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Hillary campaigns at mrs king funeral { February 8 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/national/08king.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/national/08king.html
February 8, 2006
At Mrs. King's Funeral, a Mix of Elegy and Politics
By SHAILA DEWAN
and ELISABETH BUMILLER
LITHONIA, Ga., Feb. 7 — Coretta Scott King was laid to rest Tuesday, after a funeral where white-gloved ushers welcomed 15,000 people, including four presidents, three governors, three planeloads of Congress members, celebrities, gospel stars and leading figures of the civil rights movement.
The six-hour service, held in the vast two-tiered sanctuary of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church just outside Atlanta, was marked by elegiac moments, standing ovations, and, with the Clintons and Bushes sharing a podium, some overt political gibes about the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.
One of the first to speak was President Bush, who said Mrs. King had chosen to fight on for racial equality even after her husband's assassination, when she would have been justified in retiring from public life.
"Americans knew her husband only as a young man," Mr. Bush said. "We knew Mrs. King in all the seasons of her life. And there was beauty and dignity in every season."
He added, "By going forward with a strong and forgiving heart, Coretta Scott King not only secured her husband's legacy, she built her own. Having loved a leader, she became a leader."
But others did not confine their remarks to Mrs. King, nor did they temper them just because Mr. Bush was seated just a few feet behind. The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who spoke at times in rhyme, said, "We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there."
Former President Jimmy Carter, in an apparent allusion to the current President Bush's eavesdropping program, mentioned the difficulties that Mrs. King and her husband, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., endured as they became the target of secret government wiretapping.
Of the four presidents, Mr. Clinton was the obvious favorite of the crowd. A huge cheer went up as he reached the open area near Mrs. King's coffin, and the crowd gave him a thunderous standing ovation when he approached the microphone with his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mr. Clinton was followed by the far more formal remarks of Senator Clinton, who until then had stood silently nodding her head as he spoke.
Mr. Clinton began by saying, "I'm honored to be here with my president and my former presidents." Then he paused briefly and gestured toward Mrs. Clinton, his unspoken words seeming to suggest that he wanted to say future president, too. When the crowd began cheering, Mr. Clinton laughed and said, "No, no, no."
He delivered the longest speech of the four presidents, apparently without notes. "I don't want us to forget that there's a woman in there," Mr. Clinton said, pointing to Mrs. King's coffin. "Not a symbol, a real woman who lived and breathed and got angry and got hurt and had dreams and disappointments."
The funeral was held after three days of services and remembrances for Mrs. King. More than 150,000 lined up to see Mrs. King lying in state in the rotunda of the state Capitol on Saturday and at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church on Monday.
The official pomp brought faint smiles to the lips of friends who first knew Mrs. King, 78, as a champion of radical causes and later as the courageous widow of a man whom the authorities treated as a troublemaker and a criminal. Some said it was a chance to make up for the fact that Dr. King had not been similarly honored at his death in 1968. Still others said Mrs. King's death on Jan. 30, her system weakened by ovarian cancer, signaled the end of an era.
"I've been stripped," whispered the actress Cicely Tyson, who once played Mrs. King in a mini-series, her hands hovering at the lenses of her sunglasses as if she was going to bury her face in them.
Sitting in a front row seat, she ticked off the names of Shirley Chisholm, Rosa Parks and others who have recently died. "These were the women who were there when I first started, and who kind of took me in. And they're leaving me."
As early as 5 a.m., throngs of people gathered at a nearby shopping mall. When shuttles stopped ferrying people to the church because it was full, many walked, bringing to mind the civil rights marches of Dr. King's era, when men wore suits and ties and women wore dresses and pearl earrings.
"C'mon, Jesus, we're almost at the top of the hill," said Grace King, 45, of Warner Robbins, Ga., who said she was unaccustomed to so much exercise. "But when I think about what they went through, how much they walked, I don't mind walking."
Yuritzy Villaseñor, an elementary school teacher who came from California for the funeral, was so overcome after viewing the body that she could barely speak. "She gave it all up for you and me to be standing here together," she said.
Inside the circular sanctuary, the inner circle near the podium became quite literally that, as dignitaries including the Rev. Jesse Jackson; the Rev. Al Sharpton; Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party; Myrlie Evers, the wife of the slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers; and Marion Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children's Defense Fund, mingled and reminisced before the service began.
Bill Campbell, a former mayor of Atlanta now on trial on multiple corruption counts, held court there with his wife and his lawyer, having been given the day off from court to attend the funeral.
Mr. Sharpton said, "She became the most acceptable part of the movement you could think of, but she never left the movement. She used to reprimand me and say, 'Al, you can't fight if you have anger.' "
In Dekalb County, school was called off for the day and across the country flags flew at half-staff. After the funeral, attendees begged strangers for copies of the 20-page program, combing the sanctuary for discards until church employees forced them to leave.
During the service, three of Mrs. King's four children, Martin Luther King III, 48; Dexter King, 45, and Yolanda King, 50, sat together in the first row. The Rev. Bernice King, 42, an elder at New Birth, sat on stage, waiting to deliver the eulogy.
The poet Maya Angelou remembered Mrs. King as both a friend and a proponent of peace. "She cherished her race," Ms. Angelou said. "She cherished women. She cared for gay and straight people. She prayed nightly for Palestine and equally for Israel."
When the presidents spoke, past resentments, current alliances and sharp humor were all on display, as was a bit of the relationship between a father and son.
After former President George Bush lost some of his prepared remarks, he told the crowd, "It may be your lucky day, I've lost a page." As they cheered, cameras caught the current President Bush laughing heartily in the background.
The former president, who spoke about his own conservative Episcopal upbringing, took a playful dig at the poesy of Mr. Lowery, who helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr. King and then served as its president for 20 years.
"I hope he doesn't mind," the former president said, "because he's a legend here, but the advice I'd give this guy is, Maya has nothing to worry about. Don't give up your day job. Keep preaching."
To which Mr. Clinton retorted, in his own remarks, "That ain't bad for one of the frozen chosen."
Mr. Clinton recounted how, days after Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, Mrs. King had gone to the city to address the striking garbage workers.
"She had to say, 'What am I going to do with the rest of my life?' " he said. "That's the most important thing for us because what really matters if you believe all of this stuff was in the plan, is, what are we going to do with the rest of our lives?"
Mr. Carter called Dr. King "the greatest leader that my native state, and perhaps my native country, have ever produced."
The services included performances by Stevie Wonder, Michael Bolton, and the gospel stars CeCe and BeBe Winans.
In the eulogy, Ms. King addressed the ripple of controversy over the location of the funeral, which some people thought should have been held at the much smaller Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King, his father and his maternal grandmother had been preachers.
Ms. King said the location had been chosen by God, who wanted a "new birth."
"I said, 'God, why here?' He said, 'It's time for the world to be born again,' " Ms. King said. "God is not looking for a Martin Luther King or Coretta Scott King. The old has passed away; there is a new order that is emerging."
Some of the three dozen speakers talked about Mrs. King's final months, after she suffered a stroke last August. She was also, unbeknown to many of even her closest friends, suffering from ovarian cancer.
"I expected to see somebody who looked like they had been ill," said the Rev. T. D. Jakes. "She was polished. Her hair was in place. Her nails were done."
Ms. King also talked about the days preceding her mother's death, when the two of them were at a holistic hospital in Mexico and Mrs. King drifted in and out of consciousness. "I have never seen my mother at so much peace," she said.
She defended the family's decision to admit Mrs. King to the hospital, which was closed by the Mexican government after Mrs. King's death, saying conventional medical treatment would not have saved her mother because it was her time to go.
After the funeral, a motorcade of police motorcycles and limousines carried Mrs. King to the King Center, the institution she founded in Atlanta as a memorial to her husband, and where his crypt is maintained in the middle of a reflecting pool.
Mrs. King's coffin was placed in a temporary mausoleum until a new crypt is constructed so that she can lie next to her husband.
Shaila Dewan reported from Lithonia for this article, and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington. Brenda Goodman contributed reporting from Atlanta.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
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