[1] In August 2005, King suffered a stroke which paralyzed her right side and left her unable to speak; five months later, she died of respiratory failure due to complications from ovarian cancer.

While the Kings had tea and meals with their son and Scott, Martin Sr. turned his attention to her and insinuated that her plans of a career in music were not fitting for a Baptist minister's wife.

In January 1956, she answered numerous phone calls threatening her husband's life, as rumors intended to make African Americans dissatisfied with Martin Luther King spread that he had purchased a Buick station wagon for her.

[46] On January 30, 1956, Coretta and Dexter congregation member Roscoe Williams' wife Mary Lucy heard the "sound of a brick striking the concrete floor of the front porch."

"[66] Coretta sorted the tapes with the rest of the mail, listened to them, and immediately called her husband, "giving the Bureau a great deal of pleasure with the tone and tenor of her reactions.

[71] Coretta Scott King criticized the sexism of the Civil Rights Movement in January 1966 in New Lady magazine, saying in part, "Not enough attention has been focused on the roles played by women in the struggle.

After the marchers reached the staging area at the Civic Center Plaza in front of Memphis City Hall, onlookers proceeded to take pictures of King and her children but stopped when she addressed everyone at a microphone.

[86] With the end of the funeral service, King led her children and mourners in a march from the church to Morehouse College, her late husband's alma mater.

[99] On October 15, 1969, King was the lead speaker at the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam demonstration in Washington, D.C., where she led a crowd down Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House bearing candles.

On July 25, 1978, King held a press conference in defense of then-Ambassador Andrew Young and his controversial statement on political prisoners in American jails.

[107] On August 26, 1983, King resented endorsing Jesse Jackson for president, since she wanted to back up someone she believed could beat Ronald Reagan, and dismissed her husband becoming a presidential candidate had he lived.

[111] On February 9, 1987, eight civil rights activists were jailed for protesting the exclusion of African Americans during the filming of The Oprah Winfrey Show in Cumming, Georgia.

King was outraged over the arrests, and wanted members of the group, "Coalition to End Fear and Intimidation in Forsyth County", to meet with Georgia Governor Joe Frank Harris to "seek a just resolution of the situation.

[116] On January 17, 1994, the day marking the 65th birthday of her husband, King said: "No injustice, no matter how great, can excuse even a single act of violence against another human being.

[118] During the fall of 1995, King chaired an attempt to register one million African American female voters for the presidential election next year with fellow widows Betty Shabazz and Myrlie Evers and was saluted by her daughter Yolanda in a Washington hotel ballroom.

[119] On October 12, 1995, King spoke about the O. J. Simpson murder case, which she negated having a long-term effect on relations between races when speaking to an audience at Soka University in Aliso Viejo, California.

Coretta Scott King fought to ensure that her husband's legacy was not distorted and the history told at his monument in Washington D.C., was true to the Civil Rights Movement.

[129][130] During the 1980s, Coretta Scott King reaffirmed her long-standing opposition to apartheid, participating in a series of sit-in protests in Washington, D.C., that prompted nationwide demonstrations against South African racial policies.

[139] On April 1, 1998, at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, King called on the civil rights community to join in the struggle against homophobia and anti-gay bias.

"Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood", she stated.

"[141][142][143] On November 9, 2000, she repeated similar remarks at the opening plenary session of the 13th annual Creating Change Conference, organized by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

[144][145][146][147] 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 Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech.

[148] Her funeral was conducted by Bishop Eddie Long, which has been criticized by then-NAACP chairman Julian Bond who refused to attend it, stating that he "just couldn't imagine that she'd want to be in that church with a minister who was a raving homophobe".

[165] Coretta Scott King died in the late evening of January 30, 2006,[166] at the rehabilitation center in Mexico, in the Oasis Hospital where she was undergoing holistic therapy for her stroke and advanced-stage ovarian cancer.

However, when King failed to meet his own standards by missing a plane and fell into a level of despair, Coretta told her husband over the phone that "I believe in you, if that means anything.

"[175] Author Ron Ramdin wrote "King faced many new and trying moments, his refuge was home and closeness to Coretta, whose calm and soothing voice whenever she sang, gave him renewed strength.

[188] Jowers himself refused to identify the man he claimed killed Martin Luther King, as a favor to who he confirmed as the deceased killer with alleged ties to organized crimes.

Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge.

[203] In 1970, the American Library Association began awarding a medal named for Coretta Scott King to outstanding African-American writers and illustrators of children's literature.

Among the staff and students, the acronym for the school's name, CSKYWLA (pronounced "see-skee-WAH-lah"), has been coined as a protologism to which this definition has given – "to be empowered by scholarship, non-violence, and social change."