Resolution 5726 - Laserfiche WebLink

RESOLUTION NO. 5726 A RESOLUTION of the City of Everett to honor the life of Coretta Scott King, a woman who encouraged and supported, through her own actions and those of her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the rise of the civil rights movement WHEREAS, Coretta Scott was born on April 27, 1927, in Marion, Ala. and on June 18, 1953, married Martin Luther King Jr. in a ceremony conducted by the groom's father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr.; and WHEREAS, in September 1954, the young couple moved to Montgomery, Ala., where Martin Luther King Jr. accepted an appointment as Pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church; and WHEREAS, the couple soon organized a boycott of the city's buses following the Dec. 1 arrest of Rosa Parks, who quietly refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man; and WHEREAS, even with the demands of caring for a family with four children, Coretta Scott King continued to pursue a future with her musical talents by developing and performing a series of critically acclaimed Freedom Concerts, which combined poetry, narration and music to tell of the civil rights movement and to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization founded by her husband; and WHEREAS, while Dr. King's fame spread around the world, Coretta Scott King served as a Women's Strike for Peace delegate to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva Switzerland in 1962, became the first woman to deliver the Class Day address at Harvard and the first woman to preach at a statutory service at St. Paul's Cathedral in London; and WHEREAS, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, Coretta Scott King worked to fulfill her husband's dream by creating The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change; and WHEREAS, throughout her life, Coretta Scott King traveled the world spreading the word for a just and right society, led the successful campaign to establish her husband's birthday, Jan. 15, as a national holiday and stood beside Nelson Mandela as he was sworn in as President of South Africa; and WHEREAS, after turning over leadership of the King Center to her son, Dexter, in 1995, Coretta Scott King remained active throughout the rest of her life with racial and economic justice issues and devoted time to AIDS education and curbing gun violence;