US: Coretta Scott King, who surged to the forefront of the fight for racial equality after her husband Martin Luther King jnr was murdered in 1968, has died aged 78. She had suffered a stroke and a heart attack in August.
Mrs King played a major back-up role in the civil rights movement until her husband was assassinated on a Memphis motel balcony on April 4th, 1968, while supporting a sanitation workers' strike.
In Atlanta at the time, Mrs King learned of her husband's shooting in a telephone call from the Rev Jesse Jackson. Of this call she later wrote: "I seemed subconsciously to have been waiting for all of our lives."
As recalled in her autobiography, My Life With Martin Luther King Jr, she stepped fully into the civil rights movement.
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.
It has archives containing more than 2,000 King speeches and is built around the King crypt and its eternal flame. - (Reuters)
