respect due.
Coretta Scott King, who turned a life shattered by her husband's assassination into one devoted to enshrining his legacy of human rights and equality, has died, former mayor Andrew Young told NBC Tuesday morning. She was 78.
Young, who was a former civil rights activist and was close to the King family, broke the news during a phone call he made to the "Today" show. Efforts by The Associated Press to reach the family were unsuccessful. They did not immediately return phone calls.
Asked how he found out about her death, Young said: "I understand she was asleep last night and her daughter tried to wake her up."
King, who suffered a serious stroke and heart attack in 2005, did not appear at the birthday observance for her husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., for the first time in the 20-year observance of the holiday.
Coretta King was a supportive lieutenant to her husband during the most tumultuous days of the American civil rights movement. She had married him in 1953.
After her husband's assassination in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, she kept his dream alive while also raising their four children.
