A Memorial Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King Takes Its Place In Boston

A new sculpture honoring Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King was unveiled on Boston Commons. The couple met in Boston during their college years in the 1950s. 

King was a graduate student at Boston University. He met, Coretta Scott, in January 1952 after a mutual friend introduced them. She was a student at the New England Conservatory of Music. The two married in June 1953.

Historians say the two often talked about racial and economic injustices in America and around the world during their college days. In time, they became the face of social justice and the Civil Rights Movement, working together and championing each other.

Their work continues

As the MLK Holiday weekend began, the King Center hosted the second day of its “Beloved Community Global Summit.” 

Dr. Elizabeth Rosner and Cameron Friend began the session with a recap from Thursday’s opening, emphasizing one of the summit’s key principles to “cultivate a beloved community mindset” which stresses love and honors the humanity of all people. 

Rosner and Friend offered a supporting thought for embracing others.

“You don’t call someone out, but you call them in,” Rosner explained.

Changing lives through nonviolence is one of the King Center’s fundamental ideals. The summit’s workshops dovetailed with the organization’s goals.

The King Center was founded in 1968 by Coretta Scott King after her husband’s assassination is “the official, living memorial dedicated to the advancement of the legacy of” Martin Luther King.

For 36 years, America has remembered the work of King on his birthday which is a federal holiday. King was born on January 15, 1929. An assassin’s bullet ended his life in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. 

To read more about the “Beloved Community” Summit, visit The King Center.

The elder King, who received The Nobel Peace Prize, outlined three obstacles to justice: poverty, racism and militarism. King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”