
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.
Love Story — 1955
Coretta Scott King
Martin Luther King Jr.
Venus and Saturn
A convergence of planets
A cosmic union of fate
Coretta Scott King
The songbird and preacher’s wife
Dexter Baptist Church
Dr. King preached like Moses
Chattered Montgomery folks
Rosa Parks rebelled
A nonviolent activist
Stubborn like granite
Seamstress took a front bus seat
Arrested for her protest
Thick black clouds of change
Swept across Montgomery
Jim Crow squawked at death
Black folks put on walking shoes
Boycotted city buses
Dr. King stood up
Fanned the flames on Jim Crow’s pyre
Fiery-tongued preacher
Pretty wife and newborn child
His family soon a target
BOOM! King’s home was bombed
The bus boycott carried on
Fifty thousand strong
Black maids walked in snow and rain
December to December
BOOM! King’s home was bombed
Coretta and baby cried
Martin grew fearful
Said…Go to your father’s house
Coretta refused to leave
Obadiah Scott
Said…Come home to Heiberger
Coretta said…NO
Venus and Saturn converged
It was not a time to run
Bernice understood
Coretta was Obie’s seed
Fireproof heart of faith
Baptized in muddy waters
A woman born for battle
Coretta Scott King
Venus and Saturn converged
Two agents for change
Marched down highways and bridges
Singing — We shall not be moved
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.