Thousands pay last respects and celebrate King’s life

Errin Haines

LITHONIA, Ga. — Four U.S. presidents, senators and celebrities joined thousands of mourners filling a church sanctuary Tuesday to say goodbye to Coretta Scott King, the “first lady of the civil rights movement.”

The crowd, estimated to be at least 10,000 strong, stood as King’s four children walked in with President Bush and former presidents Clinton, Bush and Carter.

“The dream is still alive,” said Bishop Eddie Long, leader of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia.

“We are all in a better place, doing better things, doors have been opened,” he said.

The lines to get into the funeral and to attend the final viewing of King’s body before her funeral started forming before 3 a.m. on a chilly morning outside New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, where King’s daughter Bernice is a minister.

“There’s one word to describe going to go see Coretta – historic. It’s good to finally see her at peace,” said Robert Jackson, a 34-year-old financial consultant from Atlanta whose 10-year-old daughter, Ebony, persuaded him to take her to the church Tuesday.

In Washington, the flag outside the Capitol flew at half-staff in King’s honor.

King, who carried on her husband’s dream of equality for nearly 40 years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, died Jan. 30 at the age of 78 after battling ovarian cancer and the effects of a stroke.

“I always really admired her,” former President Clinton said as he flew toward Atlanta aboard Air Force One with President Bush. “I liked her very much. I liked being with her. I liked the way she maintained her dignity in the face of all the difficulties she faced.”

The presidents and poet Maya Angelou were among at least 39 people scheduled to speak during the funeral. Stevie Wonder, Michael Bolton, and Bebe and Cece Winans were slated to perform.

The Kings’ youngest child, Bernice, was to deliver the eulogy. She was 5 when her father was assassinated in 1968 and is perhaps best remembered for the photographs of her lying in her black-veiled mother’s lap during her father’s funeral.

More than 160,000 mourners have waited in long lines at public viewings since King’s body was returned to Georgia to file past her casket and pay their respects – on Monday at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where her husband preached in the 1960s, at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church on Tuesday morning, and during the weekend at the Georgia Capitol, where King became the first woman and the first black person to lie in honor there.

“I’m here to pay my respects for a woman who has gotten me to the place I am today,” said Theresa Wade, of Mapleton, waiting outside the church Tuesday. “I believe everyone should pay tribute because the King family has done so much for us.”

Some 8,000 people took part in the morning viewing, which was cut short a half hour early so the Secret Service could sweep the building.

“She made many great sacrifices,” said Sean Washington, 38, who drove from Tampa, Fla., with his wife and children from a disability center, to attend the King’s funeral. “To be in her presence once more is something that I would definitely cherish, no matter what.”

The funeral followed a day of tributes at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Gladys Knight performed and television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, former Atlanta mayor and King lieutenant Andrew Young and others shared their memories of King.

“For me, she embodied royalty. She was the queen. ... You knew she was a force,” Winfrey told an audience of 1,700 at the musical celebration in King’s honor.

Winfrey laughed as she told how she once persuaded King to get a new hairdo on her TV show. And she became emotional when she told how King, in the week before her death, sent her a handmade quilt that her husband’s mother had passed down.

“She leaves us all a better America than the America of her childhood,” Winfrey said.

At a service Monday night, the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton galvanized the crowd with fiery speeches that blasted the government and public figures for trying to make the King legacy their own while doing nothing for world peace or poor black Americans.

“We can’t let them take her from us and reduce her to their trophy and not our freedom fighter,” Jackson said.

After the funeral, King’s body will be placed in a crypt near her husband’s tomb at the King Center, which she built to promote his memory.

Between the tombs is the eternal flame that was placed there years ago in Martin Luther King Jr.’s honor. On the crypt, inscribed in black, is the Bible passage First Corinthians 13:13, which reads: “And now abide Faith, Hope, Love, These Three; but the greatest of these is Love.”

(Associated Press Writer Nedra Pickler contributed to this report.)