 London ~~ Tuesday May 22 2007 Yolanda King Campaigning daughter of civil rights leader who extended her father's legacy
Godfrey Hodgson
Yolanda King, who has died suddenly aged 51, was the eldest child of the American civil rights leader Martin Luther King and his wife, Coretta Scott King (obituary, February 1 2006). As an actor, she appeared in films and television dramas, many connected with the African-American cause. She was a champion of lesbian and gay rights, and of racial minorities.
Known to her family and friends as Yoki, King was born in Montgomery, Alabama, during the 1955 bus boycott that launched her father on a national career leading to the Nobel peace prize in 1964 and assassination in Memphis in 1968, when his daughter was 12. She learned of his death from a television news bulletin while doing the washing up. "To this day," she told a magazine 30 years later, "my heart skips a beat when I hear a special bulletin announced."
Determined from a very young age to act, at eight, King attended the Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop, then the only unsegregated drama school in the Georgia state capital. It was run by Walt and Betty Roberts, the parents of Julia Roberts.
At 15, King played a part-time prostitute in The Owl and the Pussycat, made into a 1970 movie by Barbara Streisand and George Segal. Her appearance - opposite a white actor - triggered the first of many rows resulting from her uninhibited commitment to the causes she believed in. "The white community criticised it because they didn't think interracial sex was right," she said later. "The black community asked, 'How could you disgrace your dead father's image by playing a prostitute?'" She recalled being forced to stand up in church and explain her actions.
King, who moved to Culver City, near Hollywood, was founder and head of Higher Ground Productions, which she called a "gateway for inner peace, unity and global transformation". Her website described her mission as encouraging personal growth and positive social change.
As an actor, she played many parts more or less directly based on her father's life. At her grandfather's church in Atlanta, she did a one-woman show representing scenes from the civil rights movement; in 1978, in the TV mini-series King, she played Rosa Parks (obituary, October 26 2005), the woman whose refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger triggered the Montgomery bus boycott. One of her strongest roles was in the movie Ghosts of Mississippi (1996). She also worked with Attallah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, in a series of anti-racist performances; in 1981, she played his wife, Attallah's mother Betty Shabazz, in the film Death of a Prophet.
King graduated from Smith College, Massachusetts, in 1976, having majored in theatre and Afro-American studies, and took an MA in theatre at New York University. From the beginning, she was troubled by the expectations that she would devote her life to the civil rights cause; as she pointed out in an interview, in the end she did so - but she did it in her own way, through theatre.
She was first arrested in 1984, demonstrating against the apartheid regime in South Africa. She spoke regularly to meetings of the American Heart Foundation, because she was particularly keen to warn African-Americans of the dangers of strokes. In 2000, she was one of 187 people arrested at a demonstration by lesbian and gay rights activists at a church meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, being addressed by George Carey, the then archbishop of Canterbury.
Last year, she told a gay rights meeting that "If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, you do not have the same rights as other Americans. You cannot marry ... you still face discrimination in the workplace, and in our armed forces. For a nation that prides itself on liberty, justice and equality for all, this is totally unacceptable."
King was a member of a number of civil rights organisations, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded by her father, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and she was on the board of the King Centre in Atlanta. In 2005 she sided with her brother Dexter on the proposed sale of the centre to the US national park service, which her brother and sister, Martin Luther King Jr and the Rev Bernice King, opposed. The family dispute has still not been resolved.
King was on her way from speaking to a meeting of the American Heart Association when she collapsed and died in the doorway of Dexter's house.
- Yolanda Denise King, actor and campaigner, born November 17 1955; died May 15 2007 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  Thursday May 17, 2007
Yolanda King, 51, Actor and Dr. King's Daughter, Dies  Yolanda King (Nick Wass/Associated Press, 2006)
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Yolanda King, the eldest child of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who melded her fathers message of racial equality and nonviolence with her own calling as an actor and a motivational speaker, died on Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 51. Steve Klein, a spokesman for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, said the cause of death had not been determined but seemed related to cardiopulmonary problems.
Ms. King was meeting her brother Dexter King at a friend’s home when she collapsed and died.
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. Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, and Mrs. King died last year.
Besides her brother Dexter Scott King, Yolanda King is survived by another brother, Martin Luther King III, and her sister, the Rev. Bernice King.
Yolanda King wrote and produced plays; gave speeches to groups that included elementary schoolchildren and Fortune 500 corporations; and acted in commercial movies. With Elodia Tate, she edited a motivational book emphasizing the importance of diversity. Ms. King’s consistent goal was to infect her work, including her films, with her family’s deeper purposes.
She portrayed Rosa Parks, who sparked the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her bus seat in a miniseries, “King” (1978), and Betty Shabazz, the wife of Malcolm X, in “Death of a Prophet” (1981).
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.
She founded a dramatic group with Atallah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X, the slain civil rights leader, and started a theatrical production company, Higher Ground Productions, dedicated to what she called personal empowerment. She was also on the board of the King Center.
In a statement, Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia and a veteran of the civil rights movement, said that being Dr. King’s daughter was to carry an extra burden.
It began on Jan. 30, 1956, when Yolanda, nicknamed Yoki, was 2 months old and the family’s house was bombed in the Montgomery bus boycott.
In 1958, Dr. King narrowly escaped death when he was stabbed in a bookstore in Harlem. To Yolanda, it seemed as if adults naturally went to jail occasionally, because all those she knew seemed to do that.
Her deepest memories were the love of her father, who taught her to swim and playfully pummeled her but never spanked her. She called him “my first buddy,” saying, “I was tremendously loved.”
Ms. King was 12 on April 4, 1968, when she heard a news bulletin on television saying her father had been assassinated in Memphis. Four days later, she and her brothers accompanied their mother to appear at Memphis City Hall. Mrs. King said the children attended because they wanted to.
The next year, Ms. King’s uncle A. D. King, her father’s sole brother, accidentally drowned. In 1974, an apparent madman fired a gun in the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and killed her grandmother Alberta Williams King.
Yolanda King learned about racial discrimination at 3 or 4 when she was barred from an amusement park. She was one of the first black children at a previously segregated elementary school in Atlanta, where she endured racial epithets. In high school, she was president of her sophomore and junior classes and vice president of her senior class.
She wrote her first play at 8, and her mother sent her to acting school the next year. Her decision in 1971 to play a prostitute in a school production of Bill Manhoff’s “Owl and the Pussycat,” which involved kissing a white man, scandalized the white and black communities. Her paternal grandfather, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., refused to attend, but her mother supported her.
Ms. King graduated from Smith College and earned a master of fine arts degree from New York University. She then toured the country with the Christian Theater Artist Company, which she helped found.
In an interview with The Baltimore Sun in 1998, Ms. King said acting had liberated her, not least the parts unrelated to her family history.
“In life,” she said, “I had to be prim and proper and poised the King daughter. But acting, I could be zany, silly, sometimes the foolish person that I am. I could let the rough edges show.”
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 Thursday May 17, 2007
Yolanda King, daughter of MLK, dies at 51
Story Highlights
• The Rev. Joseph Lowery says Yolanda King "wore the mantle of princess"
• Cause of death uncertain; family suspects heart problem
• She played Rosa Parks in a miniseries and appeared in "Ghosts of Mississippi"
• Her death comes more than a year after her mother, Coretta Scott King, died
ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- Yolanda King, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s eldest child who pursued her father's dream of racial harmony through drama and motivational speaking, collapsed and died. She was 51.
King died late Tuesday in Santa Monica, California, said Steve Klein, a spokesman for the King Center. The family did not know the cause of death, but relatives think it might have been a heart problem, he said.
"She was an actress, author, producer, advocate for peace and nonviolence, who was known and loved for her motivational and inspirational contributions to society," the King family said in a statement.
Former Mayor Andrew Young, a lieutenant of her father's who has remained close to the family, said King was going to her brother Dexter's home when she collapsed in the doorway.
Her death came less than a year and a half after her mother, Coretta Scott King, died in January 2006 after battling ovarian cancer and the effects of a stroke. Her struggle prompted her daughter to work with the American Heart Association to raise awareness about strokes, especially among blacks.
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."
"Yolanda was lovely. She wore the mantle of princess, and she wore it with dignity and charm," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, one of her father's close aides in the civil rights movement. He added she was "thoroughly committed to the movement and found her own means of expressing that commitment through drama."
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who also worked with her father, said: "She lived with a lot of the trauma of our struggle. The movement was in her DNA." The Rev. Al Sharpton called her a "torch bearer for her parents and a committed activist in her own right."
White House press secretary Tony Snow said President Bush and the first lady were sad to learn of King's death, adding, "Our thoughts are with the King family today."
Yolanda King founded and led Higher Ground Productions, billed as a "gateway for inner peace, unity and global transformation." On her company's Web site, she described her mission as encouraging personal growth and positive social change.
The flag at The King Center, where she was a board member, flew at half-staff on Wednesday.
Yolanda Denise King -- nicknamed Yoki by the family -- was born November 17, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, where her father was then preaching. Her brother Martin III was born in 1957; brother Dexter in 1961; and sister Bernice in 1963.
She was just two weeks old when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus there, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott spearheaded by her father.
When she was 10 weeks old, the King family home was bombed in Jan. 30, 1956, as her father attended a boycott rally. Neither she nor her mother was injured when the device exploded on the front porch.
In 1963, when she was 7, her father mentioned her and her siblings at the March on Washington, saying: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
She was 12 when her father was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968.
King was a 1976 graduate of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she majored in theater and Afro-American studies. She also earned a master's degree in theater from New York University.
Yolanda King was the most visible of the four children during this year's Martin Luther King Day in January, the first since her mother's death.
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. I am in direct contact with her spirit, and that has given me so much peace and so much strength."
At her father's Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, she performed a series of solo skits that told stories including a girl's first ride on a desegregated bus and a college student's recollection of the 1963 campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Ala.
She also urged the audience to be a force for peace and love, and to use the King holiday each year to ask tough questions about their own beliefs about prejudice.
"We must keep reaching across the table and, in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, feed each other," she said.
Funeral arrangements would be announced later, the family said in a brief statement.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.
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