Black Women in the News
Bernice King Believes It’s ‘Critical’ To Heed Martin Luther King’s Lessons Today
By Taryn Finley via https://www.huffingtonpost.com
The civil rights leader’s youngest daughter believes King’s teachings are vital “now more than ever before.”
Bernice King had just turned five when she learned of her father’s assassination.
It was 7:01 p.m. in Memphis when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, close to her bedtime, so she didn’t know about the tragedy until the next day. Her mother, Coretta Scott King, headed to the airport the next day. When Coretta returned to Atlanta on April 5, 1968, Bernice and her siblings were taken to the airport to meet her and board a plane.
There would be no more dinners with Daddy. No more showering him with kisses when he came back from a trip. This was her introduction to death.
“My mother realized at that point she hadn’t prepared me,” Bernice told HuffPost during a recent phone interview. “And so, she had to explain to me that, ‘Your daddy’s dead, when you see him, he’s going to be laying in a casket. He won’t be able to speak to you, and his spirit has gone to live with God.’”
On April 9, the day of the funeral, Coretta played a portion of the sermon her husband had delivered just two months prior at Ebenezer Baptist Church, in which he prophetically gave his own eulogy.
“And again, remember, she told me he couldn’t talk to me, but a child knows their dad’s…
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