AP News, January 14th, 2007
It's been a year since Coretta Scott King received thunderous applause when she surprised guests at the annual Salute to Greatness Dinner and appeared on stage, smiling and waving with her children.
On Saturday, guests again applauded the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., as she was honored posthumously for her human rights contributions and work to preserve her husband's legacy in the decades after his death.
The event is the primary fundraiser for The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, which Coretta Scott King founded in the basement of the couple's home shortly after her husband's death in 1968.
King suffered a stroke and heart attack in August 2005 and battled ovarian cancer before she died in January 2006.
"The loss of this amazing and gallant woman was devastating for the nation and the King Center family," said her nephew, Isaac Newton Farris Jr. _ who now leads the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
Civil rights widow Myrlie Evers-Williams joined Andrew Young, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and the King children in paying tribute to the civil rights matriarch.
"She was a woman that we know lives on in our hearts, minds and deeds," Evers-Williams told the audience. "Coretta Scott King...was a queen. Let us reach out and embrace her."
The coalition, led by Franklin, that helped secure the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection last summer was also honored at the gala.
"This is the foundation of a history yet to be told in Atlanta," Franklin said of the collection _ also known as the King Papers _ as she accepted the Salute to Greatness award from Dexter King with Young by her side.
Recorded tributes from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Maya Angelou were also played during the dinner.
"She could so easily have been satisfied to have been the spouse ... of one of the greatest human beings to walk the planet Earth but, no," Tutu said. "She was a giant in her own right and so many of us are so much the better for being touched by her."
Yolanda King, who emceed the event, led a joyous rendition of Stevie Wonder's version of "Happy Birthday" as she stood with her siblings Dexter and Bernice and her extended family to sing for her father, who would have been 78 on Monday. Their brother, Martin Luther King III, did not attend because of a prior engagement, Yolanda King said.
The gala is one of a series of tributes to Coretta Scott King across the city.
On Friday, a group of American and African human rights activists laid a white flower wreath at the King crypt _ which now houses both Kings _ at The King Center's reflecting pool.
The symbolic wreath laying recalls a tradition started by Coretta Scott King to mark her husband's birthday on Jan. 15 even before the day became a federal holiday. Each year, from 1969 to 2005, she publicly remembered him at events at his tomb and at Ebenezer Baptist Church _ where King preached from 1960 to 1968 _ including the wreath laying.
