Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

by David J. Garrow

“That poor man was so harassed at home,” Rutherford remembered while emphasizing that “you cannot write about Dr. King without dealing with the reality.” “She was as much a part of his depression as his staff.… Coretta was a part of the problem, but … also in many ways she probably was a much put-upon person.” Rutherford and other aides recognized what different conceptions of the wife’s role King and Coretta held, and how her unhappiness with the constraints King successfully imposed on her made King’s home life so tense. “Had the man lived, the marriage wouldn’t have survived, and everybody feels that way,” one staffer observed. Coretta was “completely and totally out of her depth in this milieu in which Martin moved and functioned,” Rutherford thought, but she “saw for herself a role,” a public role as a substantive figure, “that Dr. King didn’t accept or agree with at all.” Some aides saw Coretta’s acceptance of all the home and child-rearing tasks as a blessing for King—“Coretta was the ideal wife for Martin”—but those same aides had no illusions about the marriage. “Coretta King was most certainly a widow long before Dr. King died.” Her resentment of that made for unpleasantness all around. As Rutherford noted, “That again was why he couldn’t go home.”