family on the front line - a father's courage; a mother's insistence on education

Their private hours together were as precious as they were few

GROWING UP IN THE SOUTH in the 1940's, I was always afraid that something would happen to my daddy, Obadiah "Obie" Scott, the only Black in Marion, Alabama, who owned his own truck. His truck put him in a position to compete with Whites in the lumber-hauling business, but it also made him a target: In 1942 our family home burned down Thanksgiving weekend, and we suspected arson. But in the racial and political climate of the 1940's, we had no recourse. Daddy simply kept working. eventually built us a new house, and even saved up enough money to buy a sawmill. When he refused to sell his mill to a White man, he was threatened; two weeks later Daddy found his sawmill burned to a pile of ashes. Again, there was nothing for him to do but to go back to work hauling timber for other people.

Yet my father, who, like his father before him, served as the preacher's steward and chairman of the trustee board of our African Methodist Episcopal Zion church, never grew bitter. His example deepened my understanding of the courage it takes to actually live out a commitment to God's love over hatred. Daddy prepared me, without my knowing it, for the risks that my husband and I would face together throughout the Civil Rights Movement.

My mother, Bernice, who had only a fourth-grade education, set another very clear goal for me, my older sister and younger brother: "My children are going to college," she would say, "even if it means I only have one dress to put on." So I followed in my sister's footsteps and graduated from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1951, then went on to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where I studied to become a concert singer.

In my second semester at the conservatory, I met a young man who was working on his doctorate at Boston University and preparing to lead a large Baptist congregation, like his father and grandfather before him. I have to confess, I wasn't much interested in dating a preacher. But this guy had a sensitivity, intelligence and seriousness of purpose that you didn't find in other young men his age.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was also a charming suitor. He was a good dancer too. He had a wonderful sense of humor and a way of making everyone he came into contact with feel very special, including me. But I had my mind firmly fixed on my music and education, although I had thought of someday returning South to help my people. Could marrying a minister be a part of God's purpose for me? I spent the first few months I knew Martin in prayerful meditation,

asking God to give me direction. Sixteen months after we met, on June 18, 1953, we were married on the lawn of my parents' home in Alabama.

Less than a year after our wedding. Martin decided to accept the pastorate of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. I really hadn't planned on settling that soon back in the South--certainly not in the "cradle of the Confederacy," of all places. But we moved, and it wasn't long before I could clearly see God's purpose in our returning to Alabama just then. As events led Black citizens to launch the Montgomery bus boycott in December 1955, we were catapulted to the forefront of a movement, when my husband, the new young preacher in town, was chosen president and chief spokesperson for the Montgomery Improvement Association.

On January 30, 1956--57 days into the boycott that would be successful after more than a year of Blacks' shunning segregated city buses--our house was bombed. Although I was at home at the time with our little newborn, Yolanda, fortunately no one was hurt. Instead of fear, I felt blessed to share this great opportunity to fight for justice with our adopted community.

As a pastor's wife, I managed the comings and goings in a busy household. Martin was always bringing people home for meetings. But especially after the boycott became national and international news, we began receiving guests from everywhere. I cooked so much food in my time! And still, I tended to the needs of my own growing family.

The arrival of each of our children seemed to coincide with a crisis in our life related to the Civil Rights Movement. Our first child, Yolanda, was only 2 1/2 weeks old when the bus boycott started on December 5, 1955. When Martin III was almost a year old in 1958, my husband was stabbed by a demented woman in Harlem and almost died. When I was five months' pregnant with Dexter in 1960, a judge sentenced Martin to six months' hard labor at the Reidsville (Georgia) State penitentiary for violating his probation on a trumped-up traffic charge. (Fortunately, Martin was released after serving only a couple of days.) And with our youngest child, Bernice, we came up with this scheme to time her delivery in the spring of 1963, because Martin was planning to lead a march in Birmingham, and he wanted his inevitable arrest there to happen on April 12, Good Friday, for its symbolism. So I took castor oil to induce an early labor, and Bernice was born on March 9.8, while Martin was still in town.

Because Martin was traveling so much after the Movement started, most of the daily parenting was left to me. But when he was home, we'd have family outings that would be scheduled into Martin's calendar like any important appointment. We'd go bowling, to the amusement park or to the fair. We truly coveted those precious hours Martin could spend just with the family, because they were so few. My children especially recall those rare moments at home when he simply played with them. Sometimes lamps and tables would be knocked over from their tossing a ball in the house, and I would lose my cool. When I started scolding, my husband would look at me innocently and say, "Where else do we have to play?"

When Martin was home, Sunday morning around our breakfast table became a very special family time. Martin would begin with a prayer, and we'd have a Scripture reading before we ate. This ritual became so meaningful to us that the children and I continued to hold these Sunday morning family-prayer breakfasts after Martin's death.

Many people don't understand how I was able to go on after he died, to raise money to build The King Center and to organize and push for a federal holiday in his name. But I, too, had been called to serve the cause for which my husband gave his life and willingly committed myself to it as my life's work.

Being part of the campaigns, demonstrations and boycotts in the 1950's and 1960's, helped many people like me find the real purpose and meaning of our lives. The Movement days were a time when our sense of family, community and collective purpose was a deeply spiritual experience. How else do you describe that kind of clarity, that willingness to serve and to give? There's still a lot of work to be done to awaken more people to the power of love and our connections to one another. Martin so often spoke of building the "beloved community." This is the vision we must continue to hold.

Coretta Scott King is the founder of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., in Atlanta. Joy Duckett Cain is an ESSENCE features writer.

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