As today’s Martin Luther King holiday draws to a close, I’m reflecting on how hated he was at the end of his life and how now, on his 91st birthday, there is a federal holiday honoring his life and legacy. There is one reason for this shift, and her name is Coretta Scott King. 
A still-grieving Mrs. King was so clear that her husband’s life and death must not be in vain, and that she could not let his work be erased or forgotten. A year after his assassination, she started what became @TheKingCenter in the basement of the couple’s home.
On his first birthday after his death, there was a push to observe the day nationally and for federal recognition. Days after King was killed, Michigan Democrat John Conyers introduced legislation calling for the federal holiday, and Mrs. King testified in Congress in support.
Today is Mrs. King’s as much as it is Dr. King’s, because she demanded that the country that disrespected her husband in life would respect him in death, year after year, until it became a reality. She turned tragedy into a triumph of her work and her legacy.
