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Coretta Scott King (April 27, 1927 – January 30, 2006) was an American author, activist, and civil rights leader. The widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King helped lead the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Mrs. King`s most prominent role may have been in the years after her husband`s 1968 assassination when she took on the leadership of the struggle for racial equality herself and became active in the Women`s Movement.

Coretta Scott and Martin Luther King, Jr., were married on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her mothers` house; the ceremony was performed by King`s father, Martin Luther King, Sr.. After completing her degree in voice and violin at the New England Conservatory, she moved with her husband to Montgomery, Alabama in September 1954. The Kings had four children.

King died at the age of 78 in the late evening of January 30, 2006 at a rehabilitation center in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, where she was undergoing holistic therapy for her stroke and advanced stage ovarian cancer. The main cause of King`s death, however, is believed to be respiratory failure due to complications from ovarian cancer. Over 14,000 people gathered for King`s eight-hour funeral at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia on February 7, 2006 where daughter Bernice King, who is an elder at the church, eulogized her mother.

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