There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about Martin. He was my source of inspiration.…Martin and I were soulmates. When he died, a part of me died.…The nation may have lost a great leader but I lost a husband. My children lost their father. We paid the ultimate price.

Born this day in 1927 was Coretta Scott King—civil rights activist, wife of civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and, after her husband’s assassination, the founder of a center for nonviolent social change.