Coretta Scott King | The Nation

The widows of great men either gracefully retire from history's stage or take their own lonely road. Coretta Scott King had little hesitancy about carrying on her husband's work. As she said in 1956, "All along I have supported my husband in this cause...whatever happens to him, it happens to me." Just four days after his assassination, in 1968, she marched with the garbage workers he had championed and began work on the Poor People's Campaign. She continued to walk in his steps, but eventually she found her own cadence. She was active in the Nuclear Freeze movement and preached nonviolence. She went on to support gay rights and AIDS victims. She was, as SCLC co-founder the Rev. Joseph Lowery said, "the first First Lady of the movement."