Coretta

Named a Washington Post Book to Read
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A USA Today “New and Noteworthy” Pick
A Read It Forward Favorite Read
A Parade Magazine Pick

Coretta Scott King's true story, told in full for the first time.

"Reveals never-before-told aspects of Mrs. King’s life. . . . We learn of the brilliant mind and courageous spirit behind the enigmatic figure.”
— Essence

Born in 1927 to daringly enterprising parents in the Deep South, Coretta Scott had always felt called to a special purpose. While enrolled as one of the first black scholarship students recruited to Antioch College, she became politically and socially active and committed to the peace movement. As a graduate student at the New England Conservatory of Music, determined to pursue her own career as a concert singer, she met Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister insistent that his wife stay home with the children. But, in love and devoted to shared Christian beliefs as well as shared racial and economic justice goals, she married Dr. King, and events promptly thrust her into a maelstrom of history throughout which she was a strategic partner, a standard-bearer, and so much more.

As a widow and single mother of four, she worked tirelessly to found and develop the King Center as a citadel for world peace; lobbied for fifteen years for a U.S. national holiday in honor of her husband; championed women’s, workers’, and gay rights; and was a powerful international voice for nonviolence, freedom, and human dignity.

"Distinctly . . . particularly absorbing" (Patricia J. Williams, The New York Times Book Review), Coretta’s is a love story, a family saga, and the memoir of an extraordinary black woman in twentieth-century America—a brave leader who, in the face of terrorism and violent hatred, stood committed, proud, forgiving, nonviolent, and hopeful every day of her life.