April 27

She was the first woman and first African-American to lie in state at the Georgia State Capitol rotunda.

Coretta Scott was born in 1927 in Alabama and studied music education at Antioch College in Ohio. After graduation she enrolled in The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she met a young Boston University Ph.D. student named Martin Luther King, Jr. They married in 1953 and moved to Atlanta in 1960 when he became co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Coretta Scott King played an integral role in the civil rights activism that became her husband’s life. After her husband was assassinated in 1968, she remained active – focusing on civil rights, women’s rights and world peace. She founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta and advocated successfully for a federal holiday in his honor.

The woman who faced hatred and violence with dignity and strength was born on April 27, 1927, Today in Georgia History.