Coretta Scott King, R.I.P.

r.i.p. sort of forgot that she was two years older than her husband.

i read this earlier. i can only hope for an obituary one third as good as that when i die.

RIP

This made me tear up when I heard it this morning.

This made me weepy too. I met her once and she was both sweet and inspirational. RIP.

rest in peace

RIP... a sad day

ah hell, :(

let the Alito Era begin.

Ms. King was equal to what life brought her way. Damn few of us would have done as well. When you briefly consider what she dealt with, it is screamingly obvious that she was an extremely courageous person. She'll be missed.

If Bush so much as says her name in the State of the Union speech tonight the fucking Congress had better stand and applaud longer and louder than they do for anything else in that speech.

there was a pretty great thing in the nation recently about her efforts in creating the king holiday and its roots in labor

"I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people, and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.

Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence, that spreads all too easily to victimize the next minority group.

Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Georgia, and St. Augustine, Florida, and many other campaigns of the civil rights movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions." - Coretta Scott King, in 1999 at the 25th Anniversary luncheon for the Lambda Legal Defense Fund.

From Andrew Sullivan

I was just about to post that quote. I didn't realize she'd given up a singing career to marry MLK.

My tribute, with many links...

http://blogs.citypages.com/pscholtes/2006/02/coretta_scott_k.asp

from the LA Times:

A day of eulogizing Coretta Scott King turned into a rare, in-person rebuke of President Bush, with a succession of civil rights and political leaders assailing White House policies as evidence that the dream of social and racial equality pursued by King and her slain husband was far from reality.

Bush and his wife, Laura, sat on stage as more than 10,000 cheered suggestions from several speakers that the 1960s civil rights movement led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — and fostered by his widow since his assassination — remains alive and that its goals have not been fully realized. They cited the debates in Washington over the war in Iraq, the recovery from Hurricane Katrina and government eavesdropping.

more vid & commentary about the event(and the reactions)

and the reactions to CNN conservatives decrying this

Forget Dubya, GHWB making a speech when he campaigned against the Civil Rights Act of '64 (losing Senate race) is sickening enough.

Also, SIX hours? And I hallucinated that the Times' account had WJ Clinton quoting PE's "frozen chosen"...

plenty of classy people still out there, too:

With Regard To Today's Funeral Political Rally
By: Blanton · Section: Culture

Why is it that we have to accept the Pantheon of the Left and see their funerals televised -- from Wellstone to Mrs. King?

Why is it that those who participate in these funerals feel compelled to turn a solemn, religious event into a Def Comedy Jam spectacle of anti-Republican, anti-conservative boilerplate "known facts" and demands for handouts?

This is just further indication that the left is out of touch.

To borrow another contributor's phrase -- the media and the left treat the Jesse Jacksons of this country and the Jesse Jacksons of the Middle East with respect, compassion, and understanding. Those of us who work hard for a living to provide for our families, humbly go to church, and try to do unto others as we would have them do unto us see our values, our lifestyles, our beliefs, and our Lord ridiculed and bashed on television, the cover of Rolling Stone, and in the mainstream media.

I also think I have a clearer understanding of why the culture of so many black Americans in this country is below what it should be and is capable of being. The prominent black spiritual leaders, like Joseph Lowery, are more interested in subsidization from The Man(TM) than salvation from the Lord.

The above was pretty well answered in another link above.

But I seem to remember a solid week of uncritical media adulation following Reagan's death...

Reagan who voted against the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act; who launched his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, declaring, "I believe in states' rights" (old code for segregationists, and in a town where three Civil Rights workers were murdered 16 years earlier); who supported Jesse Helms's effort to kill the MLK holiday until it was politically futile to do so; who opposed busing; who supported tax exemptions for schools that discriminate on the basis of race; whose Central American death squads modeled themselves after the KKK...

At my Uni there is a big paper board where people can write kind messages or memories of Coretta Scott King. Someone drew on it a Godzilla with a tall, skinny tophat shooting lazers at his nose at a skyscraper. On his stomach is written "ROSA AND CORETTA WE LUV YOU."