The older sister of Coretta Scott King, she worked behind the scenes to promote the Civil Rights Movement and was actively involved in many of the crucial events of that era.

Though Antioch had enjoyed a long history of racial tolerance, Mrs. Bagley was the first African American student admitted to the school in the modern era.

[3] Her sister Coretta met Martin Luther King Jr. while attending the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston after winning a scholarship.

In those years, she helped her sister in developing the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and served on its board of directors for the rest of her life.

[6] Edythe represented her sister and her brother-in-law in 1971 when the Police Athletic League dedicated a building its then-newest center to Martin Luther King Jr. and helped in ceremonies at that time as well.

Edythe received her secondary education at Lincoln School in nearby Marion, where she was exposed to a faculty that was both racially and geographically diverse with members from New England, New York, and the Midwest as a junior that included an appearance in Yellow Springs, Ohio, home of Antioch College.

[12] In the summer of 2010, alumni of Antioch College honored Edythe with the Walter F. Anderson Award, along with William David Chappelle III and Jim Dunn.

[14] The day after her death, Mrs. Bagley's nephew Martin Luther King III reported that she had died and called her a "vibrant, brilliant woman and always a source of strength and wisdom for our mother during the difficult challenges of the civil rights movement.

Over the next two years, she conducted extensive research, gathered family documents, and interviewed countless individuals who had been at the center of the civil rights struggle.

[12] In April 2012, nearly one year after Mrs. Bagley's death, the book, Desert Rose: The Life and Legacy of Coretta Scott King, was published by the University of Alabama Press.