Another long-lived widow passes over years after her prominent husband...

darkdaughta's picture
Tue, 01/31/2006 - 21:26 -- darkdaughta

I saw on yahoo that Coretta Scott King the woman partner/ally of Martin Luther King had died.

I thought, the passing of more history and her/stories. I'm living in an age where so much is dehistoricized even by the feminists and activists I encounter, where so much emphasis is placed on youth and the young that I worry that our struggles become less and less grounded in a knowledge of the past. This passing marks a loss for sure. But a loss of what kind?

But, since I was always more of a Malcolm X-y sort of Black queer girl, I won't get too much up in the contribution of her late partner whose name and dream are presently being pimped by all sorts of folks who don't care one fig about everyday Black people, no way no how.

When I saw the article and picture of this Black woman so defined by her existence as loyal wife and widow, living shrine to the memory of a man, her husband, I thought of other Black wives of "great" men who had lived and worked along side their partners, yet who were defined as lesser, as patriarchally subjugated to visions not seen as primarily theirs, dreams not primarily theirs, but instead those of their men.

I thought with rage about Winnie Mandela...oops, did I say Mandela? I don't think she can claim the last name since he divorced her. Yes, she who fought the great battle, fought dirty in the trenches while her husband was being mentally broken, dominated and chemically lobotomized (so as to not leave any permanent scars. how do you think a resistance fighter and nation's leader went into the jail and a doddering, soft spoken man fine with white south africa came out? Any psyche survivor/consumer can explain exactly how one would take a defiant soul, make it more malleable, friendly and willing to "play nice.")

I thought about her "loving" husband and ally coming out of prison and almost immediately disassociating himself from the partner who had loved him, allied with him and kept his name alive all those years. I thought of him "setting her aside" and finding himself a more docile, friendly, less bloodied wife more in keeping with his new role as international man of peace.

I thought about the fact that Nelson Mandela, threatened by the leadership power of his mate, could and did side-line his greatest ally in struggle with ease, because Winnie Mandela had always been vulnerable to being seen as just his wife, just a feminized symbol of his resistance, a receptacle for his ideas, not a fully conscientized warrior fighting a battle that was also hers to claim and to define powerfully if not always ethically.

I understand that had he died either before or during encarceration, she would have been able to "keep her place" as honoured wife, as widow of the martyr of the struggle, as powerful head of the movement, as warrior mother of the struggle. Had he died, she would not have been seen as in direct competition with him for power. Had he died, I understand that South Africa would have been a verrrry different place today. (but that's a whole other posting in and of itself)

So, when I hear about Coretta Scott King's passing, I mourn a historical passing more than a herstorical one. I wonder how this woman's path would have diverged from that of her husband's if he had lived and she had continued to grow next to him. I wonder if she would have attained this status of legend if she had remarried or chosen to take a lover and have more children with another after his murder instead of spending the rest of her life (understood as) a sexless widow. But, under a misogynist patriarchal system of wimmin's oppression, it's clear that her life and status as living icon would have been different, right?

I understand her as a good wife, a good widow in black, monogamously faithful to her death. A wife keeping her husband's name alive, keeping her husband's dream alive and through this act, the dreams of a whole peopling.

Her husband was the phallic head of a non-violent struggle and she was it's mother, inseminated by his dream, primed to give birth ritually to his vision in his name publicly, over and over again, until her death.

I understand this woman as a subjugated symbol of heterosexual, patriarchal wifehood. A symbol of a man's struggle. A sacrificial ritual object representing a leader long gone. An icon of resistance to colonization...by proxy not through her own presence at the helm. Empowered to speak and to act, not through her own dreams for justice and civil rights, which it seems predated her meeting and marrying her partner, but ultimately thorugh his patriarchal maleness and the access her proximity to it earned.

Welcomed and listened to because of the legitimacy conferred on her by his last name, by the "sanctity" of monogamous marriage and wifehood, I understand her as a foot soldier in a struggle lead by a (Black) man, in a struggle that welcomed a female instigator (Rosa Parks), that would not have followed a female leader. I don't understand her as a symbol of Black female power and leadership in her own right.

Long may his name live after her passing.

Comments

mamasusie's picture
Submitted by mamasusie on

You write:

I wonder how this woman's path would have diverged from that of her husband's if he had lived and she had continued to grow next to him. I wonder if she would have attained this status of legend if she had remarried or chosen to take a lover and have more children with another after his murder instead of spending the rest of her life (understood as) a sexless widow. But, under a misogynist patriarchal system of wimmin's oppression, it's clear that her life and status as living icon would have been different, right?

The most recent news I remember of Mrs. Scott King was her vehement opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment. I'm pretty sure that her own personal views about opression - no matter whose opression she was fighting - were forefront in her mind. I don't see this having any connection to her "status of legend" at all. And I certainly don't see how her decisions about how she wanted to live her life sexually after her husband's death factors into the way she was perceived by most - as a kick ass human being. I lost my life partner to sudden death, far too young. And grief is a funny thing. If I had chosen to remain a "widow" sexually for the rest of my life, that makes me no more opressed, and no less of an awesome woman in my own right.

"Step off my big ass."

- Anthromom

lapina's picture
Submitted by lapina on

As always.
Could you please come up with a way to podcast your writing. I would love to hear you speak it.
*edit* I am not sure if you already know all about it, but here is a tutorial.

So the days pass, and I ask myself whether one is not hypnotized, as a child by a silver globe, by life, and whether this is living.
~ Virginia Woolf

Trula's picture
Submitted by Trula on

I am again astonished by your presumptions.

I agree with Lapina though, I would love to hear you speak. I bet you have a fantastic speaking voice! and it would all sound real good.

MamaGathering 2006 | Other Blog | My Bookstore

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sapphire's picture
Submitted by sapphire on

my son is so into him for the last 3 months or so, since I got him this shirt with dr. king's face on it.

http://www.bootylandkids.com/sstee2.html

i wanted to say though that one cannot discount a movement solely based on the fact that there were elements lacking from it. WA state for example just passed a bill adding sexual orientation to a list of civil rights that cannot be discriminated against for housing/jobs etc. Just because we have not yet said gays can legally marry does not mean what was done in the legislature is of no value. So with Dr. King and the civil rights movement. He was amazing and brought about enough though in the minds of people (in a non-violent way) that things like the Panthers could exist at all. it is all a progression. Coretta made choices that I may not have made, does that make her less of a feminist, less of a woman of choice? I have to recall Allison Crews in regards to this :

Being pro-woman, being pro-choice means being supportive of any reproductive choice a women makes for herself. Women, of any age, in any social situation have the right to bear children. We have the right to choose when, where, with whom and how we bear children. We have the right to abort a pregnancy, for whatever reason we may have. If we have no money, if we have no support, if we wish to continue our education or career uninterrupted, if we are being abused, if we were raped, it is our right to not bear a child. If we become pregnant, through any circumstance, we have the right to birth the way we want to. We have the right to elect to have our child removed by cesarean section on a convenient date. We have the right to choose to deliver alone in our homes, catching our babies with our own hands. We have the right to be respected as mothers, to be seen as the responsible, hardworking parents that we are. We have the right to remain child-free forever, to find fulfillment through our careers and personal adventures. We have the right to bear as many children as our body will allow, and to be fulfilled through the nurturing of our children. We have the right to nourish and nurture our children at our breasts, for as many years as they may need to and we allow. We have the right to keep our body to ourselves once we give birth, if we cannot handle the physical or emotional aspects of breastfeeding, and feed our children artificial breast milk. We have the right to chose to become parents and the right to delay parenting. We have the right to share a bed with our children, and we have the right to put them to sleep in beds of their own. We have the right to mother the way we want to, to ignore other’s advice and criticisms. We have the right to an education, no matter how old we are and what grade we are in when we give birth. We have the right to a career, to daycare, to financial aid. We have the right to stay home and postpone a career until our children are grown. Our bodies are our own, our futures are ours to mold. No one should be allowed to interfere with them. Whatever our reproductive choices may be, nobody ever can deny us our right to them. And this is what being pro-choice means to me.

(read the rest at: http://propagandapress.org/?p=125 )

do we really want choice if that means that some will choose something different than I would?

formerly lluvia (spanish for rain :))

CordeetMente's picture
Submitted by CordeetMente on

Hi DD, I had glimpsed this post a few days ago & hadn't had the time to read it then. I sought it out this evening & have been able to read it & the responses but don't have the time right now to write a full response. But I do have a quick question, just wondering if you've read either of the Mandela's autobiographies? Will try to write more later tonight after I get DS to bed. Thanks for the thought provoking post. Peace til later, CM

"I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world." - Virginia Woolf

"I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world." - Virginia Woolf

"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." - Rose F. Kennedy