February 9, 2006 by mosaiconline

Thousands pay tribute to Coretta Scott King

By: Audra D. Burch (KRT)
Posted In: News

LITHONIA, Ga. _ Coretta Scott King, the first lady of the civil rights movement, went home on Tuesday and hers was a funeral service that made angels of singers and preachers of politicians and beloved mourners of the 10,000 who poured into New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta.

Four presidents, much of the U.S. Congress, a South African dignitary, a Jewish sisterfriend, poets, pastors and ordinary people by the thousands blessed the lady, blessed the legacy in a ceremony that began at noon and stretched until the sun began to fade.

“Her journey was long and only briefly with a hand to hold,” said President Bush. “I offer the sympathy of our entire nation.”

Bush said beautiful things about King, who may be remembered most because she loved a great leader. The people clapped hard and Ingrid Dove, the lady on the second row of the balcony in the eighth seat, sat quietly and cried.

She nodded as Bush painted the portrait of Coretta Scott King, a freedom fighter who began her most important work April 5, 1968, the day after her husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated.

Dove, a social worker who had spent the last 30 years trying to make the lives of regular folk right, sobbed through much of the service, saddened for the collective loss as much as for Coretta’s passing.

A Miami native, Dove came here the year after King was killed and became a student of this movement to write the rights of blacks into law.

Dove, 57, met King once and watched from afar as the widow raised four children alone, watched as she nurtured the dream and protected the legacy, watched as her body wilted and finally gave out.

Just last month, Dove saw King at the annual holiday celebration at the King Center, and though she was in a wheelchair, Dove believed there would be more time.

Had she known that King’s body was ravaged by ovarian cancer, she would have said thank you _ for believing America could be better.

So when it was time to say goodbye Tuesday, Dove rose at 6 a.m., put on her best pearl earrings and drove to the huge mall needed to hold all the people who came. She boarded one of the school buses that each carried 48 mourners, and she waited in a line for the door to the church to open.

To understand the loss of King is to appreciate her role in history and her ties to Atlanta. At daylight, people walked and walked and walked up a hill, some carrying shiny dress shoes, only to be worn in the church.

One woman arrived at the mall parking lot at 11 p.m. Monday _ determined to be on the first bus that came.

“That is just what she meant to me. I was too young to attend Martin Luther King’s funeral,” said Deborah Beckham, 51, who works at the federal prison. “I haven’t stopped crying since she died. She is worthy.”

And while it is tempting to immortalize King, it was former President Bill Clinton who reminded the churchgoers that she was human.

“I don’t want us to forget that in there is a woman,” said Clinton, gesturing toward a casket crowned in cascading roses. “She was not a symbol, but a real woman who lived and breathed and got angry and hurt and had dreams and disappointments.”

Maya Angelou took the stage slowed by a cane and the grief of losing a 30-year friendship. She described King as a cornflower that was destined to become a steel magnolia. She said this was a woman who, after all these years, still prayed nightly for Palestine and equally for Israel.

Long ago, they had taken to calling each other “chosen sisters” and “girl” _ a black woman thing. They traveled together and would talk late into the night, even as they both entered their seventh decade.

Maya would tell Coretta jokes, believing she needed to laugh to heal. And Coretta needed Maya to reaffirm her deepest beliefs:

Yes, girl peace and justice is owed to every person, everywhere all of the time. Angelou, who at times struggled not to give in to all that hurt, said the church owed King something too _ that this fine gathering, with its salutes in scripture and songs, not be just a footnote in history.

Angelou left the stage in the rhythm of a standing ovation and in the balcony Dove stood and clapped but fretted. She was scared that the children _ all pigtails and velvet dresses, khaki and nervous giggles _ were lost. That the magnitude of all the history in this place, all the civil rights workers with their gray hair and thinning voices and frail memories would be forgotten. Sometimes the children stood up, sometimes they didn’t, sometimes they applauded when it seemed right, but did they know who these people were?

Did they know Dorothy Height or the Rev. Joseph Lowery or Dick Gregory?

Did they know they were soldiers?

“We’re losing our most important people. We just buried Rosa Parks. I don’t want all they stood for to die with them,” Dove said. “We just can’t forget.”

___

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.