor and a black gentleman (World War II veteran) who painted an excellent portrait of Martin Luther King., Jr., whose memory you sully, Piper, by your very posts on this thread). I was running a small art gallery in the bottom floor of our apartment and Walter would come over and help pass the time by playing chess with me (he won 95% of the time). Walter was as good a friend as one could ever want. Unfortunately, he passed away a few years ago.

My current housemate is Larry Sterling, a great musician. You can see his photo by going to this website:

http://keysnews.com/

Then scrolling down the page to "Solares Hill" and opening it up (it comes in PDF format). Larry is pictured with my daughter and two of her friends (on page seven of "Solares Hill").

Edited February 25, 2006 by Tim Gratz

John Simkin · April 3, 2006

Extract from an article written by Michael Honey that appeared in the Seattle Times (2nd April,2006). Honey teaches American history at the University of Washington, Tacoma, and recently held the Harry Bridges endowed chair in labor studies at the UW. He has published two previous award-winning histories of labor and civil rights in the South, and his book on Martin Luther King Jr. and the Memphis sanitation strike is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opin...dayhoney02.html

As they watched the television coverage of President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas in 1963, Dr. King told her, "This is what is going to happen to me." She accepted this reality, not morbidly, but as a fact of life. She told a Seattle audience in 1965, "You realize that what you are doing is pretty dangerous, but we go on with the faith that what we are doing is right. If something happens to my husband, the cause will continue. It may even be helped." She did not flinch, and raised four children in the context of two lives absolutely committed to changing the world.

Mrs. King opposed the Vietnam War, and prodded her husband to publicly speak out against it, and he came under increasing attack as a traitor to his country when he did so. She took his place leading peace demonstrations in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and presided at a Women's International League for Peace and Freedom conference, where she declared, "All women have a common bond — they don't want their husbands and sons maimed and killed in war."

An assassin finally snuffed out Dr. King's life on April 4, 1968, while he led a strike of 1,300 black sanitation workers — the working poor of their day — to demand the right to have a union. Many whites in Memphis, calling him a communist and racial agitator, said they were glad he was dead.

In this frightening atmosphere, Mrs. King and three of her children led some 20,000 marchers through the streets of Memphis on April 8, holding signs that read, "Honor King: End Racism," "Union Justice Now," or, simply, "I Am A Man." National Guardsmen lined the streets, perched on M-48 tanks, bayonets mounted, as helicopters circled overhead. She led another 150,000 in a funeral procession through the streets of Atlanta the next day.

Her quiet courage and composed demeanor renewed people's sense of pride, courage and respect for the peaceful principles the civil-rights movement stood for. In the wake of King's death, riots spread to 125 cities, leading to the deaths of 43 and arrests of more than 20,000 people, with the deployment of 60,000 National Guardsmen to suppress the rebellion — the largest military intervention in domestic affairs since the Civil War.

Mrs. King's quiet dignity and fortitude helped to stabilize the nation, and though everyone expected Memphis to blow up, it was the one city that remained peaceful. Led by Mrs. King and her children, the march of workers, unionists, students, religious and civic leaders, and black-power and civil-rights advocates represented the interracial "coalition of conscience" that Dr. King always sought to build, and it is the same one we so desperately need today.

Mrs. King challenged the crowd to go on from that day forward to "make all people truly free and to make every person feel that he is a human being. His campaign for the poor must go on." Only in conclusion did her voice break, as she asked, "How many men must die before we can really have a free and true and peaceful society? How long will it take?"

We might ask Mrs. King's questions now. How long will it take for our government to stop its military aggression, killing, torture and spying? When will it take up the anti-racism and anti-poverty struggle that has been so abandoned under the Bush administration? In the wake of Dr. King's death in 1968, President Johnson urged aid to the cities, manpower training, equal-opportunity measures in jobs and housing, and more aid to schools. Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., called for an $80 billion Marshall Plan for the poor.

Now President Bush proposes spending more than half of the federal budget on expenditures related to current, past and future military action, while cutting funds for health care, schools and human needs. Bush's promise to end poverty in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is made hollow by his insistence on tax cuts for the rich and subsidies to wealthy corporations.

During the 38 years since her husband died while fighting for the right of poor workers to organize a union, Mrs. King continued to speak in support of workers, unions and the poor. She held high the dream of nonviolence. She spoke out unequivocally for gay rights, and remained a consistent supporter of women's rights, peace and ending nuclear weapons and the military buildup.

It is up to us now to carry on the legacy of the Kings, Parks, Bradens and others who pioneered the human-rights movement for the future of us all.

In her first pronouncement after her husband's death, Mrs. King said, "He gave his life for the poor of the world, the garbage workers of Memphis and the peasants of Vietnam. The day that Negro people and others in bondage are truly free, on the day want is abolished, on the day wars are no more, on that day I know my husband will rest in a long-deserved peace."

The same can be said for her. But there can be no rest for those of us who follow the dream.

John Simkin · April 3, 2006