Full Text of SR0603 094th General Assembly
SR0603 94TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
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| SENATE RESOLUTION
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| WHEREAS, The members of the Senate of the State of Illinois | 3 |
| learned with regret of the death of one of our nation's | 4 |
| foremost civil rights leaders, Coretta Scott King, on Tuesday, | 5 |
| January 31, 2006; and
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| WHEREAS, She was born on April 27, 1927, on her | 7 |
| grandfather's farm in Heiberger, Alabama, to Obadiah and | 8 |
| Bernice Scott; she attended Lincoln High School in Marion, | 9 |
| Alabama, and Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she | 10 |
| was the first African American to major in elementary | 11 |
| education; and
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| WHEREAS, While attending Antioch College, Mrs. King was | 13 |
| active in the NAACP and shifted the focus of her studies to | 14 |
| music; in 1951, she won a scholarship to the New England | 15 |
| Conservatory of Music in Boston; it was there that she was | 16 |
| first introduced to her future husband, the Reverend Martin | 17 |
| Luther King Jr.; and
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| WHEREAS, In 1952, a friend wanted to introduce her to Dr. | 19 |
| King, who at the time was studying for his doctoral degree at | 20 |
| Boston University; when Mrs. King found out that he was a | 21 |
| minister, she lost interest, fearing he was too pious and | 22 |
| narrow-minded; still, Dr. King called her and convinced her to | 23 |
| have lunch with him; that very day, he told her that he thought | 24 |
| they should get married someday, that she was everything that | 25 |
| he had wanted in a woman; they were eventually married in the | 26 |
| garden of her parents' home in Alabama on June 19, 1953; and
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| WHEREAS, After earning her degree in voice and violin and | 28 |
| after Dr. King passed his exams, he took on the pastorship of | 29 |
| Dexter Avenue Church in Montgomery, Alabama; on December 1, | 30 |
| 1955, a seamstress named Rosa Parks boarded a crowded | 31 |
| Montgomery bus and refused to give up her seat to a white |
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| passenger; she was arrested for violating the state's bus | 2 |
| segregation law, igniting a fury among Montgomery's blacks that | 3 |
| would ripple across the South; local black leaders formed the | 4 |
| ad hoc Montgomery Improvement Assn. and called for a boycott of | 5 |
| the municipal bus system; the man chosen to lead the protest | 6 |
| was the young minister from Dexter Avenue Church; and
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| WHEREAS, Dr. King became the most famous black man in | 8 |
| America when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on November 13, 1956, | 9 |
| that Montgomery's bus segregation laws were unconstitutional; | 10 |
| he became known for his oration, and his most famous speech, | 11 |
| the "I Have a Dream" address delivered at the 1963 March on | 12 |
| Washington, was a clarion call for justice that galvanized the | 13 |
| nation; the following year he was the recipient of the 1964 | 14 |
| Nobel Peace Prize; and
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| WHEREAS, During the 1950s and 1960s, the Kings had to worry | 16 |
| about their own safety, when their house was bombed while Mrs. | 17 |
| King was there with the baby, Yolanda, when Dr. King was | 18 |
| stabbed in the heart by a deranged woman, and when he was | 19 |
| incarcerated multiple times for taking a stand for freedom and | 20 |
| equality; and
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| WHEREAS, While much of her time was spent at home with | 22 |
| Yolanda and their other three children, Martin III, Dexter, and | 23 |
| Bernice, Mrs. King was active in several organizations; she had | 24 |
| been a member since her college days of the anti-war group, | 25 |
| Women's Strike for Peace; at Dr. King's urging, she joined a | 26 |
| delegation of the group that went to Geneva, Switzerland, in | 27 |
| 1962 for atomic test-ban talks; she also was a member of the | 28 |
| Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and in | 29 |
| 1969, she led a quarter of a million people on the first | 30 |
| "moratorium" on the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C.; and
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| WHEREAS, She also raised money for the civil rights | 32 |
| movement by organizing a series of "Freedom Concerts", the |
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| first of which took place in New York City in 1964; they were | 2 |
| modeled on a program held on December 5, 1956, the first | 3 |
| anniversary of the Montgomery boycott, in which she, Duke | 4 |
| Ellington, Harry Belafonte, and other performers told the story | 5 |
| of the Montgomery struggle through music, poetry, and prose; | 6 |
| she eventually gave more than 30 concerts and raised in excess | 7 |
| of $50,000 for the cause; and
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| WHEREAS, As history has recorded, the Reverend Dr. Martin | 9 |
| Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on April 4, 1968, in | 10 |
| Memphis, Tennessee; he and Mrs. King had been married 14 years; | 11 |
| President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of | 12 |
| mourning; and
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| WHEREAS, Before his burial, Mrs. King flew to Memphis to | 14 |
| take his place at the head of the protest march by garbage | 15 |
| workers whose plight had brought him to the city; a month | 16 |
| later, she helped to open the Poor Peoples' Campaign that he | 17 |
| had been planning before his death; she then became the | 18 |
| custodian of her late husband's legacy; in 1969, she began to | 19 |
| mobilize support for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for | 20 |
| Nonviolent Change; she eventually raised $15 million to build | 21 |
| the complex, which opened in 1982;
she served as the center's | 22 |
| president for two decades; and
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| WHEREAS, She also channeled her energy into a long and | 24 |
| difficult drive to establish a King holiday; the legislation | 25 |
| finally cleared Congress on November 19, 1983, and was signed | 26 |
| by President Ronald Reagan two weeks later; Dr. King's birthday | 27 |
| became the tenth national holiday and only the second named for | 28 |
| an American; and
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| WHEREAS, She established herself as an advocate of women's | 30 |
| rights and full employment in the 1970s, campaigned against | 31 |
| apartheid in the 1980s, and was a keynote speaker in 1984 at | 32 |
| the U.N. International Day of Solidarity with the Women of |
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| South Africa and Namibia; the next year she was arrested with | 2 |
| her daughter, Bernice, at a rally outside the South African | 3 |
| Embassy in Washington; in 1994, she shared the podium with | 4 |
| Nelson Mandela after he won the first nonracial government | 5 |
| election in South Africa; and
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| WHEREAS, The passing of Coretta Scott King has been deeply | 7 |
| felt by many, especially her children, Dexter, Martin Luther | 8 |
| III, Yolanda Denise, and Bernice Albertine; therefore, be it
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| RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-FOURTH GENERAL | 10 |
| ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we mourn the passing of | 11 |
| Coretta Scott King, who leaves a legacy of activism and | 12 |
| devotion to the ideal, and we extend our sincere condolences to | 13 |
| her family, friends, and all who knew and loved her; and be it | 14 |
| further
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| RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be | 16 |
| presented to her family as an expression of our deepest | 17 |
| sympathy.
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