US Features
Coretta King journeyed from poverty to 'state' funeral
By Pat Reber
Feb 8, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington - The themes of Iraq and Hurricane Katrina cast political shadows over the funeral of civil rights leader Coretta Scott King, who grew up poor on an Alabama cotton farm and was eulogized by four US presidents during her funeral Tuesday.

The speakers recalled her beauty, the 1968 assassination of her husband, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and her 'quiet persistence' and courage.

Underlying the messages were commitment by many of the speakers to continue her work in a country where more than 40 million people still have no health insurance, and where racial inequality persists.

It was the first such gathering of presidents since the funeral of former president Ronald Reagan in 2004, and tensions flowed from the church podium in front of King's flower-bedecked casket like a political dialogue - with US President George Bush mostly on the listening end.

The 10,000 people packed into Atlanta's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church gave former president Bill Clinton, a Democrat who remains popular among African Americans, a huge round of applause as he entered the church, setting an almost festive mood for the service, according to live broadcasts from Atlanta.

President Bush, the conservative Republican leader who was harshly criticized by the black community for the government's tardy rescue of tens of thousands of African Americans after Hurricane Katrina, delivered the first brief eulogy.

Using Biblical images of Moses and other religious references, Bush said: 'By going forward with a strong and forgiving heart, Coretta Scott King not only secured her husband's legacy, she built her own.' His remarks drew polite applause.

Joseph Lowery, who founded the influential Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with Coretta's late husband, brought down the house with remarks directed squarely at Bush.

'We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there, but Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection here,' Lowery said, using a poetic cadence typical of black ministers.

It was a clear reference to the unconventional weapons Bush cited to justify the invasion of Iraq, and the 'misdirection' of Bush's proposed budget for 2007 that boosts defence and security spending while cutting social programmes - and taxes.

'For war, millions more, but no more for the poor,' Lowery said, provoking laughter and applause. At the end, he turned abruptly and shook a smiling Bush's hand.

In a mark of Coretta King's national prominence, at least three US television broadcasters carried the first three hours of the funeral live, and eulogies continued for at least another three hours after the presidents departed.

Former president Jimmy Carter also raised the racial and social inequities exposed by Hurricane Katrina.

'Those who were devastated by Katrina know that there is not yet equal opportunity for all Americans,' he said.

Carter noted that, as a southern Democrat from Georgia, he would never have entered the White House in 1977 if it had not been for the African American vote - a vote made possible by the voters' rights and registration campaigns led by the Kings.

Former president George Bush, father of the current president, defused the tensions with banter, remarking on how 'wonderful' he found the black church service compared to his 'conservative Episcopal parish.'

Turning to Lowery, he quipped: 'They used to send Lowery to Washington. I kept score in the Oval Office,' Bush said, adding it was usually 'Lowery 21, Bush 3'.

'Our world is a kinder and gentler place because of Coretta Scott King and her husband. They changed the course of history,' Bush said.

King was a national force for change and reconciliation in US politics for nearly 40 years after her husband was felled by an assassin's bullet in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.

Clinton recalled how just the week after Martin Luther King was slain, Coretta took her four children back to Memphis to finish the labour march that her husband had gone to lead. Clinton challenged his listeners to follow that example by now carrying on her work. <!--page-->

King died last week at age 78 after battling ovarian cancer and suffering a debilitating stroke last year. On Saturday, she became the first African American and first woman to lie in state in the State Capitol dome in Georgia - where legal racial segregation once kept black Americans from voting or accessing public services.

Her daughter, Bernice, delivered the main eulogy Tuesday, comparing her mother's cancer to the 'materialism, greed, racism, perversion, misogyny, idolatry and militarism' that she said has undermined the struggle for peace and racial justice.

'It's a cancer that is eating away at the very nature of what God created us for,' she said.

Since Martin Luther King's death, black Americans have secured the right to vote, been elected as senators and governors, and gained protections in federal law against discrimination in education, employment and housing. King's birthday is celebrated every year as a national holiday.