This article is written by Rachel Lwin, TNSM parent members of the Diversity and Community and Engagement Committee (D+CE) and expresses her views. At TNSM, we are grateful to have this D+CE forum that allows opportunities for members of our community to share their own beliefs, always with the goal of expanding our understanding of each other’s experiences and points of view.
Last week, TNSM parent and DC+E member Allie Precht commemorated Martin Luther King Jr. and discussed the way his life, work, and legacy are taught to students past and present. It got me thinking about the man himself and the Civil Rights Movement of course, but also his wife and civil rights activist, Coretta Scott King. Hers is a name that has rolled off my tongue countless times in my former work as a librarian because she has a family of book awards named after her. The Coretta Scott King Awards “are given annually to outstanding African American authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults that demonstrate an appreciation of African American culture and universal human values.” Honorees and winners include some of the most revered names in art and literature, like Jerry Pinkney, Jacqueline Woodson, Jason Reynolds, Kadir Nelson, Christian Robinson, Rita Williams-Garcia, Nikki Grimes, Sharon Draper–the list goes on. Allie mentioned Amanda Gorman in her post last week, and I’d like to add that I can’t wait to see her name on the list of CSK Award winners someday soon.
The awards were created to commemorate and honor both MLK Jr. and Coretta Scott King. It is interesting to think of them this way, as a unit, especially through the lens I have now as a human who wears a handful of hats–parent, spouse, friend, citizen, and so on. Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledged the necessity of Coretta Scott to his activism–that without her work, his work would not have existed. According to the King Center, “During Dr. King’s career, Mrs. King devoted most of her time to raising their four children…. From the earliest days, however, she balanced mothering and Movement work, speaking before church, civic, college, fraternal and peace groups.” She was a musician and classically trained singer, but set aside some of her own professional aspirations to take on the unrelenting work of parenting and advocacy for a greater cause. (She studied at Antioch College, just up the road in Yellow Springs!) It resonates still, that the collision of parenthood and personhood that is, as the CSK Awards state, is universally human.
We talk of MLK Jr.’s impact on the U.S. and indeed on the world as a whole. As for Coretta Scott King, she was, of course, in the trenches of the American Civil Rights Movement. What I personally did not know was that she was also a fierce advocate for including LGBTQ as a protected class under the Civil Rights Act that she and MLK Jr. and others had fought so hard to have passed. She raised four children, often on her own when her husband was still alive, and then as a widow after his assassination. Her list of accomplishments and contributions to the betterment of the world we live in today is robust.
To build on Allie’s thoughts from last week, I too feel the duty, desire, and struggle to educate myself and my children about the activists who worked tirelessly for equal civil rights under the law, not least Coretta Scott King. I worry that I, and perhaps my children, will only have learned of her as someone on the periphery, rather than someone playing a supporting role, sure, but a role without which mountains would not move.
Also like Allie, I find comfort and focus through books and the stories that can teach us about our history and about ourselves. Below are some books at the Cincinnati Library that can give our children a window into the complex life of Coretta Scott King.