(Atlanta, Georgia) Coretta Scott King, the widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., died this morning. She was 78.
Until she was disabled by a stroke last August King frequently spoke out, often to the anger of some Black pastors, in favor of LGBT civil rights.
King called her critics "misinformed" and said that Martin Luther King's message to the world was one of equality and inclusion.
In 2003, she invited the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to take part in observances of the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech.
It was the first time that an LGBT rights group had been invited to a major event of the African American community and drew the ire of some of the other speakers.
King said her husband supported the quest for equality by gays and reminded her critics that the 1963 March on Washington was organized by Bayard Rustin, an openly gay man.
NGLTF executive director Matt Foreman, who spoke at the 2003 anniversary, called Coretta King a model for equality.
“Our community has lost a dear and courageous friend, someone who was there for us when virtually no one else was," Foreman said on Tuesday.
"Mrs. King never hesitated to use her moral authority to proclaim that homophobia is hate, and hate has no place in the Beloved Community that she and Dr. King envisioned for our nation and our world."
In March 2004, she told a university audience that same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue and denounced a proposed amendment to the Constitution ban it.
"Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union," she said in a speech at The Richard Stockton College in Pomona, New Jersey.
"A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages."
In her speech King also criticized a group of black pastors in her home state of Georgia for backing a bill to amend that state's constitution to block gay and lesbian couples from marrying.
“All of us who aspire to live without prejudice or limits owe a very large debt to Mrs. King,” C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network said following the announcement of her death.
“She was what Virginia Woolf once called that rare combination of ‘granite and rainbow,’ at once an immovable legacy on which we all stood and a luminous reminder of the arc waiting just behind the rain. A tireless advocate for equality, she leaves us both her own work and the work we must all yet do.”
Gay Democrats also remembered King's contributions.
"Standing behind a great movement was a grand woman who shouldered the hopes of our American dream," said Eric Stern, National Stonewall Democrats Executive Director.
"Returning to Memphis five days after the assassination of her husband to demand justice for working families, Coretta Scott King continued her advocacy for the expansion of liberty embodied by their partnership. Mrs. King argued that our nation would not fulfill its promise unless all Americans, including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens, were afforded equal treatment under the law."
Coretta Scott met Martin Luther King Jr. while she was studying at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music.
They were married in June of 1953 and a year later moved to Montgomery, Alabama, to take on the leadership of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
When Dr. King was assassinated she was a young widow with four young children to raise.
The killing instantly thrust her to the forefront of the civil rights movement. She took up her husband's mantle of social justice crusader speaking in forums across this country and around the world.
Her death was announced by former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young. He said that she will be buried beside her husband at the Martin Luther King Center for NonViolent Social Change.
