• Home
• People
• Yolanda King

Yolanda King

Yolanda Denise King (November 17, 1955 – May 15, 2007) was an American activist and first-born child of Coretta Scott King and civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She was known also for her artistic and entertainment endeavors and public speaking.Her childhood experience was greatly influenced by her father's highly public and influential activism. Born two weeks before Rosa Parks famously 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 became a secondary caregiver to her younger siblings and was bullied at school.When her father was assassinated April 4, 1968, King, then only twelve years of age, was noted for her composure during the highly public funeral and mourning events. She joined her mother and siblings in marches, and she was lauded by such noted figures as Bill Cosby and Harry Belafonte, the latter setting a trust fund for her and her siblings.In her teenage years, she became an effective leader of her class in high school and was given attention by the magazines Jet and Ebony. Her teenage years were filled with more tragedies, specifically that of her uncle Alfred Daniel 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, based on perceptions founded solely upon her relationship with her father. Despite this, King managed to keep up her grades and was actively 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 an active supporter for 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 spokesman for her mother during the illness that would eventually lead to her death. King outlived her mother only 16 months, succumbing to complications related to a chronic heart condition May 15, 2007.