Yolanda King, daughter of MLK, dies at 51

  Yolanda King, daughter of MLK, dies at 51 POSTED: 5:35 a.m. EDT, May 16, 2007 ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- Yolanda Denise King, daughter and eldest child of civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has died, said Steve Klein, a spokesman for the King Center.

King died late Tuesday in Santa Monica, California, at age 51.

Yolanda King in a 2006 photograph.Klein said the family did not know the cause of death but that relatives think it might have been a heart problem.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s Daughter Dies at 51

 

By ERRIN HAINES

AP

ATLANTA (May 16) - Yolanda Denise King, daughter and eldest child of civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has died, said Steve Klein, a spokesman for the King Center.

 

 

Peter Dejong, AP

Yolanda Denise King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., spoke to the media in the Netherlands in January. She was the most visible and outspoken child of the civil rights leader.

 

King died late Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif., at age 51.

Klein said the family did not know the cause of death but think it might have been a heart problem.

Born on Nov. 17, 1955, in Montgomery, Ala., King was just an infant when her home was bombed during the turbulent civil rights era.

As an actress, she appeared in numerous films and even played Rosa Parks in the 1978 miniseries "King." She also appeared in"Ghosts of Mississippi." She founded a production company called Higher Ground Productions.

King was also an author and advocate for peace and nonviolence. Her death comes more than a year after the death of her mother, Coretta Scott King.
 

 

 

Yolanda King is survived by her sister, the Rev. Bernice A. King; two brothers, Martin Luther King III and Dexter Scott King; and an extended family.

Arrangements would be announced later, the family said in a statement.

Yolanda King was the most visible and outspoken among the Kings' four children during activities honoring this year's Martin Luther King Day in January, the first since Coretta Scott King's death.

At her father's former Atlanta church, Ebenezer Baptist, she performed a series of one-actor skits on King Day this year that told stories including a girl's first ride on a desegregated bus and a college student's recollection of the 1963 desegregation of Birmingham, Ala.

She also urged the audience at Ebenezer to be a force for peace and love, and to use the King holiday each year in January to ask tough questions about their own beliefs on prejudice.

"We must keep reaching across the table and, in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, feed each other," King said.

When asked then by The Associated Press how she was dealing with the loss of her mother, King responded: "I connected with her spirit so strongly. I am in direct contact with her spirit, and that has given me so much peace and so much strength."