#WCW Feminist Profile: Coretta Scott King

This week, while we honor and celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr., I also wanted to take a moment to celebrate Coretta Scott King. Coretta was an American activist, author, musician, singer, and civil rights leader, and fought alongside her husband in the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960’s.

Coretta Scott, named after her grandmother Cora McLaughlin Scott, was born in Marion, Alabama on April 27th, 1927 to Obadiah and Bernice Scott. The Scott family had owned a farm since the American Civil War, but were not wealthy by any means. During the Great Depression, Coretta and her siblings picked cotton to help earn money for the family.

As a self-described ‘tomboy’ as a child, she enjoyed climbing trees and wrestling boys, and was very strong for her size. Her brother, Obadiah, stated that Coretta “always tried to excel in everything she did”. Despite having a formal education themselves, her parents were determined to provide education for their children. Her mother, Bernice, was quoted as saying “my children are going to college, even if it means I only have but one dress to put on”.

Coretta and her siblings went to a one-room elementary school 5 miles from their home, and later, due to racial segregation, were bussed 9 miles away to Lincoln Normal School, the closest black high school in Marion, Alabama. (The bus was driven by her mother, Bernice, who took all the local black teenagers to school and back) In 1945, Coretta graduated valedictorian and enrolled in Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where her older sister attended. There, she studied Interracial Education, which was a program that recruited nonwhite students and gave them full scholarships to attend the historically white campus.

Coretta said that “Antioch had envisioned itself as a laboratory in democracy but had no black students. Edythe (her sister) became the first African American to attend Antioch on a completely integrated basis, and was joined by two other black female students in the fall of 1943. Pioneering is never easy, and all of us who followed my sister at Antioch owe her a great debt of gratitude”.

Because of her experienced in college, she became politically active, joining the Antioch chapter of the NAACP and the college’s Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committees. But college wasn’t without many trials; in her second year, as a requirement for her degree, she requested to perform her required teaching practice at Yellow Springs’ public schools, but was denied by the school board based on racial discrimination. She appealed to her college administration, but they were unable to change the situation in the local school system. Instead, Antioch employed her at the college’s associated laboratory. 

Coretta won a scholarship to New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and transferred there, where she met Martin Luther King Jr. Her friend, Mary Powell, had given Coretta phone number to Martin (along with two other girl’s numbers). However, Martin was unimpressed with the other girls, and called her on the phone, after which they met in person. The rest is history. Two weeks after they’d met, Martin had wrote to his mother saying that he’d met his future wife.

Coretta took a little longer to get there; however, she detailed to her sister Edythe her feelings for Martin and when asked what she liked about him, she said he reminded her so much of their father. Edythe said she knew Martin was “the one” for Coretta at that very moment.

King's parents visited him in the fall and had suspicions about Coretta Scott after seeing how clean his apartment was. 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. After Coretta did not respond to his questioning of their romance being serious, Martin Sr. asked if she took his son "seriously". King's father also told her that there were many other women his son was interested in and had "a lot to offer." After telling him that she had "a lot to offer" as well, Martin Luther King Sr. and his wife went on to try and meet with members of Coretta's family. Once the two obtained Edythe's number from Coretta, they sat down with her and had lunch with her. During their time together, Martin Luther King Sr. tried to ask Edythe about the relationship between her sister and his son. Edythe insisted that her sister was an excellent choice for Martin Luther King Jr., but also felt that Coretta did not need to bargain for a husband. [1]

On Valentine’s Day, 1953, they announced their engagement in the Atlanta Daily World, and were married on June 18th, 1953. Unlike what was acceptable at this time, Coretta had the vow to ‘obey her husband’ removed from the ceremony. After completing her degree in voice and piano at New England Conservatory, they moved to Montgomery, Alabama in September of 1954.

Coretta said that "after we married, we moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where my husband had accepted an invitation to be the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Before long, we found ourselves in the middle of the Montgomery bus boycott, and Martin was elected leader of the protest movement. As the boycott continued, I had a growing sense that I was involved in something so much greater than myself, something of profound historic importance. I came to the realization that we had been thrust into the forefront of a movement to liberate oppressed people, not only in Montgomery but also throughout our country, and this movement had worldwide implications. I felt blessed to have been called to be a part of such a noble and historic cause."[2]

Devoted to the her cause, Coretta gave up her dreams of becoming a classical singer so that Martin could become a full-time pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church; this sacrifice in the name of the movement would become symbolic for the actions of African American women during the movement.[3] The mid 1950’s were tumultuous, and the Kings received many death threats at Martin’s involvement with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. By the end of the boycott, Mrs. King and her husband had come to believe in nonviolent protests as a way of expression consistent with biblical teachings.[4] Two days after the integration of Montgomery's bus service, on December 23, a gunshot blasted through the front door of the King home while Coretta, Martin, and their daughter were asleep, though the three were unharmed. [5] As a family, they continued to be subject to acts of violence.

Coretta served as a delegate for the Women’s Strike for Peace Conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 1962 and in New York in 1963. She worked hard to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and spoke with Malcom X days before his assassination. On March 26, 1965 Coretta and Martin, along with her father, marched to Montgomery.

Later, in January 1966, she criticized the sexism of the Civil Rights Movement in the New Lady magazine, saying in part, "Not enough attention has been focused on the roles played by women in the struggle. By and large, men have formed the leadership in the civil rights struggle but...women have been the backbone of the whole civil rights movement." [6] In 1968, she participated in a Women Strike for Peace protest at the capital of Washington D.C., with over 5,000 women. She co-chaired the Congress of Women conference and was part of the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, which honored the first woman elected to the House of Representatives.

Two days after her husband's death, Coretta spoke at Ebenezer Baptist Church where she said her husband told their children, "If a man had nothing that was worth dying for, then he was not fit to live." She talked about his beliefs and ideals and said while he may be dead, "his spirit will never die”. [7] She also delivered a speech at a rally he was supposed to attend, not long after his assassination, in New York City; using his notes, Coretta wrote her own speech and delivered it to the crown with strength, and later took hold of the movement that was hurting in her husband’s absence.

Eventually, she broadened her cause to women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, economic issues, world peace, amongst others. In a Solidarity speech, she asked women to “unite and form a solid block of women power to fight the three great evils of racism, poverty and war.” [8] Following this speech, she spoke at an anti-war demonstration in Central Park in place of her husband, and asked, “why a nation as rich as ours should be blighted by poverty, disease, and illiteracy?”, reminding the audience that while we fight wars abroad, there are many, many wars we fight in our own country, which claim the lives of children, as well as women and men.

As a leader in the movement, she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, serving as the president and CEO until passing it onto their son Dexter, and in 1969 she released her memoirs, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Coretta Scott King’s life was full to the brim of not just advocacy, but action, not just understanding, but compassion. She was a strong willed woman who fought for what she believed in, sacrificed for her causes, and never stopped, even after unspeakable tragedy, loss, and despair. She was such a brilliant woman, so talented, so commanding. We must not forget to celebrate her life, along with her husband’s. They were two of the most important people in our history, and their life’s work, their sacrifices, cannot be in vain. In times as hard and trying as these, we cannot let our America stand for anything less than refuge, peace, and goodwill. We must use our voices, we must use our power, as the King’s demonstrated, through nonviolent protest and political action.

[1] Bagley, Edyth Scott (2012). Desert Rose: The Life and Legacy of Coretta Scott King. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press. pp. 17–19. ISBN 978-0-8173-1765-2.
[2] "Coretta Scott King Interview - Academy of Achievement". Achievement.org. Archived from the original on 2015-04-23. Retrieved 2015-05-13.
[3] Bagley, p. 108.
[4] Bagley, p. 144
[5] Garrow, p. 83.
[6] Civil Rights History from the Ground Up: Local Struggles, a National Movement. Books.google.com. Retrieved 2015-05-13.
[7] "Widow Hopes For Fulfillment of King's Dream". Jet. April 18, 1968.
[8] Pappas, Heather. "Coretta Scott King". Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Archived from the original on 2007-10-12. Retrieved 2007-09-10.

Disparate Impact and the New Supreme Court

Disparate Impact occurs when a ‘protected group’ or ‘protected class of people’ are disproportionately impacted by policies, practices, rules, or other systems that appear to be neutral, while disparate treatment is intentional discrimination.[1] Both terms refer to discriminatory practices, however, many people still have trouble believing in, understanding, and even ‘seeing’ disparate impact. This presents a huge problem for those protected groups who are systematically affected by biases and discriminatory practices.

In legal terms, “disparate impact is a legal doctrine which declares that a policy can be considered discriminatory if it ‘adversely impacts’ a group based on that group’s traits, such as its race, color, religion, or sex. This is especially true when there is no legitimate need for such a policy. If someone finds a policy or practices to be discriminatory, then he [she/they] is [are] permitted to challenge it, claiming it has an “adverse effect” on those who would be otherwise protected. Typically, disparate impact is considered when a policy that is unintentionally discriminatory becomes discriminatory when put into practice.”[2]

The origin of this law is Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, commonly referred to as the Fair Housing Act of 1968 [3], and was pioneered by civil rights advocates like Martin Luther King Jr. and NAACP’s Washington director Clarence Mitchell Jr., who worked to end race-based housing patterns that were still in force by the late 1960's; while the bill’s original goal was to extend federal protection to civil rights workers (1964), it was eventually expanded to address racial and religious discrimination in housing (1968)[4], followed by gender (1974), and people with disabilities (1988).

So what does this have to do with our current state of affairs?

The Supreme Court was shaken with the retirement of Conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy on June 21, 2018. Following his vacancy, Judge Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to fill his seat. After several months of turmoil [for victims and advocates] following the allegations of sexual assault by Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford and many others, Kavanaugh was sworn into office as an associate justice to the U.S. Supreme Court on October 6, 2018, with a 50-48 vote. While this may seem like old news, the tidal wave of impact this decision has will continue to keep the waters tumultuous for years and decades to come.

Disparate impact hangs by a legal thread in the Supreme Court; the concern lies in the effects that the current combination of Justices will have on (specifically) discrimination laws. Justice Kennedy was the only conservative justice who voted to preserve ‘the standard’ during a crucial housing case in 2015, stating that the courts should not just pay attention to intentional racism (disparate treatment), but also on the disparate impact as well, and the damage caused by “unconscious prejudices and disguised animus”. [5] The other four conservative justices, however, dissented from the majority opinion in that case, elevating cause for concern as Justice Kavanaugh enters the court. Without Justice Kennedy, and with Kavanaugh’s history of skepticism regarding disparate impact [6], discrimination law could be in real jeopardy.

Until that 2015 case, no Supreme Court ‘majority opinion’ [7] had ever described disparate impact liability as an attempt to address the negative effects of unconscious prejudice. Therefore, the importance of this case was monumental; it reframed “the jurisprudential debate about why we have disparate impact causes of action under Title VII (which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, and sex) or the ADEA (which prohibits discrimination on the basis of age). It recognizes that disparate impact liability might be useful in those cases because unconscious biases might be keeping minorities and women back even in the absence of conscious discriminatory intent. Moreover, while Kennedy’s majority opinion stated that such unconscious prejudices escape ‘easy classification’ as disparate treatment, it does not say that they could never qualify as such. To the contrary, Kennedy puts smoking out unconscious prejudices under the heading of ‘uncovering discriminatory intent’.

This is particularly important because disparate impact is not cognizable under the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Since 1976, the Supreme Court has said that discriminatory intent is required. However, as Justice Samuel Alito pointed out in [this] case, disparate impact can be used as evidence of discriminatory intent, even in constitutional cases. So to the extent that unconscious bias counts as discriminatory intent, the kinds of cases cognizable under the Equal Protection Clause may expand as well.” [8]

So what does it all mean?

Essentially, the concern is that based on their records, Kavanaugh, along with the other four conservative judges, could begin to dismantle current discrimination laws such as the Fair Housing Act by dramatically narrowing the definition of discrimination, starting with disparate impact. Without the belief in and protection of disparate impact, Supreme Court rulings can necessitate that proof of intentional discrimination (disparate treatment) is the only form of court-recognized discrimination.

George Washington University Sociologist Gregory Squires said that with this shift in the Supreme Court, “we [will] probably see less movement in the direction of more diverse communities, and increasing incidents of discrimination," and that "housing providers [will] feel empowered to do things they wouldn't do today with disparate impact." [9]

Additionally, the Trump Administration has demonstrated their resolve to question, even attack ‘the standard’; White House officials are considering the abolishment of the use of disparate impact, which will weaken federal rules against discrimination of women and people of color in areas of housing and education. An internal Justice Department memo directed senior civil rights officials to examine how changes or removals could be made to decades old ‘disparate impact’ regulations. Similar action is currently being taken at both the Education Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.[10]

Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law stated that “disparate impact is a bedrock principle. Through the courts, we’ve been able to marshal data and use the disparate-impact doctrine as a robust tool for ferreting out discrimination.” Without the ability to use disparate impact within cases, systemic discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, and religion would be left unchecked, pushing our laws and policy back into pre-civil rights era America.

Meckler and Barratt (2019) state that “much — but not all — of the disparate-impact law could be changed by the administration because the concept was incorporated through regulations, which administrations are free to change by following a formal process. A broad-based rewrite of regulations could affect areas such as transportation and environmental law, as well as education and housing. But it would be harder to make changes to voting and employment law, experts say, because the concept of disparate impact is overtly written into the underlying statute, not just the regulations.”

Plainly put, without being able to use disparate impact as a critical tool in discrimination cases, victims will have to be able to prove that their employer/landlord/school/etc intentionally discriminated against them, instead of judges being able to look at the ways in which these social and organizational systems engage in discriminatory practices systemically. Evidence that proves intentional discrimination is often extremely difficult to find; however, even if bias and discrimination is unintentional, organizations such as these should still be held accountable, or our society will never fully break free from the injustice of discrimination. Ajmel Quereshi, senior counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said that “most people don’t have access to what’s going on in somebody’s mind. Even if a decision was intentionally discriminatory, it’s going to be very difficult to prove.” [11] 

Without the ability to use disparate impact, many, if not most victims of discrimination won’t be able to successfully and legally fight against the oppressing entity in the court. 

Bottom Line

Thankfully our Democracy is set up so that not one singular branch of government is all-powerful; however, two of the three branches (and half of the third-the Senate) are currently controlled by Trump loyalists, which makes things all the more difficult. But we can fight back; it’s imperative that we become informed people. We cannot fight back against this administration and these injustices without knowledge of what is currently going on. As Martin Luther King Jr. taught us, We The People have power, and it’s up to us to use that power, to use our voices and make our will known to our government.

We cannot revert back to our antiquated, immoral, and discriminatory past. We cannot and will not go silently into the night.


[1] What are disparate impact and disparate treatment? Society of Human Resource Management
[2] Disparate Impact; Legal Dictionary
[3] The Fair Housing Act; U.S. Department of Justice
[4] Fair Housing Act; History
[5] Supreme Court 2015: The court acknowledges unconscious prejudice; Slate
[6] Report on the record of Supreme Court Nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh; Demos
[7] The term ‘opinion’ is used in law to refer to several types of writing done by the Justices. The ‘majority opinion’ is a judicial opinion agreed to by more than half of the members of the court. The Justice who authors the ‘majority opinion’ summarizes the opinion from the bench during a regularly scheduled session of the Court. Supreme Court of the United States
[8] Supreme Court 2015: The court acknowledges unconscious prejudice; Slate
[9] A new Supreme Court is poised to take a chunk out of MLK’s legacy; John Blake
[10] Trump administration considers rollback of anti-discrimination rules; Laura Meckler & Devlin Barrett
[11] Trump administration considers rollback of anti-discrimination rules; Laura Meckler & Devlin Barrett