April 27, 1927

Civil rights activist and author Coretta Scott was born on this day in 1927. A high school valedictorian, she went to Antioch College in Ohio, where he older sister Edythe was the first African-American to attend. There she became active in the local chapter of the NAACP, and unsuccessfully lobbied to work toward her teaching certificate with the local Yellow Springs Schools.

Scott transferred to study music in Boston, where she was introduced to Martin Luther King Jr. They married in 1953, and she moved with him to Montgomery in 1954 as he assumed the role of pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The Kings raised four children, all of whom work in the field of advancing civil rights. After the assassination of her husband, Coretta Scott King continued his legacy, lobbying for the creation of the King Center, and the institution of a national holiday on the third Monday in January, near his Jan. 15 birthday.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott met in Boston in the early 1950s. King was pursuing a doctoral degree at Boston University and Scott was a student at the New England Conservatory of Music. The couple married on June 18, 1953, in Heiberger, Perry County, where Scott had been raised. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Library of Congress)

Coretta Scott King at the Democratic National Convention, New York City, July 13, 1976. (Warren K. Leffler, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Coretta Scott King (1927-2006) was a civil rights leader and the wife of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. A Perry County native, she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, following her husband’s assassination, and was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and the Gandhi Peace Prize. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of The Birmingham News)

Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King led thousands of protesters during the Selma to Montgomery March in March 1965. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, property of The Birmingham News)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.