Holding hands on the battleground of freedom

EDITOR’S NOTE: To celebrate the sustaining power of love, we asked Memphis author Alice Faye Duncan to share the story of Coretta Scott King and her loyalty to Martin Luther King Jr. It’s a story she tells in her forthcoming 2023 book “Coretta’s Journey—The Life and Times of Coretta Scott King” (Calkins Creek Press). Duncan sees their love as “the perfect study in cosmic devotion.” 

Few know Coretta Scott King’s journey from girlhood in Alabama to activist and prophet, speaking across the nation promoting nonviolence as a way of life. She challenged the Black civil rights patriarchy after Martin Luther King’s death. It was this fiery, unflappable, and resolute version of herself that captured Martin’s heart on their first date in Boston in 1951.

As February is the month to extol love and Black history, I offer you ten Tanka poems. These spare verses recall 1955, the year Coretta and Martin were a young couple with a new baby in Montgomery, Alabama. Martin could not perceive that Montgomery’s boycott was the start of a liberation movement and that Coretta’s parents, Obie and Bernice Scott, had raised a woman who was the perfect love to walk with him and hold his trembling hand on the battleground for freedom. 

Originating in Japan, Tanka poems include five lines with 31 syllables (5-7-5-7-7). I chose this simple form to make a complex love story accessible to readers across all levels of understanding. What did Gwendolyn Brooks say? “Poetry is life distilled.” And here is my distilled understanding of the greatest love story that continues to keep on giving.  

Alice Faye Duncan lives in Memphis and is a National Board educator who writes poetry and picture books for children to help them remember important, but forgotten moments from American history. Her newest titles include “Opal Lee and What it Means To Be Free” and “Evicted—The Struggle for the Right to Vote.” Free teacher guides for both books can be found at www.alicefayeduncan.com.