By Hamil R. Harris and Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 1, 2006; A07
ATLANTA, Jan. 31 -- Hundreds of people -- from powerful politicians to ordinary schoolchildren -- gathered here at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s mausoleum to mourn Coretta Scott King, who died early Tuesday in a small alternative medical facility in Mexico.
A family spokeswoman said the cause of death was ovarian cancer and heart failure.
A statement released by the family late Tuesday said that King, 78, the wife of the slain civil rights leader, went to the Hospital Santa Monica in Playa de Rosarito, a few miles south of San Diego in Baja California, within the past two weeks to seek treatment for advanced ovarian cancer. U.S. doctors had diagnosed the condition as terminal.
King had a stroke in August that left her partly paralyzed, and she had not fully recovered when she learned of the cancer diagnosis. She died about 1 a.m. Pacific time (4 a.m. Eastern), said Lorena Blanco, a spokeswoman for the U.S. consulate in Tijuana. Judy Smith, the family's spokeswoman, said King's daughter Bernice was with her when she died.
President Bush sent his condolences from the White House and Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) offered to let King's body lie in state at the Georgia Capitol. Activists far and wide hailed her as a leader whose legacy rivals that of her famous husband.
King led the fight to make her husband's January birthday a national holiday and established the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, among other accomplishments.
"She was the glue that held the movement together," said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a civil rights veteran who marched with the Kings numerous times.
It was unclear Tuesday why King selected the facility in Mexico. Its founder is a chiropractor with no medical degree who has been sanctioned numerous times by regulators and legal authorities in the United States. A statement from the family said that "Mrs. King and her family wanted to explore other options."
King had traveled to Mexico on a private jet supplied by Bishop T.D. Jakes, founder of Potter's House, a Dallas megachurch.
"We just arranged transportation," Jakes said. "Mrs. King and my mother were schoolmates in Marion, Alabama. Mrs. King was truly the first lady of the civil rights movement. She stood with dignity and poise, and it deeply saddens me that I've lost such a close friend. This is very personal to me."
With King's death, the future of the center she established in her husband's name is thrown into further uncertainty as the couple's four children argue over whether to keep the deteriorating facility in the family or sell it to the federal government for millions of dollars. King's death prompted a former ally in the civil rights struggle to implore her children to settle their differences to save the center.
For now, her children -- Yolanda, Martin Luther III, Dexter and Bernice -- made arrangements to bring her remains to the United States, Blanco said. By law, the body must be embalmed beforehand. It is scheduled to be flown to Atlanta early Wednesday.
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.
Dexter King, in particular, has been the subject of pointed criticism for his stewardship of the center. He once proposed converting the area around it into a Disney-like theme park and, with his mother, fought to control every aspect of his father's writings and speeches, valued at $30 million, yet allowed a pair of telecommunications companies to use King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech to sell their products.
"I don't think King's legacy is in bricks and mortar," Lowery said, "it is in our hearts and minds. I would hope that the [King family] would get a democratically elected board of directors. I am suggesting that the board not belong to one person and I am saying to nieces and nephews to get your act together."
Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, said the issue of who will care for the center will be hard to resolve.
"For so many years, the King Center was kept alive because of her dedicated efforts," Carson said of Coretta King. "I don't know who in that family is prepared to continue doing that. Since her retirement 10 years ago, there's been a lot of uncertainty about how it would be carried on in perpetuity."
Like many in Atlanta, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King preached, was gripped by sadness.
"I had the privilege of praying with Mrs. King on Dr. King's birthday, and even during illness her sense of strength and triumph was apparent," he said.
Warnock said that he knew King was going to Mexico for treatment, but that she seemed okay. Her death caught him off guard.
"I would have not predicted that she would have left us so soon, but in my experience as a pastor it is a call that is never ours to make. We were taken by surprise, because if there was anyone who could push through this and make it, certainly it would be Mrs. King."
Now he hopes for the opportunity to eulogize his friend and Atlanta's most recognizable figure.
"We fully expect" services to take place at Ebenezer Baptist Church, he said. "Ebenezer was her church home. This was her family."
Fears reported from Washington.
