The widow of Martin Luther King Jr has died at the age of 78.
Coretta Scott King had suffered a stroke and a heart attack in August.
She played a major back-up role in the civil rights movement until the death of her husband, who was assassinated on a Memphis motel balcony on April 4th, 1968, while supporting a sanitation workers' strike.
Mrs King, who was in Atlanta at the time, learned of her husband's shooting in a telephone call from Rev Jesse Jackson, a call she later wrote: "I seemed subconsciously to have been waiting for all of our lives."
As she recalled in her autobiography My Life With Martin Luther King Jr, she felt she had to step fully into the civil rights movement.
"Because his task was not finished, I felt that I must rededicate myself to the completion of his work," she said.
Determined to make sure Americans did not forget her husband or his dream of a colour-blind society, she created a memorial and a forum in the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta.
The centre has archives containing more than 2,000 King speeches and is built around the King crypt and its eternal flame.