Coretta Scott King - Later Life

Later Life

Every year after the assassination of her husband in 1968, Coretta attended a commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to mark his birthday on January 15. She fought for years to make it a national holiday. Murray M. Silver, an Atlanta attorney, made the appeal at the services on January 14, 1979. Coretta Scott King later confirmed that it was the "...best, most productive appeal ever..." Coretta Scott King was finally successful in this in 1986, when Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was made a federal holiday.

Coretta Scott King attended the state funeral of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1973, as a very close friend of the former president.

In 1979 and 1980 Dr. Noel Erskine and Mrs. King co-taught a class on "The Theology of Martin Luther King, Jr." at the Candler School of Theology (Emory University).

When President Ronald Reagan signed legislation establishing Martin Luther King Day, she was at the event.

She became vegan in the last 10 years of her life.

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