Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPRThe New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceThe Washington Post's Books to Read in 2017USA Today, "New and Noteworthy"Read it Forward, Favorite Reads of January 2017A Parade Magazine Pick"This book is distinctly Coretta's story . . . particularly absorbing. . . generous, in a manner that is unfashionable in our culture."-New York Times Book Review"Eloquent . . . inspirational"-USA Today The life story of Coretta Scott King-wife of Martin Luther King Jr., founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (The King Center), and singular twentieth-century American civil and human rights activist-as told fully for the first time, toward the end of her life, to Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds.Born in 1927 to daringly enterprising parents in the Deep South, Coretta Scott had always felt called to a special purpose. While enrolled as one of the first black scholarship students recruited to Antioch College, she became politically and socially active and committed to the peace movement. As a graduate student at the New England Conservatory of Music, determined to pursue her own career as a concert singer, she met Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister insistent that his wife stay home with the children. But in love and devoted to shared Christian beliefs as well as shared racial and economic justice goals, she married Dr. King, and events promptly thrust her into a maelstrom of history throughout which she was a strategic partner, a standard bearer, and so much more.As a widow and single mother of four, she worked tirelessly to found and develop The King Center as a citadel for world peace, lobbied for fifteen years for the US national holiday in honor of her husband, championed for women's, workers' and gay rights and was a powerful international voice for nonviolence, freedom and human dignity. Coretta's is a love story, a family saga, and the memoir of an extraordinary black woman in twentieth-century America, a brave leader who, in the face of terrorism and violent hatred, stood committed, proud, forgiving, nonviolent, and hopeful every day of her life.

Introduction 1 1. We Don't Have Time to Cry 7 2. A Sense of Belonging 23 3. I Have Something to Offer 31 4. A Brave Soldier 47 5. Time Itself Was Ready 58 6. The Winds of Change 73 7. I Will Never Turn Back 84 8. Pushed to the Breaking Point 89 9. I've Been Called by God, Too 95 10. So Evil Only God Could Change It 103 11. I Have a Dream 111 12. Heartbreak Knocked, Faith Answered 118 13. Securing the Right to Vote Was a Blood Covenant 131 14. Moral Concerns Know No Geographic Boundary 142 15. I Don't Want You to Grieve for Me 151 16. With a Prayer in My Heart, I Could Greet the Morning 172 17. My Fifth Child 185 18. We Must Learn to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable 214 19. Injustice Anywhere Is a Threat to Justice Everywhere 237 20. Happy Birthday, Martin 265 21. Our Children 281 22. I Will Count It All Joy 317Afterwords 331 by Andrew Young, Maya Angelou, John Conyers, Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, Myrlie Evers-Williams, Patricia LatimoreMy Mother, My Mentor 345 by Dr. Bernice A. KingThe Making of Her Memoir 351 by Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds