by Stephanie Manning
A MID-WEEK PAUSE:
No concerts on the calendar this Wednesday — so no need to brave the bitterly cold temperatures, either. Perhaps this is a sign to spend the day cozied up indoors.
To check out what the rest of the week has in store, visit our Concert Listings.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Know a young singing actor looking to take the stage this summer? The Ohio Light Opera has announced auditions for performers ages 8-18 for its 2025 productions of Brigadoon and Carousel. Sign ups for slots on Friday, February 7 and info about what to prepare can be found here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this day in 1929, Baptist minister, activist, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta. And today, we’re looking back on Dan Hathaway’s write-up about the woman who stood at his side: his wife, Coretta Scott King (pictured, above).
Dan’s commentary feels especially relevant given that The Cleveland Orchestra’s 45th Annual MLK Jr. Celebration Concert, taking place this weekend, features a program all about Coretta Scott King’s life. (Learn more about that event here.)
Wer ein holdes Weib errungen,
Stimm’ in unsern Jubel ein!
Nie wird es zu hoch besungen,
Retterin des Gatten sein.Those are the words that close Beethoven’s Fidelio, when the entire company celebrates the freeing of Florestan and other political prisoners through the intervention of his faithful wife Leonora.
Somehow, in the curious way the mind connects things, listening recently to that ebullient finale made me wonder why the celebrations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy around his birthday on January 15 every year rarely mention his own faithful wife, Coretta Scott King, who continued his campaigns against racism and injustice after his assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968.
Moreso, as Jeanne Theoharis writes in a February, 2018 article in The Guardian, “Martin Luther King’s ‘helpmate’ was a seasoned civil rights campaigner in her own right — ‘never just a wife, never just a widow.’” Read I am not a symbol, I am an activist’: the untold story of Coretta Scott King here.
She was also a musician, who went on after graduating from Antioch College to earn bachelor’s degrees in voice and violin at The New England Conservatory, where she met her future husband, who was pursuing his doctorate at Boston University. She talks about her singing career in a video interview for the National Visionary Leadership Project, and in a WFMT article.
Sample the flavor of Coretta Scott King’s oratory in her address at Harvard’s Class Day Exercises in 1968, when she stood in for her late husband only weeks after his assassination, and six days after Robert F. Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles.
An early protester against the Vietnam War who also campaigned for gay rights and was arrested in 1985 along with her son Martin III and her two daugherts for protesting South Africa’s policy of apartheid outside the country’s embassy in Washington, Coretta Scott King’s 15-year lobbying effort resulted in the Act of Congress that established Martin Luther King Day as an official national holiday — the first non-President to be so honored.
And just for fun, on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, actor John Lithgow recalled having Coretta Scott babysit him and his siblings in Yellow Springs, Ohio during her time at Antioch.
