By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Christine King Farris, the sister of slain U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and a prominent activist herself, died on Thursday at the age of 95, the King Center said.
Farris died peacefully in Atlanta, Georgia, with her family by her side, according to the King Center, of which she was a founding board member.
Farris participated in historic events of the civil rights movement, including the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and the “March Against Fear” in Mississippi in 1966.
Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, by avowed segregationist James Earl Ray in 1968. That same year, Farris joined his widow Coretta Scott King to form the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta.
Farris was part of a delegation to Washington in 2011 for a ceremony when Martin Luther King Jr’s monument was erected on the National Mall and was also present for the 2017 unveiling of a long-awaited statue of her brother at the state Capitol.
Willie Christine King was born on September 11, 1927, in Atlanta. She earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Spelman College in 1948 and later attended New York’s Columbia University, where she earned two master’s degrees in education.
She went on to become a Spelman educator, and director of the Learning Resources Center until she retired in 2014.
She was married to Isaac Newton Farris Sr for 57 years until his death in 2017. The couple had two children, Isaac Newton Farris Jr and Angela Farris Watkins.
In 2003, she published a memoir on her childhood and upbringing with her brother.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
