A witness to history
http://www.lsjournal.com/100/story/43531.html
Mary Scott Hicks recounts tales of cousin Coretta Scott King, civil rights
Feb. 02, 2010
Miranda Wycoff, Journal Staff
"Coretta had all the faith," said Coretta Scott King's first cousin,
Mary Scott Hicks.
Mary saw that faith tested time and time again, even before Coretta
married Martin Luther King Jr., in 1953. The girls grew up together
in the small town of Marion, Ala., in the 1930s and 40s.
Mary was two years younger than Coretta born in 1929, but Mary said
she was always the one who told Coretta about what the adults were
talking about.
"My mother would tell me about the Klan and all the bad things
happening," Mary said. "Coretta's mother just kept her reading."
So when Coretta and Mary were at school one day the county school
allowed black and white children to go together, although their play
area was separated by a fence and Coretta saw a young white boy
sitting by himself, she went over to talk to him.
But when she reached him at the fence, he spit on her.
"She ran around that fence so fast, and whipped him good and then ran
back around," Mary said with a twinkle in her eye. Even today, almost
70 years after the incident, it was easy to see Mary was proud of her
usually reserved cousin.
Coretta and Mary had no idea what repercussions would come of that
seemingly courageous schoolyard act. Later that day, Coretta had
lingered in the pastures on her way home. Her mother and father were
worried about her, as it was starting to get late.
"I said, 'Miss Bernice, Coretta will be alright she's not afraid of
anything,'" Mary said. "She scratched that boy up good."
But Obie Scott, Coretta's father and Mary's uncle, knew something the
young girls did not.
Earlier that day Obie overheard a man in town say, "That little Negro
girl who scratched my son up will never again see the light of day."
So Mary was sent up to the pasture to find her cousin.
"I found her tied up underneath a tree," Mary said, shuddering as she
recounted the scene. "Not far away were nooses tied to another tree
branch. When I bent down to check on her, they caught me too."
Mary said the men had run out of rope and tied her up with their own
shoelaces.
"Coretta had her mouth taped up, so I took it off for her," Mary
said. "When I did, she said, 'Now Mary, don't yell, things will be
alright. Someone is going to come find us.
"She said, 'Mary something tells me everything is going to be all
right," Mary said. "But I didn't believe her. I said, 'Well something
hasn't told me nothin'!'"
That faith her older cousin had, Mary said, calmed her down and soon
enough Obie came creeping up with his shotgun.
"He walked right up on them and fired shots in the air," Mary said.
"One shot up and they ran. We never heard from them again."
But that was certainly not the last hardship for the Scott cousins
and their families.
One evening a few white men came to Mary's house and summoned her
stepfather to "help them" that evening.
He didn't come home.
A few days later, Mary's family received a tip from another white man
about where they might find their stepfather.
"We found him strapped to a tree with bullet holes in him," Mary said.
Another time, Mary and her brother had concocted a plan to "get the
men" who beat up Coretta's father by burning down their house.
Mary said Obie would tell Coretta's mother, Bernice, everyday that he
wasn't sure if he would come back or not.
"That's the fear we lived in," Mary said.
The ever-feisty Mary persuaded her first cousin to tag along on the
adventure to burn down the house of the men who beat up Obie.
"My brother put the oil down, I had the matches, and I told Coretta
to bring the fuses," Mary said.
But Coretta didn't bring them saying she forgot, but knowing in her
heart that what they were about to do was not the right thing.
"Coretta had all the faith. I had none," Mary said. "Her mother
taught her to not do evil for evil and she knew it was wrong."
Mary recounted several incidents each in itself something no one
should have to endure.
But for Mary and her cousin, those recurring incidents were
commonplace in rural Alabama and across the south.
"I witnessed history," Mary said. "I lived it."
A few years later, Mary's mother found a burning cross in their yard
with a note demanding her family leave before sundown all because
she tried to take a spoiled chicken back to the butcher shop. Mary
and her family immediately moved from Marion to Sylacaugua, Ala.
From there, Coretta and Mary went their separate ways. Mary moved to
Dayton, Ohio and Coretta met and married Martin Luther King Jr. and
began something Mary never foresaw as a child growing up in Marion, Ala.
"I can hardly imagine it now," Mary said of her cousin's mark on the
Civil Rights movement.
But the cousins never forgot the bond they forged. When King was put
in jail, Coretta called Mary to help get him out. And when Mary saw
Coretta still living in a dangerous Atlanta neighborhood after King's
death, Mary made an important phone call to persuade her to move.
Years after Coretta's death, Mary still proudly displays pictures of
her first cousin in her home at John Knox Village in Lee's Summit
she decided to retire there last May.
"She was born for that job," Mary said of Coretta's role in the Civil
Rights movement.
Mary said she will never forget the lessons of faith her cousin
taught her, as she still lives those lessons each day.
"At 81, I'm enjoying my life and using those lessons I was taught,"
Mary said with perhaps the same feisty smile that she gave Coretta
those many years ago.
--
To reach Journal reporter Miranda Wycoff, call 816-282-7017, or
e-mail mwycoff@lsjournal.com.
--------
Coretta Scott King - More Than Wife and Widow - Deserves Special Recognition
http://www.seattlemedium.com/News/article/article.asp?NewsID=101284&sID=34&ItemSource=L
by Rev. Barbara Reynolds
NNPA Columnist
Originally posted 2/10/2010
(NNPA) - Four years have passed since the death of Coretta Scott King
on January 30, 2006.
What greater time than now to commemorate her legacy by naming
schools, federal and state office buildings and highways after her.
King's activism before, during and after the death of her husband,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. helped transform this nation, an
accomplishment too important to be marginalized or forgotten.
In taped interviews over a two-year period to complete a biography,
Mrs. King often emphasized that she was much more than just the wife
or the widow of her husband. "I was an activist when I met him. I was
a partner with him in the movement and I remained an activist after
Martin was gone. I was married to the man I loved, but I was also
married to the cause which helped me to go on without him."
Here is a woman whose life is a stand- alone heroic epic. As a young
girl she sometimes worked in the piercing hot sun of Alabama as a
hired-hand picking cotton for two dollars a week, but rose in
prominence to help pick presidents, mayors, and congressional leaders.
Mrs. King grew to womanhood in the 40's when it was unacceptable for
women to further their dreams outside the confines of their homes.
Yet, she proved that a woman could become a housewife, raise four
children and still become a co-partner on a violent battlefield with
her husband in one of the world's greatest human rights movement.
As a student at Antioch College, she became involved in the peace
movement. "Before I ever met Martin in 1952 I was involved in
politics. I did not become an activist after Martin's death, as some
might think. I was an activist when I met him.
Before she married King, she had to learn to live with fear. As a
teenager, whites home burned down her family. Once married, threats
were constant and sometimes real. She was at home with her infant
daughter, Yolanda, when her house was bombed during the 1956
Montgomery Bus Boycott. "The bombing helped me to face fear and
understand my faith in God was stronger than my fears."
After Martin's assassination, she said: "I had to fight back the
tears and find the strength within to perpetuate Martin's legacy by
keeping the Dream alive. "We did that through the creation of the Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-violent Social Change, which I
envisioned as the West Point of non-violence. We created non-violent
training programs that are still being conducted around the world. We
promoted a national holiday as a model for commemorating Martin's
sacrifice and service for others to follow. Wherever there was
injustice--war, discrimination against women, gays, and the
disadvantaged-- I did my best to show up and exert moral persuasion
for what is right.
Mrs. King said, "We spurred redevelopment in Atlanta, creating the
diversity that helped attract the 1996 Summer Olympics and the Center
continues to attract visitors from around the world, which brings in
million to Atlanta through tourism."
So far, Atlanta has not named any major buildings or highways after
Mrs. King. This special recognition has been bestowed on many other
movement leaders, such as the late Ralph D. Abernathy and former
United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young, both of whom were top King aides.
This shortcoming bothers loyalists, such as Steve Klein, the King
Center's Communications Director. "After all she did for the nation,
especially Atlanta, it is surprisingly that so little has been done
in her honor. A charter school named after her is about it. She took
a deteriorating community, vacant lots and blight and through her
work there is a King Complex, with a federal park, the King birth
home, the gravesites where both Kings are entombed, all of which has
become a spiritual Mecca."
Dr. King once said of Coretta, "No matter where I am if she is not
with me she is only a heartbeat away." Yet, no matter who stood
beside Dr. King, he would overshadow them in life as well as death.
Nevertheless Mrs. King must not be allowed to recede in the shadows
of history. She once told me, "My story is a freedom song, of
struggle. It about finding one's purpose, how to overcome fear and to
stand up for causes bigger than one's self."
Mrs. King's story must be writ large. If we fail to do so, a respect
for process, perspective and posterity will suffer.
Journalism necessity requires shorthand. To say she built a Center
and spoke out for injustice requires only a few words. It sounds
easy, however, it was not. Somehow we must take the time to dig into
the details of how many years all that took, how many tears were shed
in the process.
Moreover, it is difficult to communicate to a younger generation how
the nation moved from people being killed for trying to exercise
their voting rights to the election of the first black president
without studying the life of activists like Mrs. King who aided in
the transformation.
Mrs. King worked tirelessly to preserve her husband's legacy, which
in the end became her farewell gift to the nation as well... It seems
only right to commemorate both Kings because they were two souls with
one goal. And they served our country well.
--
Dr. Barbara Reynolds is an ordained minister and author of five
books, one of which is entitled No I Won't Shut Up for which Mrs.
King wrote the foreword.
.
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