Atlanta playwright pays homage to civil rights icon

Published 11:12 pm Saturday, February 17, 2007

ATLANTA (AP) — On a rainy February Monday, thousands of mourners braved a steady rain and unrelenting chill, lining Auburn Avenue for hours to get a glimpse of the body of Coretta Scott King in her pink suit and blanketed with a shroud of flowers at her beloved Ebenezer Baptist Church.

It was a scene that was burnished into playwright Pearl Cleage’s mind, and one she immediately recognized as a theatrical moment.

“That line made a community out of people who were not a community before,” Cleage said.

Cleage was moved to memorialize that day in “A Song for Coretta,” a play that focuses on five women waiting to pay their final respects to the civil rights matriarch at the close of Feb. 6, 2006. The play debuts this weekend at Spelman College, where Cleage graduated in 1971 and is now a professor and where King’s daughter, Bernice, also graduated.

Coretta Scott King — who died on Jan. 30, 2006, from complications from ovarian cancer — was mourned by thousands in a series of tributes in Atlanta before she was laid to rest a week later, near the tomb of her husband, Martin Luther King Jr. More than 115,000 mourners attended the Ebenezer viewing, and the line at times reached a mile long.

King is the common thread that bonds the characters in the play. Separated by geography, generation, and life experience, they all share stories with a college student and aspiring reporter about the impact King had on their lives and why they were compelled to come say goodbye.

Though Cleage did not wait at Ebenezer to bid King farewell, she watched the event on television. Her conception of that night is reminiscent of reality, where people gathered for blocks, chatting, drinking coffee and musing on King’s effect on their lives and the world while waiting to file past her casket at the church where her husband preached during the last eight years of his life. She remained a member of the church until her death.

Cleage also knew King personally from her days working at The King Center, which Mrs. King started soon after her husband’s assassination in 1968.

New to Atlanta in 1969, Cleage — whose father was a civil rights activist — went to The King Center hoping to help Coretta Scott King with her archiving efforts. As a young college student at Spelman, Cleage solicited graying civil rights leaders for memorabilia from the bygone era, including tapes of speeches and press conferences she spent hours transcribing.

She also interacted with King, who Cleage remembers as sweet, genuine, soft spoken and smart.

“She knew exactly what she was trying to do and understood the importance of her legacy,” Cleage said.

A central message in the play is that King can be an example — even those with no relation to the mother, wife and activist — for black women in search of a role model.

“We have a difficult time at this moment, in this country, trying to figure out the right thing to do. We can ask, ’What would Coretta do?”’ Cleage said. “The beauty and importance of her life is that she worked hard … and she talked about issues that affect everyday people.”

The playwright also uses her work to raise some of those issues: teenage pregnancy, the war in Iraq, intergenerational tensions in the black community and Hurricane Katrina. Cleage said she chose to focus on women to make the play a “sisterhood moment” about women who found strength in another woman.

The play’s director, Crystal Dickinson, said she is attracted to Cleage’s ability to speak for black women. Dickinson, who has directed two of Cleage’s one-act plays, said “A Song for Coretta” is about change and listening to others.

“We have to love each other, even when it’s tough,” Dickinson said. “That’s the way that you change things, not by judging. I think that’s what this teaches a lot about, how Coretta Scott King’s example helps us to remember that.”