Coretta Scott King to speak at Cal U
CALIFORNIA – California University of Pennsylvania and the office of the president, in cooperation with the Frederick Douglass Institute, will present “An Evening With Coretta Scott King: The Importance of her Husband’s Legacy and the Future of the Civil Rights Movement,” Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 7 p.m. in Steele Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Mrs. King entered the world stage in 1955 as wife of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and as a leading participant in the American civil rights movement. Her partnership with her husband resulted not only in four talented children but in a life devoted to the highest values of human dignity in service to social change.
Mrs. King has traveled throughout the nation and world, speaking out on behalf of racial and economic justice, women’s and children’s rights, gay and lesbian dignity, religious freedom, the needs of the poor and homeless, full-employment health care, educational opportunities, nuclear disarmament and ecological sanity. In her career, she has lent her support to democracy movements worldwide and been a consultant to many world leaders, including Corazon Aquino, Kenneth Kaunda and Nelson Mandela.
Born and raised in Marion, Ala., she graduated valedictorian from Lincoln High School. She received a bachelor of arts degree in music and education from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and then went on to study concert singing at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music, where she earned a degree in voice and violin.
While in Boston, she met Martin Luther King Jr., who was studying for his doctorate in systematic theology at Boston University. They were married June 18, 1953, and in September 1954 took up residence in Montgomery, Ala., with Mrs. King assuming the functions of pastor’s wife at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
Since her husband’s assassination in 1968, Mrs. King has devoted much of her energy and attention to developing programs and building the Atlanta-based Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change as a living memorial to her husband’s life dream.
Situated in the Freedom Hall complex encircling Dr. King’s tomb, the King Center is part of a 23-acre national historic park that included his birth home and which hosts more than 1 million visitors a year.
Her accomplishments include honorary doctorates from more than 40 colleges and universities. She has written three books and a nationally syndicated column. She 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.
For more information concerning Mrs. King’s talk at Cal U, call Dr. Michele McCoy, director of public affairs, at 724-938-4155.