Coretta Scott King

In high school, I had a teacher who influenced me greatly, Miss Olive J. Williams, and she was versatile in music, and I wanted to be like her. She exposed me to the world of classical music. Before then, I had never heard classical music. She exposed me also to the great composers of the world, as well as black performers, which I didn’t know about at the time: Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes and Dorothy Maynor and others.

But I was blessed with parents who taught me not to let anyone make me feel like I wasn’t good enough, and as my mother told me, “You are just as good as anyone else. You get an education and try to be somebody. Then you won’t have to be kicked around by anybody, and you won’t have to depend on anyone for your livelihood, not even a man.”

I never got to the point where I felt that nonviolence was not viable. ... I realized that it wasn’t that it wouldn’t work, it’s that people didn’t follow the proper steps in trying to achieve it because there are a set of principles and there are a set of steps in the methodology that we were taught about nonviolence. And when we follow those they work.