The Kings' Queen: A Song for Coretta Scott King

So, she contacted music directors at a major historically Black university and a historic Black church in Atlanta and asked if they were interested in learning the song before the funeral. She received no’s. She left a copy of the song on paper and cassette with a music professor at a large local university and at the funeral home that was preparing Mrs. King’s body; she hoped the undertakers would get the song to the King family. She called the talent agency that handled the speaking career of one of Mrs. King’s daughters and left a sample of the song on the agency’s voice mail.

Desperate to have the song heard during the period of mourning, Janet attended a nighttime vigil for Mrs. King at another iconic Black university in town and asked the program director if she could perform the song. He said that she could but never called on her to do so.

It seemed no one was interested in the poor single mother’s substitute for a rose.

“Well,” she told her 13-year-old son, Chad, “I guess I wrote this song for you and me only.”

On Saturday, the day of the viewing of Mrs. King’s body at the state capitol in downtown Atlanta, Janet prepared to watch the life-celebration and mourning activities on TV. However, she says, a restless spirit settled upon her and forced her to go downtown to the Georgia State University computer lab, where she printed out a brief editorial that began life years before as a seven-page essay that argued for the naming of an Atlanta landmark after Mrs. King. She intended to deliver the editorial to one of the city’s small Black newspapers to see if she could get it printed (the papers had rejected the piece in the past). For a reason she did not understand at the time, Janet also printed out several copies of her song's lyrics.

After Janet joined the body-viewing queue that wrapped around a city block, a woman behind Janet asked what she had in the folder in her arms. Janet thought it a strange question from a stranger but told the woman that it was a song she had written for Mrs. King. “Oh!” the stranger said. “Are you going to sing it?” Janet answered, “I don’t know. I’d like to.”

The conversation ended, but it weighed on Janet’s thoughts. “Why not sing it?” she reasoned. “I’ve got it. I wrote it. It is a funeral song, so it should be sung here. So…why not?”

Gathering courage, Janet stepped out of line and onto a small concrete wall that lined the sidewalk on Mitchell Street. She said, “Excuse me. Is there anyone interested in learning and singing a song for Coretta?” She was amazed when, all around her, hands shot into the air.

Because she was nervous, Janet’s voice did not carry well as she demonstrated the melody, so a female minister in the crowd, who was from the Midwest, used her robust singing voice to make sure everyone heard the melody and could copy it. With that, the group moved along in the queue and sang the song over and over again.

A woman approached with a cell phone. She handed it to Janet and asked if she wouldn’t mind singing into it. The woman said that on the other end was a friend whose constraints as a medical student prevented her from traveling to Atlanta for the viewing. Would Janet please not mind singing a verse to the med student? Janet complied, and both the woman with the phone and the unseen student on the other end expressed tearful gratitude.

When the singers neared the capitol, a female security guard approached them, ready, it seemed, to silence them—until she heard what they were singing. Her face softened into a smile and she retreated but told Janet that they needed to stop singing when they reached the doors of the building. The group agreed, but out of respect for Mrs. King, they grew silent even before they reached the doors.

After viewing Mrs. King’s lovely face in the coffin, Janet exited the building and felt both grateful for the viewing and void and disappointed, for the quick look at the woman she regarded as queen seemed an abrupt end to what had been a great emotional week. She knew that if she felt that way as a resident of Atlanta, visitors who had come from hundreds of miles away might feel even more of a letdown.

So, Janet decided to prolong their experience. She stopped on the covered porch of the doors through which the visitors were exiting and held before her one of her favorite photos of Mrs. King. The female minister joined her right away, and they sang several verses until the minister had to leave with her party. After that, Janet sang alone.

Singing for an audience was not an entirely new experience for Janet. In her late teens and early twenties, she had performed, as a non-professional, at wedding receptions and with a basement band. But it had been fifteen years since she’d stopped performing, because for some reason she’d lost her stage voice. But as she stood on the porch of the capitol, she marveled that the voice coming out of her throat was clear, non-quavering, and even pretty. It was the voice, she felt as she sang, of someone else. Or, at least, a voice over which someone else had taken control.