Coretta: My Life, My Love, My Legacy

by Coretta Scott King, Barbara Reynolds

Overview

Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR
The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
The Washington Post’s Books to Read in 2017
USA Today, “New and Noteworthy”
Read it Forward, Favorite Reads of January 2017
A Parade Magazine Pick

"This book is distinctly Coretta's story . . . particularly absorbing. . . generous, in a manner that is unfashionable in our culture."—New York Times Book Review

“Eloquent . . . inspirational"—USA Today

The life story of Coretta Scott King—wife of Martin Luther King Jr., founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (The King Center), and singular twentieth-century American civil and human rights activist—as told fully for the first time, toward the end of her life, to Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds.

Born in 1927 to daringly enterprising parents in the Deep South, Coretta Scott had always felt called to a special purpose. While enrolled as one of the first black scholarship students recruited to Antioch College, she became politically and socially active and committed to the peace movement. As a graduate student at the New England Conservatory of Music, determined to pursue her own career as a concert singer, she met Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister insistent that his wife stay home with the children. But in love and devoted to shared Christian beliefs as well as shared racial and economic justice goals, she married Dr. King, and events promptly thrust her into a maelstrom of history throughout which she was a strategic partner, a standard bearer, and so much more.

As a widow and single mother of four, she worked tirelessly to found and develop The King Center as a citadel for world peace, lobbied for fifteen years for the US national holiday in honor of her husband, championed for women's, workers’ and gay rights and was a powerful international voice for nonviolence, freedom and human dignity.

Coretta’s is a love story, a family saga, and the memoir of an extraordinary black woman in twentieth-century America, a brave leader who, in the face of terrorism and violent hatred, stood committed, proud, forgiving, nonviolent, and hopeful every day of her life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781627795999
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/17/2017
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	488,393
File size:	790 KB

About the Author

Coretta Scott King was an American civil rights activist, international human rights champion, author, the wife of Martin Luther King Jr., and the mother of four. Born in 1927 in Heiberger, Alabama, she died in 2006 in Rosarito Beach, Mexico.

Dr. Barbara Reynolds is an ordained minister, a columnist, and the author of several books, including Out of Hell&Living Well: Healing from the Inside Out. She was a longtime editorial board member of USA Today, won an SCLC Drum Major for Justice Award in 1987, and was inducted into the Board of Preachers at the 29th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. International College of Ministers and Laity at Morehouse College in 2014.

Coretta Scott King was an American civil rights activist, international human rights champion and author, the wife of Martin Luther King Jr., and the mother of four. Born in 1927 in Heiberger, Alabama, she died in 2006 in Rosarito Beach, Mexico.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1
1. We Don’t Have Time to Cry 7
2. A Sense of Belonging 23
3. I Have Something to Offer 31
4. A Brave Soldier 47
5. Time Itself Was Ready 58
6. The Winds of Change 73
7. I Will Never Turn Back 84
8. Pushed to the Breaking Point 89
9. I’ve Been Called by God, Too 95
10. So Evil Only God Could Change It 103
11. I Have a Dream 111
12. Heartbreak Knocked, Faith Answered 118
13. Securing the Right to Vote Was a Blood Covenant 131
14. Moral Concerns Know No Geographic Boundary 142
15. I Don’t Want You to Grieve for Me 151
16. With a Prayer in My Heart, I Could Greet the Morning 172
17. My Fifth Child 185
18. We Must Learn to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable 214
19. Injustice Anywhere Is a Threat to Justice Everywhere 237
20. Happy Birthday, Martin 265
21. Our Children 281
22. I Will Count It All Joy 317

Afterwords 331
by Andrew Young, Maya Angelou, John Conyers, Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, Myrlie Evers-Williams, Patricia Latimore

My Mother, My Mentor 345
by Dr. Bernice A. King

The Making of Her Memoir 351
by Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds

Editorial Reviews

This book is distinctly Coretta's story. While there is nothing to radically challenge the impression of her as carefully restrained, what makes My Life particularly absorbing is its quiet account of a brutal historical era, as experienced by a very particular kind of African-American woman: well educated, cautious, a prototypically 1950s-style wife and mother…Though such women have rarely been given voice, they were the staunch backbone of the civil rights movement…For all the death and tragedy in My Life, it is King's grounding in her husband's theology of peaceful resistance that enables her survival against excruciating odds. Nonviolence, she reiterates, is not a matter of passively accepting whatever happens. It is active. It is a practice.

The New York Times Book Review - Patricia J. Williams

11/28/2016
Reynolds (Out of Hell and Living Well), an ordained minister who was a confidante of Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) since 1975, has produced from their many conversations together a posthumous memoir largely focused on King’s public life. There are few intimate glimpses, although a wife and mother’s anxieties come through strongly, as they did in King’s 1969 memoir, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. The present work includes an array of afterwords (from her daughter Bernice, Maya Angelou, and others) and Reynolds’s postscript, “The Making of Her Memoir.” It begins by revisiting King’s life story and her part in historical events from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to her husband’s assassination. The book’s latter part traces King’s political activism and spiritual commitment since Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, and the roles of their children, Yolanda, Bernice, Martin III, and Dexter, in sustaining his legacy. Overall, though some political disagreements are mentioned, this is a spiritual narrative with God as a frequent directing presence. Readers for whom the Civil Rights Movement is ancient history may get a lot out of Reynolds’s rendering of King’s account. As oral history, aspects will interest academic historians. “In reading this memoir, I hope somehow you see Coretta,” King confides in her introduction. One does, but without the vibrancy, immediacy, and clarity one might hope for. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

‘There is a Mrs. King. There is also Coretta. How one became detached from the other remains a mystery,’ King says. This book is distinctly Coretta’s story. . . particularly absorbing. . . .Living with terror is the threat that runs through ‘My Life’ . . . it is King's grounding in her husband's theology of peaceful resistance that enables her survival against excruciating odds.” —Patricia J. Williams, The New York Times Book Review

“This memoir shows Coretta Scott King . . . as a leader in her own right, as a dedicated pacifist, as a persistent adherent to principles of nonviolence, as a gritty fighter for her husband’s legacy, as a mother . . . . A great and inspirational read . . . .This book put steel in my spine.”—Julianne Malveaux, Pittsburgh Courier

“Eloquent . . . inspirational . . . . King’s life’s work relayed in this rich retelling, provides a possible blueprint — and a beacon.”—USA Today

“In [Coretta: My Life, My Love, My Legacy], legendary journalist Barbara Reynolds reveals never-before-told aspects of Mrs. King’s life . . . . We learn of the brilliant mind and courageous spirit behind the enigmatic figure.”—Essence

“The full life story of the civil rights activist and humanitarian is much more than just Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s wife. . . . It is her commitment to bettering the world that will keep her story alive in our hearts.”—Ebony.com

“The portrait that emerges here is of a woman of tremendous faith, resilience and pride . . . . By the time she died, she’d fought for a lifetime of causes.”—New York Post

“An important heroine in her own right, Coretta Scott King’s story is mesmerizing.”—Read It Forward

“This account of family, faith, and activism . . . is told so genuinely that it leaves the impression of having heard the words directly from the late activist. . . . Highly recommended.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“King was undoubtedly a singular woman, and readers will be struck by just how strongly her exceedingly compelling story resonates today. She was much more than just the woman behind the man, and now, in the most eloquent of language, she proves that truth once and for all to generations of readers who will embrace her all over again.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Gracious, elegant . . . . A touching memoir from an important figure in the civil rights movement.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A spiritual narrative with God as a frequent directing presence . . . . ‘In reading this memoir, I hope somehow you see Coretta,’ King confides in the introduction. One does.”—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

01/01/2017
An autobiography of King, as told at the end of her life to writer and ordained minister Reynolds. (LJ 12/16)

Library Journal

2016-11-09
A posthumous memoir by Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow, told via a journalist, minister, and longtime friend.In an afterward, Reynolds, a journalist and friend to Coretta Scott King (1927-2006) and a former USA Today editorial board member, offers the "making of her memoir," which required many recorded interviews since her first article about King for the Chicago Tribune in 1975, with their formal contract signed in 1997. Overall, the tone is as gracious, elegant, and soft-spoken as the legendary Southern lady and concert singer, who was born in the deeply segregated town of Heiberger, Alabama, where her black family was regularly terrorized by whites, including the burning of her house when she was 15 years old. Resilient and fearless due to the example of her harassed father, King was inculcated in the Mount Tabor AME Zion church, where her grandfathers were leaders. Attending the Lincoln missionary school, she found her "escape route" from the South in multicultural Antioch College (Ohio), then followed her passion for classical music to the New England Conservatory, in Boston, where she met the "too short" and unprepossessing minister from Atlanta, MLK Jr. Coretta wanted to be a concert singer and live comfortably in the North, while Martin wanted her to be his wife and have children and move to Montgomery to fight desegregation with nonviolence. Eventually, she came around to embrace his ideals. While her memoir is very much her own journey, it is also about her collaboration with her husband, and she insists they both had a calling by God: "God appeared to have appointed Martin and me…to become the messengers." The author does not countenance rumors that her husband was unfaithful, insisting that the FBI planted evidence as a smear campaign. In the end, her four children and her "fifth child," the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, in Atlanta, remain her greatest legacies.A touching memoir from an important figure in the civil rights movement.

Kirkus Reviews