Martin Luther King Jr. Met Coretta in Boston

This marker commemorates a turning point in the life of one of America's most consequential figures. In September of nineteen fifty-one, Martin Luther King Junior enrolled in Boston University's doctoral program in systematic theology. While studying there he met Coretta Scott, an Alabama-born singer pursuing a degree at the New England Conservatory of Music.

She was skeptical at first, unsure whether a minister's life was the one she wanted. But King was persistent, and on June eighteenth, nineteen fifty-three, they were married on the lawn of her parents' home in Perry County, Alabama, with King's father officiating. Coretta would go on to become more than a supportive spouse.

She marched, organized, performed freedom concerts to raise funds for the movement, and after her husband's assassination in nineteen sixty-eight, spent decades building his legacy and extending the work of the civil rights movement into new arenas.