The family of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is known throughout the world for their sacrifice for peace and non-violence during the civil rights movement and beyond.
What is not as widely known is the life and death of Alberta Williams King, the mother of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the wife of the Rev. Martin Luther King. Sr.
More than a family matriarch, Mrs. King was quite possibly the glue of the civil rights movement.
“She was just a remarkable human being,” her grandson Martin Luther King III told Atlanta TV station 11Alive. “There’s no question. She was a remarkable human being. Literally maybe who walked with kings and queens, but retained the common touch.”
MLK Jr., an illustrious speaker and orator, was very close to his mother and would often write her when he was out of town. In one letter, he said, “Mother Dear, one day I’m going to turn this world upside down.”
Alberta Williams King: What To Know About The Mother Of MLK Jr.
Mrs. King was born September 13, 1904 in Atlanta, Georgia, to Adam and Jennie Williams.
She went to Spelman Seminary for high school before earning a teaching certificate from Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute, which later became Hampton University in Virginia.
She and Michael King, then a young preacher, married on Thanksgiving Day in 1926. They moved into Williams’ home on Auburn Avenue and stayed in an upstairs bedroom.
Despite her new role as a wife and church mother, she continued to further her education at Morris Brown College, receiving a BA from the Atlanta school in 1938.
Mrs. King was a high achiever by any standard. She founded the Ebenezer choir, serving as organist there for 40 years and was a member of the YWCA, NAACP and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
Who Shot Alberta Williams King?
On June 30, 1974, a religious extremist arrived from Ohio and took a taxicab to Ebenezer Church. Marcus Chenault, a diminutive 21-year-old who had attended classes at Ohio State University, was armed with two pistols.
Before his bus ride to Georgia, he told friends that he was going to Atlanta “to meet destiny.”
During Sunday service, Mrs. King was sitting at the organ when she was struck with a bullet. “She was playing, ironically, the Lord’s Prayer when she was killed,” King III told the TV station.
According to testimony from the trial, Chenault, who was seated about 4 feet from the organ, fired his gun at Mrs. King. A deacon who witnessed the shooting said that Mrs. King exclaimed “Oh!” after the blast and that he saw Chenault standing up with a pistol exclaiming, “I am taking over this …” He shot more people, including a deacon, Edward Boykin, who was killed, and Mrs. Jennie Mitchell, who survived.
Among family members who witnessed Mrs. King’s shooting was her grandson, Derek Barber King. During the commotion, King said that Chenault took aim at Mrs. King again, who was on the floor screaming and bleeding. He shot her again.
Mrs. King, 70, died later that day.
There was never a clear motive as to why Chenault killed Mrs. King, although it is public record that during his trial he said, “All Christians are my enemies.” It was also brought out that Chenault, an African-American, sought to kill other black members of the clergy, as he saw them as a threat.
Chenault followed the tenants of the Black Hebrew Israelites, particularly the teachings of the Rev. Hananiah E. Israel of Cincinnati, who said that he had met the young man and tutored him in his teachings.
“He said that [he] was a college kid who didn’t know anything,” Israel told the New York Times a week after Mrs. King’s murder. “The boy was brilliant. All I had to give him was the key to open his mind.”
Israel said that he was “shocked and flabbergasted” when he found out that Chenault had gotten arrested for the shooting, which he didn’t denounce.
During his trial, Chenault was sentenced to death, even though two psychiatrists testified that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and had “delusions of grandiosity” at the time of the murders.
In 1995, Chenault’s sentence was commuted to life. He died of natural causes on August 3, 1995.
Final Word
Mrs. King’s death just six years after her son’s was yet another blow to the King family and those who knew them.
Her quiet strength exemplified the confidence she had in herself and instilled in her grandchildren. There is no doubt that her daughter-in-law, Coretta Scott King, learned much from Mrs. King, a piece Larry to the end.
Read These Inspired Quotes From The Late Coretta Scott King.
