Coretta with children
Coretta King concert flyer
John Malveaux of MusicUNTOLD.com writes:
Soprano Coretta Scott was the favorite student of her high school music
teacher in Marian, Alabama. She was selected to sing on a special program with
internationally recognized Baritone Paul
Robeson. Coretta aspired to be a concert singer like Marian Anderson. While studying in Boston at the New England Conservatory of Music on a
scholarship, she was aggressively contacted by Martin Luther King Jr., a theology student also studying in
Boston. For their first date, Martin invited Coretta
to attend a concert featuring pianist Arthur
Rubinstein with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Coretta subsequently had a dream.
"I always believed that there was a purpose
for my life, and that I had to seek that purpose, and that if I discovered that
purpose, then I believed that I would be successful in what I was doing. And I
thought I had found that purpose when I decided that music was going to be my
career -- concert singing. I was going to be trained as a concert singer at the
New England Conservatory of Music. I studied voice the first year, and after I
met Martin and prayed about whether or not I should open myself to that
relationship, I had a dream, and in that dream, I was made to feel that I
should allow myself to be open and stop fighting the relationship. And that's
what I did, and of course the rest is history."
Coretta sang recitals while
attending the New England Conservatory
of Music and she sang in the Conservatory
chorus which annually sang with the Boston
Symphony Orchestra. Coretta earned a degree in voice and violin.
Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr were married June 18, 1953. The Kings had four children.
Although the demands of raising a family had caused Mrs. King to retire
from singing, she found another way to put her musical background to
the service of the cause. She conceived and performed a series of FREEDOM CONCERTS,
combining poetry, narration and music to tell the story of the Civil
Rights Movement as fundraisers for the Southern Christian Leader
Conference after marriage and between birth of four children. See pic 1
Coretta & children (Yolanda, Bernice, Dexter, MLK lll); pic 2
Freedom Concert poster.
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