50 Fun Facts About Coretta Scott King

Coretta Scott King paid the hospital bill when which future Oscar-winning actress was born in the Atlanta area in 1967?

Julia Roberts was born to parents who ran an integrated Atlanta acting school that the King children attended. Mrs. King settled the bill because the family was struggling for money.

Which future Emmy-winning actor did Coretta Scott King babysit during her student years in a small Ohio town?

John Lithgow spent his childhood in Yellow Springs, where the future Mrs. King was training to be a music teacher. She looked after him years before either of them was famous.

Where did Coretta Scott King and her new husband spend their 1953 wedding night, as no nearby hotel took Black guests?

A funeral home took in the newlyweds because no hotel near her hometown would rent a room to a Black couple. They had just married on the lawn of her parents' house.

Which senator was silenced in 2017 for reading aloud a 1986 letter by Coretta Scott King opposing a judicial nominee?

Elizabeth Warren was barred from the rest of the debate, so she finished reading the letter on a live stream outside the chamber. It had argued against making Jeff Sessions a federal judge.

Which television host gave Coretta Scott King a new Atlanta condominium after an intruder broke into her longtime home?

Oprah Winfrey made the gift years after a man who later admitted killing women got into the old house at night and found Mrs. King sitting in bed.

In 1969 Coretta Scott King became the first woman to preach at a regular service in which London landmark?

St. Paul's Cathedral had never before heard a woman give the sermon at one of its appointed services. Mrs. King made the trip with her sister and her sister-in-law.

Coretta Scott King asked which entertainer to take her late husband's place leading the civil rights movement?

Josephine Baker thought the offer over and declined, saying her twelve adopted children were too young to lose their mother.

Which Motown star backed Coretta Scott King's campaign for a holiday honoring her husband with a 1980 tribute song?

Stevie Wonder released the single Happy Birthday to rally support, and six million people signed a petition to Congress. The holiday became law three years later.

Super Bowl XL in 2006 began with a moment of silence for Coretta Scott King and which other civil rights figure?

Rosa Parks had died the previous October in Detroit, the city hosting the game, and Mrs. King only six days before kickoff.

Coretta Scott King was born on a family farm in 1927 in which Southern state, where she later married?

Alabama's Perry County had been home to the Scotts since the Civil War era. She was born in her parents' house, with her great-grandmother, a former slave, acting as midwife.

Which crop did the young Coretta Scott King pick alongside her siblings to earn money during the Great Depression?

Cotton was the cash crop of the Scott family farm, and the children picked it to add to the household income. All of them shared a single bedroom with their parents.

Which job did Coretta Scott King's mother take on so that local Black teenagers could get to class nine miles away?

Driving the school bus was her mother's fix for a trip too far to walk. She hired the vehicle herself and collected every Black student in the community each day.

Which business owned by Coretta Scott King's father was burned down after he refused to sell it to a white buyer?

A lumber mill was one of several ventures run by Obie Scott, who was among the first Black people in his town to own a vehicle. He and his wife also kept a general store.

Which brass instrument did Coretta Scott King play at Lincoln high school, alongside piano and a place in the chorus?

Trumpet and piano were both in her repertoire by the time she finished school at the top of her class. She had also become the leading soprano of the senior chorus.

Coretta Scott King followed her older sister to which Ohio college, where she studied music and education?

Antioch had admitted her sister Edythe as its first Black student on a fully integrated basis. Coretta followed in 1945 on a partial scholarship.

At which music school was Coretta Scott King studying voice when she met her future husband in 1952?

New England Conservatory took her in 1951 to train as a singer, with a foundation grant to help pay her way. A mutual friend passed her phone number to a young theology student, and they married the following year.

What surprised Coretta Scott King about her future husband when the two first met in person in 1952?

How short he was struck her at once when he turned up after a single phone call. On that first date he told her she had every quality he wanted in a wife.

Which traditional promise did Coretta Scott King have cut from her 1953 wedding vows, a rare step for the time?

To obey was a vow she refused to make, so it was dropped from the ceremony, which her father-in-law conducted.

Coretta Scott King moved in 1954 to which Southern city, where her husband led Dexter Avenue Baptist Church?

Montgomery became home that September, and within fifteen months a mass boycott had made the young couple famous. She sang in the church choir and taught Sunday school.

What happened to the house of Coretta Scott King in January 1956 while she and her baby daughter were inside?

It was bombed by a device thrown at the front door, which filled the living room with smoke and broken glass. Nobody was hurt, and she refused both fathers' pleas to leave town with the baby.

Which presidential candidate phoned a pregnant Coretta Scott King in 1960 to offer help while her husband sat in jail?

John F. Kennedy made the call late in the campaign, and his brother then helped win the release. Historians credit the gesture with swinging many Black voters his way.

Coretta Scott King travelled with her husband in 1957 to celebrate the independence of which West African nation?

Ghana's new prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah, invited the couple and gave them a private lunch. He and his ministers wore their old prison caps to the ceremony.

Which country did Coretta Scott King tour with her husband in 1959, singing for audiences along the way?

India kept the couple busy with invitations to hundreds of engagements. She said later that she was struck by how large a part women played in the country's politics.

Coretta Scott King travelled to which Swiss city in 1962 as a Women Strike for Peace delegate to disarmament talks?

Geneva was hosting a seventeen-nation conference on arms control, and she attended on behalf of an American women's group opposed to nuclear testing.

To which city did Coretta Scott King travel in 1964 to watch her husband receive the Nobel Peace Prize?

Oslo, Norway, held the ceremony that December, with her husband at 35 the youngest winner the peace prize had yet had.

What name did Coretta Scott King give the fundraising shows of song, poetry and narration she staged in the 1960s?

Freedom Concerts told the story of the movement in music and spoken word, and the ticket money went to her husband's organization, the SCLC.

Which Black leader met privately with Coretta Scott King in Selma in 1965, weeks before he was assassinated?

Malcolm X assured her he had not come to make her husband's job harder. He hoped that seeing the alternative would make white Americans readier to listen to a nonviolent leader.

Which NAACP chairman skipped the 2006 service for Coretta Scott King over the host church's anti-gay stance?

Julian Bond said he could not imagine her wanting to be in a megachurch whose pastor preached against gay people, after her years of speaking up for their rights.

In which city did Coretta Scott King lead a march of sanitation workers four days after her husband was killed there?

Memphis saw her walk at the head of the march with her children on the day before her husband was buried. He had planned to lead it himself.

Weeks after her husband's death, Coretta Scott King gave an anti-war speech in New York using notes found where?

In his pockets were notes that included his Ten Commandments on Vietnam, and she built her address to the rally around them. The event fell on her own birthday.

In 1968 Coretta Scott King became the first woman to deliver the Class Day address at which university?

Harvard's seniors heard her in the same year she was widowed, and a year later she broke a similar barrier in a London pulpit.

A 1968 photograph of the grieving Coretta Scott King with her youngest child won which award for Moneta Sleet Jr.?

Pulitzer Prize judges honored the Ebony photographer the following year, making him the first African American man to win one.

Coretta Scott King built the King Center in Atlanta beside which church, where her husband had been co-pastor?

Ebenezer Baptist was her husband's home pulpit, shared with his father, and the memorial she founded in 1968 grew up next door. The couple are entombed on its grounds.

Which agency kept Coretta Scott King under surveillance from 1968 to 1972, fearing she would unite two movements?

FBI files show the bureau worried she would tie the anti-Vietnam War cause to civil rights, and its agents even studied her memoir for clues to her character.

Which president signed the law creating the holiday that Coretta Scott King had spent fifteen years campaigning for?

Ronald Reagan had at first opposed the idea, but Congress passed it by veto-proof margins and Mrs. King was there to watch him sign.

Coretta Scott King was arrested in 1985 during a protest outside which country's embassy in the American capital?

South Africa's embassy was the target of a string of anti-apartheid protests, and she was arrested there alongside two of her children.

Coretta Scott King signed on as a commentator in 1980 with which cable network, then in its first year on air?

CNN founder Ted Turner announced the signing himself that September, during the Atlanta news channel's first months on air.

Which diet did Coretta Scott King follow for roughly the last ten years of her life, as her son Dexter did?

Vegan meals were already a habit of her son Dexter, who had been won over to meat-free eating by the comedian and activist Dick Gregory.

In which country did Coretta Scott King die in 2006, days after checking into a clinic for alternative treatment?

Mexico's Rosarito Beach, just below the California border, was home to the clinic, which the authorities closed down soon after her death.

Coretta Scott King was the first woman and first African American given which honor in the rotunda of Georgia's capitol?

Lying in state followed a procession in which a horse-drawn carriage carried her casket through Atlanta. Thousands of mourners filed past before her funeral.

Which of Coretta Scott King's four children, a minister born in 1963, delivered the eulogy when she died in 2006?

Bernice, the youngest, was five when she was pictured in her mother's lap as her father was laid to rest. She grew up to be both a minister and a lawyer.

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards, first given in 1970, honor outstanding African American creators of what?

Youth literature is the award's whole field: the American Library Association gives it each year to Black authors and illustrators of books for children and teens. The first went to a biography of her husband.

The Embrace, a bronze unveiled in 2023 of Coretta Scott King's arms around her husband, stands in which city?

Boston Common holds the 20-foot sculpture, which shows only four intertwined arms. It recalls the hug the couple shared after he learned he had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Which actress played Coretta Scott King twice, in the HBO film Boycott and again in the 2014 film Selma?

Carmen Ejogo, a British actress, first took the part in 2001 and returned to it thirteen years later opposite David Oyelowo.

Which actress earned an Emmy nomination for playing Coretta Scott King in the 1978 television miniseries King?

Cicely Tyson starred opposite Paul Winfield in the drama, which aired on NBC over three consecutive nights and earned nine Emmy nominations in all.

Coretta Scott King belonged to which historically Black sorority, founded at Howard University in 1908?

Alpha Kappa Alpha was founded on January 15, the date of her husband's birthday. Its members have also included Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison.

The Jewish National Fund honored Coretta Scott King by naming what after her in the Galilee region of Israel?

A forest was a natural tribute from a fund known for planting trees, and it was dedicated to her message of equality and peace.

In 1983 Coretta Scott King led a mass rally to mark the twentieth anniversary of which famous protest?

The March on Washington of 1963 was where her husband spoke of his dream. Her anniversary rally pressed Congress to pass the holiday bill, which became law that autumn.

Which pet name did the husband of Coretta Scott King use for her, even when the two were only dating?

Corrie was his name for her from their courtship in the early 1950s. Her given name honored her grandmother Cora, who died before she was born.

Which actress played Coretta Scott King opposite Mary J. Blige in the 2013 television film Betty and Coretta?

Angela Bassett starred in the Lifetime drama, which follows the friendship of two women widowed by assassins three years apart.