Yolanda King

Yolanda Denise King (November 17, 1955 – May 15, 2007) was an African-American activist 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.

Her childhood experience was greatly influenced by her father's highly public activism.

She was born two weeks before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a public transit bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

She occasionally experienced threats to her life, designed to intimidate her parents, and was bullied at school.

In 1956, a number of white supremacists bombed the King household.

Yolanda and her mother were not harmed.

She and her mother, at the time of the bomb's detonation, were in the rear section of their home.

Despite this, the front porch was damaged and glass broke in the home.

She kept her father busy when walking on their home's floors.

While her mother liked her name, her father had reservations about naming her "Yolanda", due to the possibility that the name would be mispronounced.

During the course of her lifetime, King's name was mispronounced to the point that it bothered her.

King's father eventually was satisfied with the nickname "Yoki", and wished that if they had a second daughter, they would name her something simpler.

The Kings would have another daughter, almost eight years later, named Bernice (born 1963).

King recalled that her mother had been the main parent and dominant figure in their home, while her father was often away.

Decision-making towards what school she would attend in first grade was done primarily by her mother, since her father expressed disinterest to her early in the decision-making.

Her mother referred to her as being a confidant during the time following her husband's assassination.

She complimented her mother on her achievements and her mother spoke of her in a positive light, as well.

When asked by a young boy what she remembered most about her father, she admitted that her father was not able to spend much time with her and the rest of her family.

When he did, she would play and swim with him.

King cried when she found out her father had been imprisoned.

Her father admitted that he had never adjusted to bringing up children under "inexplicable conditions".

When her father was assassinated on April 4, 1968, the 12-year-old King showed her composure during the public funeral and mourning events.

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 became a secondary caregiver to her younger siblings.

In her teenage years, she became an effective leader of her high school class and was covered by the magazines Jet and Ebony.

Her teenage years were filled with more tragedies, specifically the sudden death of her uncle Alfred Daniel Williams King and the murder of her grandmother, Alberta Williams King.

While in high school, she gained lifelong friends.

It was the first and only institution where King was not harassed or mistreated because of who her father was.

However, she was still misjudged and mistrusted because of her skin color, based on perceptions founded solely upon her relationship with her father.

Despite this, King managed to keep up her grades and became involved in high school politics, serving as class president for two years.

King aroused controversy in high school for her role in a play.

She was credited with having her father's sense of humor.

In the 1990s, she supported a retrial of James Earl Ray and publicly stated that she did not hate him.

That decade saw King's acting career take off as she appeared in ten separate projects, including Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), Our Friend, Martin (1999) and Selma, Lord, Selma (1999).

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 was involved in a sibling feud that pitted her and her brother Dexter against their brother Martin Luther King III and sister Bernice King for the sale of the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

King served as a spokesperson for her mother during the illness that would eventually lead to her death.

King outlived her mother by only 16 months, succumbing to complications related to a chronic heart condition on May 15, 2007.

Yolanda was born at St. Jude's Hospital in Montgomery, Alabama to Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr. ., she was only two weeks old when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus.

Even in her infancy, Yolanda was faced with the threats her father was given when they extended to his family.