Coretta Scott King Dies

Coretta Scott King Dies

Coretta Scott King, who turned a life shattered by her husband's assassination into one devoted to enshrining his legacy of human rights and equality, has died. She was 78.

Flags at the King Center were lowered to half-staff Tuesday morning. "We appreciate the prayers and condolences from people across the country," the King family said in a statement. The family said she died overnight, but did not say where she died. She suffered a serious stroke and heart attack in 2005. "It's a bleak morning for me and for many people and yet it's a great morning because we have a chance to look at her and see what she did and who she was," the poet Maya Angelou said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "It's bleak because I can't -- many of us can't hear her sweet voice but it's great because she did live, and she was ours. I mean African-Americans and white Americans and Asians, Spanish-speaking -- she belonged to us and that's a great thing." Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, the civil rights activist who is close to the King family, broke the news on NBC's "Today" show: "I understand that she was asleep last night and her daughter (Bernice King) went in to wake her up and she was not able to and so she quietly slipped away. Her spirit will remain with us just as her husband's has." She was a supportive lieutenant to her husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., during the most tumultuous days of the American civil rights movement. She had married him in 1953. After her husband's assassination in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, she kept his dream alive while also raising their four children. King's death was a "monumental loss to the nation and the world at large," the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a written statement. "She was truly the first lady of the human rights movement," he said. "The only thing worse than losing her is if we never had her."