Coretta Scott King Leaves Own Legacy

That is where 12-year-old Maya Stroud waited Tuesday, standing near Martin Luther King's mausoleum, in the shadow of the King Center.

"This is a sad occasion, but it will be very memorable for us," said Stroud, an eighth-grader at Cedar Groove Middle School in Decatur, Ga.

Alicia Turner, 38, recalled waiting on King at Pascals, a famous soul food restaurant frequented by civil rights veterans. They included Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King's right-hand man.

"I used to see all of them -- Coretta Scott King, Abernathy, Shirley Caesar," Turner said, referring to the civil rights leader and renowned gospel singer. "She was an inspiration to all black women to put God first and keep pressing on despite the obstacles."

Those who knew King best spoke in loftier tones.

"She was a freedom fighter," as much as her husband, said civil rights activist Jesse L. Jackson. She walked with her husband during the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., that began the modern civil rights movement, stayed with him when their house was bombed, stood with him at the historic 1963 March on Washington, and marched with him for the right to vote in Selma, Ala.

"With Coretta Scott King today passes the only civil rights leader besides King himself who is irreplaceable," said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.). "She did not simply inherit his legacy, as widows do and as civil rights leaders did. She was King's full partner in the movement as much as in marriage."

Speaking from his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition headquarters in Chicago, Jackson dismissed the debate over the King Center as "an argument in the family" and said Coretta King's legacy "is secure."

On Atlanta's Auburn Avenue, known as the cradle of the civil rights movement because Martin Luther King's former church and Southern Christian Leadership Conference headquarters is there, the Rev. Joseph Lowery spoke soothing words about Coretta Scott King, but followed with strong words to her children regarding the King Center.

"She exercised her leadership with . . . grace," he said. "She became the sentimental symbol of the civil rights movement and we are grateful for her."

But the children need "to get your act together," Lowery said. Bernice and Martin Luther III are fighting to keep the center and its intellectual property as a family holding, while Yolanda and Dexter, who is living in Southern California while pursuing an acting career, have proposed to sell it to the U.S. Park Service for $11 million, roughly the amount needed to modernize the facility.

In a public and sometimes embarrassing power struggle over the property, the brothers have changed the locks on the center as each took turns controlling it.