Thousands mourn civil rights icon King at funeral

LITHONIA, Georgia - US President George W. Bush, three former presidents and thousands of others filled a Georgia church today to mourn Coretta Scott King, who took up the fight for racial equality in America after the assassination of her husband, Martin Luther King Jr, in 1968.

Mrs King, seen by many as the "first lady" of the US civil rights movement, died last week in a Mexican alternative health clinic at the age of 78, after complications from ovarian cancer and a recent debilitating stroke and heart attack.

"By going forward with a strong and forgiving heart, Coretta Scott King not only secured her husband's legacy, she built her own," Bush told the funeral service at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia.

"Having loved a leader she became a leader. And when she spoke Americans listened closely, because her voice carried the wisdom and goodness of a life well-lived," he said.

The pews at the 10,000-person capacity "megachurch" were filled with a who's who of politics, entertainment and the US civil rights community.

Former President Bill Clinton flew with Bush to Georgia on Air Force One, which also carried first lady Laura Bush and Clinton's wife, New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Former presidents Jimmy Carter and George Bush also attended the service. Bush and his predecessors sat on the stage behind King's coffin and in front of a large choir.

Tens of thousands of people have mourned King since her death, with an estimated 42,000 people paying their respects as she became the first woman and first African-American to lay in state at the Georgia Capitol building over the weekend.

Yesterday, others braved the rain and cold to get a glimpse of King, adorned in pink attire in a champagne and bronze-coloured casket, at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where her husband preached decades ago.

King died on January 30 of bronchial pneumonia at a controversial alternative health centre in Mexico, where she had sought possible treatment for terminal ovarian cancer.

In recent days, her four children said their mother, who established the Martin Luther King Jr centre for Nonviolent Social Change, was making progress recovering from an August stroke. Then she was diagnosed with cancer in November.

"We saw a genuine commitment in her life to making a difference," Yolanda King, the oldest child, told reporters on Monday. "That commitment, that passion we must all find within ourselves."

Born April 27, 1927, near Marion, Alabama, Coretta Scott King played a back-up role in the civil rights movement until her husband was gunned down on a Memphis motel balcony on April 4, 1968.

As she recalled in her autobiography My Life With Martin Luther King Jr., she felt she had to step fully into the civil rights movement after her husband's assassination.

Bush said Mrs. King had known danger, injustice and "terrible grief" and became one of the most admired Americans of her time. "Rarely has so much been asked of a pastor's wife, and rarely has so much been taken away," he said.

Clinton told reporters on the way to Georgia. "In a larger sense there are millions of people all across America that are the children of Martin and Coretta King, whose whole lives were shaped by their passion for equal opportunity and justice, and their commitment to nonviolent change, and to not being discouraged in the face of repeated disappointment."

- REUTERS