Biography
American civil rights leader
with her famed husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She survived many
traumatic events including a bombing of their home on January 30, 1956,
shortly after the birth of their first child, her husband’s stabbing two
years later, on September 20, 1958, and his 1968 assassination.
The middle of three children, King grew up in the segregated south. A
good student despite harsh conditions, she graduated high school as
valedictorian of her class. She earned a scholarship and attended
Antioch College in Ohio. There she joined the Antioch chapter of the
NAACP and became active in campus civil rights organizations. With a
B.A. in music and education, King won a scholarship to the New England
Conservatory of Music in Boston, MA. In January 1952, she met her future
husband, Martin Luther King, Jr., then a Ph.D. candidate. They married
on June 18, 1953 and she completed her advanced degree in voice and
violin. In September 1954 they moved to Montgomery, AL, where her
husband had obtained an assignment as Pastor of a Baptist Church. After
Rosa Parks’ arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery City
bus, Martin Luther King, Jr. became a leader of the community protest
which began with a boycott of city buses. He formed the SCLC (Southern
Christian Leadership Conference) on February 14, 1957.
Coretta has said that her husband had rather traditional views of a
woman’s role and she was busy tending to their four children, Yolanda,
born November 17, 1955; Martin III, born October 23, 1957; Dexter born
on January 30, 1961, and Bernice, who arrived on March 28, 1963.
Nevertheless, she was an active supporter of his work. Putting her
musical talents to good use Coretta organized and performed in Freedom
Concerts which told the story of the Civil Rights movement. As her
husband’s fame grew, hers did as well and in the 1960s she found herself
in demand as a public speaker.
On April 4, 1968 her husband was shot and pronounced dead at 7:05 PM CST
in Memphis, TN. After his assassination, the grieving widow immediately
threw herself into his work. Within two days she led 42,000 in a march
of grief and protest. In January 1969 King formed a memorial Center for
Social Change in honor of her martyred husband and lobbied for years to
make his birthday a national holiday. Her autobiography was published
September 25, 1969, "My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr." Throughout
the next several decades she organized and inspired others on behalf of
peace, civil liberties, and justice. In a 1985 protest against
apartheid, she and three of her children were arrested at the South
African embassy in Washington, DC. Ten years later, in 1995 she was
witness to Nelson Mandela’s swearing-in ceremony when he became
President of South Africa.
On August 16, 2005, King suffered a major stroke. At least one report
claimed that she had previously suffered smaller, less-serious strokes.
In addition, she had been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and ovarian
cancer. She was released from the hospital on September 22, 2005. In
January 2006, at age 78, King was admitted to an alternative health
clinic in Mexico. The venerable matriarch and activist died there on
January 30, 2006 at 8:25 PM PST according to her daughter Bernice who
was with her at the time. Religious, political, and activist figures
joined hundreds of supporters at a six-hour service in her honor. Her
eldest daughter Yolanda died at age 51 on May 15, 2007 of a reported
heart problem.
For More Information on the Web:
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/kin1bio-1
http://www.thekingcenter.org/csk/bio.html
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/31/obit.king/
Washington Post Article |
Top
What Do You Think?
Coretta Scott King led an inspirational life.
A civil rights activist in her own right, she married Martin Luther King and
raised their four children while organizing concerts, supporting her
husband’s work and enduring trauma and tragedy. After her husband’s death,
she continued in his footsteps and worked hard to ensure that his legacy
would not be forgotten. Although she is not in the news right now, she is a
historic figure whose life has importance for all times. Let’s study her
chart this week:
-
On their
first date, Martin Luther King, Jr. reportedly told Coretta Scott, "The four
things that I look for in a wife are character, personality, intelligence
and beauty. And you have them all." What in the chart describes these
qualities that evidently captured Martin’s eye? Have a look at his chart,
found elsewhere on our website at:
http://www.astrodatabank.com/NM/KingMartinLuther.htm. What is the
synastry between their charts?
-
What in
Coretta’s birth chart might have foretold her life in the public eye? Would
she have become famous if she hadn’t married Martin Luther King, Jr.? What
in her chart describes her husband, his death, and her assumption of the
mantle of civil rights leader? After she died, Andrew Young said of her,
"She was a woman born to struggle, and she has struggled and she has
overcome." What in the chart describes her lifelong struggle and her success
in dealing with it?
-
King has three
quincunx aspects, one between Jupiter and Neptune. Two others form an exact
yod: Sun and Mars-Midheaven, sextile to each other and both quincunx Saturn,
retrograde in Sagittarius. For students of midpoints, we note that Mars is
the midpoint of Pluto-North Node and, if the time is correctly recorded,
Mars exactly conjoins the MC. What do these positions add to your
interpretation of her chart?
View Others' Answers
|
|
AstroDatabank offers this
privately-funded forum for astrologers who want to share
astrological insights in a respectful and educational way.
AstroDatabank does not condone or support comments that are
profane, obscene or discriminatory against anyone’s race, color,
religious creed, national origin, ancestry, gender, disability,
sexual orientation, veteran status or any other similar
category. While we make an effort to remove as soon as we can
any comments that we deem inappropriate for these or other
discretionary reasons, we cannot guarantee that we are always
able to do so in a timely way given the nature of the Internet.
However, we reserve the right to remove comments or to block
participation at our sole discretion and at any time. Please
understand that users’ comments are their own and do not reflect
the views, techniques or interpretations of anyone at
AstroDatabank. We hope that you will use this forum to share
your astrological insights with your colleagues in a respectful
manner and that you will enjoy reading others’ comments on the
chart under discussion. For more information, please read our
legal disclaimer and terms of service.
Where do you want to go now?
|
