Images of Martin Luther King Jr. and student essays line the walls of the large brick Hartford elementary school that bears his name on Ridgefield Street.
As you can imagine, the 750 kids, predominantly black, are well-versed in the importance of judging individuals on the content of their character, not by their skin color.
Tuesday’s lesson took a different bent.
At 8:02 a.m., a moment of silence was observed for Coretta Scott King, the wife of the civil rights icon, who died Monday after complications from a stroke. Later in the afternoon there would be another public address announcement about her death and its significance.
“The thing I want the kids to understand is the strength that we have as a people and the willingness to endure in the face of adversity,” said Principal Linda Leyhow. “I want them to think about the strength that carries our people, especially in times of hardship. And I dare say, Coretta Scott King knew hardship.”
When I think about Coretta Scott King, I’ll remember a woman who did two of the most excruciating tasks that could be asked of a mother.
She had to explain to her four children why their father was regularly away from home helping other people when they too needed his attention. Then, after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tenn., mom had to explain to Yolanda, MLK III, Dexter and Bernice why dad would never again have time to be with them.
Dignity. Pride. Grace. Coretta Scott King was to single mothers what her husband was to civil rights leaders. She set an example of comportment, while enduring unspeakable tragedy — all while having the highest expectations for her children and making sure they espoused their father’s purpose to uplift others.
King’s death at 78 marks the passing of a person who epitomized what is to be resilient, independent and free-thinking. Three months apart, two strong-willed women — Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott — who gave King the inspiration and reassurance to take on a nation are now dead.
Coretta Scott King, an accomplished singer and violinist, went from quietly comforting a man with a message that moved millions to publicly trying to reignite his flame after he was murdered.
“I just thought she was a courageous women and she was a woman who had a lot of character and pride,” said Rhoda Morris, a fourth-grade teacher at the Martin Luther King Jr. school. “She gave up her career and stayed home to raise her children, and then had the responsibility of raising those children without their father present.” Morris grew up and went to college in Chester, Pa., and remembers King as a frequent preacher in the churches of that predominantly white Philadelphia suburb during the 1960s. As a single mom herself, Morris connected with Coretta Scott King as much as she did with MLK.
“When you saw her, you just said Wow!,” said Morris. “As a black woman, I wanted to be like Coretta Scott King.”
Maybe the most memorable picture of Coretta Scott King is the 1968 Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of her in black veil sitting in a church pew at her husband’s funeral. Little Bernice, then 5, was cuddled in her mother’s lap. King’s countenance was resolute, introspective, almost as if she had been preparing for such a day.
Bernice wasn’t much younger than the MLK fourth-graders I talked to Tuesday.
They expressed appreciation for the King matriarch in preserving her husband’s dream.
“She helped to make Dr. Martin Luther King day a holiday,” said Travis Morris, 10. “I feel her pain because it must have been very tough raising four little children and making them go to school and get a good education and grow up to be wonderful people.”
Teshari Orr, 10, said Coretta Scott King “wanted Dr. King’s dream to come true, and to make sure her kids passed it on, and to just keep trying no matter what.”
That resilience would be tested in the years after the assassination.
There was the wife’s protracted political battle for the King holiday, her building of the King foundation in his native Atlanta, book gossip about King and infidelity, and the unfortunate public family spat about whether to sell the family foundation and King’s writings to the same government that tried to smear him.
The King kids, grown now, find themselves with a new legacy to preserve.
And adversity of their own to stare down.
Stan Simpson’s column appears Wednesdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at ssimpson@courant.com
