[61] Both were worried that they would not like each other due to their fathers' legacies. King spoke from the cathedral's Canterbury Pulpit, the same pulpit Martin Luther King Jr. spoke from on his last Sunday sermon before his death. She became an actress, ran a production company and appeared in numerous films, including "Ghosts of Mississippi," and as Rosa Parks in the 1978 miniseries "King.". Martin Luther King Jr.'s eldest child who pursued her father's dream of racial harmony through drama and motivational speaking, has died. Instead, the two quickly found common ground in their activism and in their positive outlook towards the future of African-Americans. Yolanda, Martin, Dexter and Bernice King lost their father. She complimented her mother on her achievements and her mother spoke of her in a positive light, as well. Only a year earlier, Coretta Scott King, wife of MLK and mother to Yolanda, died from complications of ovarian cancer at the age of 78. Martin Luther King Sr., refused to attend, but her mother supported her. But acting, I could be zany, silly, sometimes the foolish person that I am. Like Jackie Kennedy before her, Coretta Scott King sat still and composed as all around her wept. Yolanda, King's nine-year-old granddaughter, made headlines just last month with her rousing speech at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington. Members of the chapter are "deeply saddened to learn of the recent passing of Ms. Yolanda King,'' spokeswoman Tiffany Travis said today. [106] She became a spokesperson for the American Heart Association after her mother's stroke, promoting a campaign to raise awareness about strokes. [47] In response to her role in the play and her own response to the role, a man wrote to Jet predicting that she would marry a white person before she was eighteen. In 1960, they moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where she was immersed in social upheaval. There, she joined hands with her siblings and mother along with other civil rights activists, singing We Shall Overcome. Flying bug found at Walmart turns out to be rare Jurassic-era insect She was the godmother of acclaimed actress RaVen Larrymore Kelly. In the interview with the magazine, she related how people expected her to be "stuck up" and referred to it as one of the "handicaps" of being Martin Luther King's child. She mentioned the possibility that the event could have been a calling for Americans to put their loyalty towards "their race, tribe and nation", as her father once said. "[127] Joseph Lowery stated; "She was a princess and she walked and carried herself like a princess. Market data provided by Factset. Showing Editorial results for yolanda king. She called him my first buddy, saying, I was tremendously loved.. Her family has speculated that her death was caused by a heart condition. Stepping into Tomorrow led to the formation of Nucleus in the 1980s, a theater company which King and Shabazz founded. King and Dexter were in favor of sale, but their other siblings were not. Below, she speaks at a 2000 Human Rights Campaign gala. Funeral arrangements would be announced later, the family said in a statement. ", "Yolanda never wavered from a commitment to nonviolent social change and justice for all," he said. She was credited with having her father's sense of humor.[1]. Her father also addressed the issue himself. She was among 187 people arrested during a demonstration by lesbian and gay rights activists. Her career as an actor and speaker combined her father's. When asked by The Associated Press at that event how she was dealing with the loss of her mother, she responded: "I connected with her spirit so strongly. Sharpton said Yolanda King was a "torch bearer for her parents and a committed activist in her own right. .component--type-recirculation .item:nth-child(5) { Ric Feld/AFP/Getty Images I remember listening to the news, in disbelief, in the twilight hours of April 4, 1968. King died late Tuesday in Santa Monica,. Death 15 May 2007 (aged 51) Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, California, USA. She was also subject to some harassment by her classmates, describing it as the "era when students were making demands and many black students were closer to the teachings of Malcolm X, or what they thought were his teachings." She was an actress and writer, known for King (1978), JAG (1995) and Hopscotch (1980). King died late Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif., at age 51, said Steve Klein, a spokesman for the King Center. Yolanda King was born on November 17, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA. [6] While her mother liked her name, her father had reservations about naming her "Yolanda", due to the possibility that the name would be mispronounced. Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, and Mrs. King died last year. Bernice King, Yolanda King and Martin Luther King III. "[126] Like her parents and siblings, King did not publicly affiliate with a political party. Yolanda at that same ceremony used her craft as an actress to deliver a tribute to her parents, performing a series of skits telling stories including a girl's first ride on a desegregated bus and a college student's recollection of the 1963 desegregation of Birmingham, Ala. In the Fall of 1968, King attended Henry Grady Highschool, in Midtown Atlanta, Georgia, she was president of her sophomore and junior class, and vice president of her senior class. or redistributed. She also found "great irony" in President Ronald Reagan having signed a bill to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday. The event was planned by survivors of the . Bernice A. On July 21, 1969, King's uncle and father's brother Alfred Daniel Williams King was found dead in the swimming pool of his home. She took classes taught by Manning Marable and Johnnella Butler, and became satisfied with her choice of a college. [39] She was active in student government and drama. It was the first and only institution where King was not harassed or mistreated because of who her father was. I am in direct contact with her spirit, and that has given me so much peace and so much strength. In 1993, she debunked the thought that her father's "dream" had been anything but a dream, and was quoted as saying "It's easier to build monuments than to make a better world. [58] Despite some early opposition to acting that she received during her controversial play in high school, King still tried to get roles and actively tried performing. King also voiced her dislike of the assumption that she would behave just like her mother and father, and the difficulty of being perceived as not being someone others could talk to. King called her father's name and having to live up to it a "challenge" and recalled a friend when she first met a friend of hers, who believed she could not say anything to King but after beginning to know her, realized that she was "no worse than my other friends" and she "could say anything" to her. Houston is in for dust and gray skies as Texas haboob arrives, Oops! [30] Four days later, she and her family accompanied their mother to Memphis City Hall on her own terms, as she and her brothers had wanted to come. Yolanda King's cause of death remains unknown, although her family including her sister Bernice King and two brothers, Martin and Dexter King believe a heart problem may have contributed to her death (via NPR). Yolanda died due to a chronic heart condition in 2007. "[92], King attended and spoke at the Human Rights Campaign Detroit Gala Dinner of 2000. Her deepest memories were the love of her father, who taught her to swim and playfully pummeled her but never spanked her. She was 51. "Hey, hope you don't mind, but I brought Yoki and Marty with me," he apologized as the three swept up the stairs of my DuPont Circle townhouse. [45], At 15 she was subject to controversy when she appeared in the play The Owl and the Pussycat with a white male lead. [22] King flew to Memphis, Tennessee with her brothers and mother and participated in leading a march in Memphis with sanitation workers and civil rights leaders. She wrote "Yolanda proved daily that it was possible to smile while wreathed in sadness. "Thanks for having us.". After she suggested that he would most likely give it all away, King laughed with her mother. "She lived with a lot of the trauma of our struggle," said the Rev. Please enter valid email address to continue. I got my answer less than a decade later when, one ridiculously snowy evening in Washington, D.C., my doorbell rang. [78] She joined her mother in placing a wreath around her father's crypt. Her childhood experience was greatly influenced by her father's highly public activism. This dental device was sold to fix patients' jaws. Father's death: 1968 Teenage years and high school: 1968-1972 Early adulthood College: 1972-1976 . Yolanda Denise King (November 17, 1955 May 15, 2007) was an African-American activist, actress and first-born child of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King who pursued artistic and entertainment endeavors and public speaking. [102] During the fall of 2004 she played Mama in "A Raisin in the Sun" at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts at Cornell University. Speaking last January in Atlanta at Ebenezer Baptist Church where her father preached for many years Yolanda exhorted those observing the national holiday that bears his name to remember that America has not yet achieved peace and racial equality. (That moment would be captured for posterity by Moneta Sleet Jr., who photographed the funeral for Ebony and Jet; he would later be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for the mother-daughter portrait of grief.) [68], She celebrated her father's holiday on January 16, 1986, and attended a breakfast in Chicago with Mayor Harold Washington. King became a human rights activist and actress. "I'm Yoki," Yolanda King said, smiling. [110], She preached in January 2007 to an audience in Ebenezer Baptist Church urging them to be an oasis for peace and love, as well as to use her father's holiday as starting ground for their own interpretations of prejudice. Suzan Johnson Cook was highlighted in an article written by the minister, as she dubbed her deceased longtime friend a "queen whose name was King". [85] In October, she uttered her belief that her father's dream of integration was not fully understood. In her teenage years, King preferred to go by her nickname "Yoki." [120] She also advocated for her father's holiday to be used as a day for helping others, and also expressed dissatisfaction on the basis of people relaxing on his day. King and her brother Martin III bragged about their selflessness at school. Family (2) Trivia (7) Daughter of Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King. "[88] She honored her father in 1995 by performing in the Chicago Sinfonietta in the play "A Lincoln Portrait", in which she was the narrator. In 1978 she starred as Rosa Parks in the TV miniseries King (based on her father's life and released on DVD in 2005). Yolanda Denise King, who was born on Nov. 17, 1955, in Montgomery, Ala., lived virtually her entire life in the maelstrom of the civil rights revolution that her father and mother, Coretta Scott King, helped lead. [34] King and her siblings were assured an education thanks to the help of Harry Belafonte, who set up a trust fund for them years prior to their father's death. King joined her mother and siblings in marches and was lauded by such figures as Harry Belafonte, who established a trust fund for her and her siblings. She ran out of the room, screamed "I don't want to hear it,"[24] and prayed that he would not die. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot loses reelection bid The only reason why Black History Month was created and still exists is because America is still struggling and trying to come to grips, come to terms with the diversity of its people. [17] For Christmas 1963, King and her siblings accepted a sacrificial Christmas as appealed by their parents and only received a single gift. After her hour-long presentation, she joined her sister and her aunt, Christine King Farris, in signing books. The death comes just over a year after the death of her mother, Coretta Scott King a civil rights leader in her own right at the age of 78, of complications from ovarian cancer, and after a battle with the effects from a stroke. FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2006, file photo, from left, the children of the Rev. The children referred to her father as an "Uncle Tom" and she was scared that he would go down in history as such. Death photos of Yolanda King Seeing Spots May 24, 2007 1 2 Next Seeing Spots Joyful Woman! NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates offers a personal note on Yolanda King. She was a young girl during his famous stay in the Birmingham, Alabama, jail. Coretta King had established her own career as a civil rights activist, and after her husband's assassination in 1968, she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (via Biography). hide caption. She proceeded to read his books, and started to believe that her father had been correct all along. [33] Bill Cosby flew to Atlanta after the funeral and entertained King and her siblings. There, in my living room, shaking off snow and laughing, were the kids in the picture two of them, anyway. She received a standing ovation afterwards, alongside a thunderous applause. Her death came less than a year and a half after her mother, Coretta Scott King, died in January 2006. [121] She disliked cliches used to define her father and expressed this to Attallah Shabazz, and recalled having seen a play where her father was a "wimp" and carried The Bible with him everywhere.[122]. ", The Rev. Market data provided by Factset. Thank you for her voice. May 16, 2007 / 5:32 AM "[100] While in Dallas in March 2004, King related; "It's only in the past half-dozen years or so that I have felt comfortable in my own skin. When King was 16, she received attention in Jet in 1972, where she talked about what her father's famous name was doing for her life. By the time she was an adult, she had grown to become a supporter of gay rights and an ally to the LGBT community, as was her mother. She made lifelong friends while in the institution that would collectively be called the "Grady Girls". When asked what kind of world she would like to live in, King said she wished "people could love everybody". #inline-recirc-item--id-93e66a4a-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d ~ .item:nth-child(5) { She also was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. [16] She predicted at that time that all of the "Negro leaders" would be killed and the non-leading African-Americans would agree to segregation. I am in direct contact with her spirit, and that has given me so much peace and so much strength.". Summary . However, her father reassured her as she began to cry that she was "just as good" as anyone who went to Funtown, and that, one day in the "not too distant future", she was going to be able to go to "any town" along with "all of God's children". Former Mayor Andrew Young, a lieutenant of her father's who has remained close to the family, said Yolanda King had just spoken at an event for the American Heart Association. The civil rights leader and wife Coretta Scott King were parents to four kids: sons Martin Luther King III, 65, and Dexter, 61, and daughters Yolanda and Bernice, 59. [36], When asked about what pressures emerged from being a daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., King stated that "as soon as people heard me speak, they would compare me to my father My siblings had the same kind of pressure. Leading up to her death, she was still active in the public eye. In the early hours of May 19, 2007, King's body was brought to Atlanta, Georgia by private plane belonging to Bishop Eddie Long. Early on, she was aware of racism in her surroundings, especially when her father had to explain to her why she wasn't allowed to go to the amusement park known as "Funtown." Martin Luther King Jr., has died, said Steve Klein, a spokesman for the King Center. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot loses reelection bid, Fiery train crash in Greece kills dozens, many of them students. During the course of her lifetime, King's name was mispronounced to the point that it bothered her. November 28, 2007 . The cause of death was believed to be heart disease. I was a high-school junior when Martin Luther King was assassinated. "[101] "I struggled with a lot of the legacy for a long time, probably actually into my 30s before I really made peace with it," Yolanda stated in 2005 on "Western Skies", a public radio show based in Colorado. It began on Jan. 30, 1956, when Yolanda, nicknamed Yoki, was 2 months old and the familys house was bombed in the Montgomery bus boycott. She reflected "I had never read his works. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who melded her father's. Yolanda King, who lived in California, was an actress, ran a production company and appeared in numerous films, including "Ghosts of Mississippi." She played Rosa Parks in the 1978 miniseries "King." [22] She ranked in the top 10 percent of her class. November 17, 1955 - May 15, 2007 Santa Monica, California | Age 51 Daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., dies . I watched as the four King children grew into adulthood, then middle age, all single. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. When asked about how she was faring following her mother's death, Yolanda responded: "I connected with her spirit so strongly. "Yolanda was lovely. I could let the rough edges show., Yolanda King, 51, Actor and Dr. Kings Daughter, Dies, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/us/17king.html. display: none; But walking through the first part of the exhibit I felt that terror. Bernice King, Martin Luther King III and Yolanda King participate in a musical tribute to their mother at the new Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. ", The Rev. [5] She kept her father busy when walking on their home's floors. [29] King complimented her mother as a "brave and strong lady," leading to a hug between them. Her educational accomplishments continued when she earned a Master of Fine Arts from New York University in 1979 (via Stanford). A flag at The King Center, which King's mother founded in 1968 and where she was a board member, was lowered to half-staff on Wednesday. ", As an actress, she appeared in numerous films, including "Ghosts of Mississippi," and even played civil rights heroine Rosa Parks in the 1978 miniseries "King.". Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. She also urged the audience at Ebenezer to be a force for peace and love, and to use the King holiday each year in January to ask tough questions about their own beliefs on prejudice. 2007 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. [19], King, and her brother "Marty", were enrolled in the fall semester of 1965 at Spring Street Elementary School, in Midtown Atlanta, Georgia. She has mostly been in the news. Yolanda King, the Rev. In 1999, she acted in Selma, Lord, Selma, about the civil rights march, and in 1996 appeared in Ghosts of Mississippi, about efforts to track down the killer of Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader. The pair performed in around 50 cities a year and did lectures together, typically in school settings. Yolanda King's bio. She wore the mantle of princess, and she wore it with dignity and charm," said the Rev. We had cups of tea because it was so frigid that night, and then they were gone. 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