More than 10,000 people on Saturday filed past the coffin of Coretta Scott King, the late widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior, who died on Tuesday at the age of 78.
King became the first woman and the first black person to be honored with a public viewing in the Capitol, the government seat of the southern state of Georgia.
Braving rain and the cold, admirers of Coretta Scott King lined up for five city blocks to pay their final respects to a woman sometimes called the first lady of Civil Rights. Many spent more than two hours standing in line to enter the Capitol.
PHOTO: AP
"She stood by [her husband's] side when he was cursed at, spat on, beaten and had their family's lives threatened," law professor Jeremy Levitt wrote in a Sun-Times group tribute.
"She was there when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and marched with him on numerous occasions, most notably in Selma, Alabama, in 1965," he added.
Coretta and Martin Luther King's four children, Yolanda, Bernice, Martin Luther III, and Dexter, spent a few private moments by the open casket before the rotunda was opened to the public.
US President George W. Bush has postponed a trip to New Hampshire to attend King's funeral, scheduled here for tomorrow, and was expected to make remarks as part of the service, the White House said.
He will be accompanied by First Lady Laura Bush.
King, a civil rights activist in her own right who carried on her husband's mission after his assassination in 1968, died this week aged 78.
Her body was flown to Atlanta on Wednesday from Mexico, where she had sought treatment for ovarian cancer.
A horse-drawn carriage brought her casket to the Capitol, where a lone bagpiper played the hymn Amazing Grace as an honor guard carried the coffin into the rotunda under the solemn gaze of Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue and other mourners.
Her body was to lie in state in the Capitol's rotunda through late Saturday.
Her husband was denied the honor under then-governor Lester Maddox following his April 1968 assassination.
"She's in a place of everlasting equality now," Perdue said
`Courageous'
He described King as "a gracious and courageous woman, an inspiration for millions and one of the most influential civil rights leaders of our time."
Perdue added that she was "absolutely an anchor and support for her husband."
Coretta Scott, a promising singer, married King in 1953 and immediately supported his equal rights campaign, often speaking on his behalf when he was unable to attend an engagement.
Four days after his assassination on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Coretta Scott King led an equal rights march by 50,000 people through the streets of the Tennessee city.
While raising four children, she also campaigned fiercely to keep alive her husband's message of non-violent change.
Today, her body will be moved to the Baptist church in Atlanta where Martin Luther King used to preach and where the funeral service will be held.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS