I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimin… - Coretta Scott King

There is a Mrs. King. There is also Coretta. How one became detached from the other remains a mystery to me. Most people who have followed my career from afar, or even given me a second thought, know me as Mrs. King: the wife of, the widow of, the mother of, the leader of. Makes me sound like the attachments that come with my vacuum cleaner. In one sense, I don't mind that at all. I'm proud to have been a wife, a single parent, and a leader. But I am more than a label. I am also Coretta. Isn't it time you know the integrated, holistic woman: one spirit, one soul, one destiny? In reading this memoir, I hope somehow you see Coretta.

I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.

Like life, racial understanding is not something that we find but something that we must create. And so the ability of Negroes and whites to work together, to understand each other, will not be found readymade; it must be created by the fact of contact.