She was more than the wife of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King was an activist, an author and a civil rights leader. Establishing her own career as an activist, Coretta worked closely with her husband in the ‘50s and ‘60s during the civil rights era. Coretta even went as far as taking part in the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and worked to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, which outlawed discrimination against race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

To honor her late husband, Coretta established the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, a non-profit organization which Coretta started in the basement of her home. One of Coretta’s biggest accomplishments was lobbying for her husband’s birthday to be recognized as a federal holiday, which she successfully did.

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