As the body of Coretta Scott King lies in state to be viewed by thousands over the next two days in the Georgia State Capitol rotunda in a singular honor denied her husband in death 38 years ago, controversy still swirls about where and how she died, who is presiding over her funeral, and about the contending wishes of the King children: Martin III, Dexter, Yolanda and Bernice about the future of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Atlanta.
Thursday, the alternative medicine clinic where Coretta King died was shut down by Mexican authorities.
The Hospital Santa Monica in Rosarito, owned by chiropractor Kurt Donsbach since 1987 without interference, was located in Baja California. Donsbach, say American officials, has had many ‘run-ins’ with the law over his nutritional supplements and procedures which he claims can cure numerous diseases. Regulation across the border “is weak and corruption is rampant.”
To his critics Mr. Donsbach is a huckster who lures people in fragile condition to his clinic in Mexico with empty promises of revolutionary treatments. ..
To his admirers he is a practical healer who uses a combination of unconventional techniques to help the body’s immune system fight off cancer rather than bombard the body with chemotherapy and radiation.
In another NYT article:
[The hospital]offered people with cancer and other chronic diseases a buffet of unorthodox treatments, from intravenous infusions of hydrogen peroxide and vitamins, to ozone saunas to something he calls microchemotherapy, small doses of cancer-fighting drugs administered with glucose.
This sounds like the kind of alternative therapy sought after by one of my favorite actors, Steve McQueen, almost 26 years ago. McQueen was riddled with mesothelioma, a form of cancer caused by asbestos particles either from his stint in the Marines or through his car racing. In the last few months of his life, he sought out the controversial alternative Laetrile treatment in Juarez, Mexico. I remember feeling horrified hearing on the evening news that the surgeons were removing five-pound tumors out of McQueen. That he died soon afterwards from a heart attack did not surprise me. He was on his last dime when he attempted this treatment.
Suffering from advanced ovarian cancer, Coretta King turned to the clinic on the advice of close friends in her church says the New York Times. She arrived at the Hospital on January 26, but at the time of her death, it was alleged, she had not begun any of Donsbach’s treatments.
The funny thing about it, however, is that there was no autopsy performed and a doctor on the Hospital staff signed the death certificate. To him, King died from “respiratory and heart failure.”
The Baja state health commmissioner has other ideas:
Dr. Vera said investigators had found that the clinic lacked proper sanitary permits, practiced unconventional treatments and did not follow federally mandated protocols for patients with terminal illnesses. They also said they had found several unknown drugs or nutritional substances being used that carried Mr. Donsbach’s name. And he said some of the staff members were not accredited to perform the work they were doing.
An autopsy was conducted on Coretta King in Riverside, California under tight secrecy. Her embalmed remains were transported on one of the personal jets of Bishop Eddie Long, the controversial pastor who offered his church for the funeral as well, probably at the behest of the children, but in particular the Reverend Bernice King who participated with him a couple of years ago in an anti-gay march in Atlanta.
And gays are mourning Coretta Scott King as someone who had national moral clout on their side.
William Stosine in USA Today said:
As a gay man, I am also saddened by the passing of Coretta Scott King because in addition to being a tireless, outspoken symbol of the civil rights movement and a human-rights advocate, this great lady spoke out about the struggles of gays and lesbians. She recognized that all forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong.
As Wikipedia states in their bio of Coretta:
She was present at the first inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001, but was vocal in her opposition to capital punishment and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, thus drawing criticism from conservative groups. She was also an advocate of women’s rights, lesbian and gay rights and AIDS/HIV prevention. Her support for gay and lesbian rights, including same-sex marriage, sometimes put her in conflict with some members of her family including her daughter Bernice and her niece Alveda King.
Mubarak Dahir, in his Alternet obituary of Coretta said:
Her history and her standing in the African-American community made her a particularly formidable ally. While many African-American leaders virulently oppose equating the black civil rights movement and the gay rights movement, Mrs. King embraced the obvious parallels. “Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood,” she said in a speech in Chicago in April 1998, just days before the 30th anniversary of her late husband’s assassination. “I’ve always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy.”
Which makes me wonder why Coretta’s funeral will not take place in Ebenezer Baptist, where she made her famous state of civil rights speeches, and where Martin Luther King, Jr. held forth in a family-held sinecure. Or even at a neutral center or place. Instead, it is being held at Bishop Long’s megachurch, the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, which is capable of having up 10,000 worshippers.
Bishop Long, he with the small fleet of jets, is infamous for his preachings against homosexuality, abortion, and gay marriage, stands that her daughter the Reverend Bernice upheld, but her mother in life disdained. I have this fantasy that Coretta would do us one last last favor and start spinning in her open casket right in front of the illustrious who will be attending the funeral, which will include, at the last minute, George and Laura Bush, a couple of Long’s good friends. Bush is going to make a speech over Coretta, too. This cynical display is going to vie with Alito showing up for Rosa Parks’ lying in at the Capitol Rotunda for running, jumping and standing gall. He knows he’s not popular among black people, especially after Katrina. This is nothing less than a ploy, probably encouraged by Long. And Long certainly doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state or that women are equal beings before the divine. Moreover, as this article from National Stonewall Democrats indicates:
“We’re not just a church, we’re an international corporation,” Long said. We’re not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can’t talk and all we’re doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation…”
[…]
The Atlanta Journal Constitution has recently reported a rather interesting exposé on Long. According to the AJC article, Long has received a hefty $3.07 million in compensation from his non-profit company and from his church.
[…]
…Bishop Eddie Long, one of several black Pastors who met at the White House as part of the Republican effort to boost Black support for the GOP, was questioned about being a closet Republican. The Bishop admitted that he had attended a meeting at the White House but added, “just because we went to the house, doesn’t mean we had intercourse.”
Right.
This is the kind of moral shyster that is sidling up to the memory of Coretta Scott King, the widow of the only true American saint and martyr, who became a living symbol in her own right. And her kids are allowing it happen because tacitly, they seem to be giving one last raspberry at their mother. Because she seemed truer to their father’s ideals and what he represented to millions, they seemed more and more wedded to the opposite view.
Before Coretta died, the King Center board, led by Dexter King, voted to pursue a possible sale of the Center to the National Park Service. This move blew open afresh the public and private family bickering over the direction of the Center, to the point where it was said that Coretta became very upset in her weakened condition due to the stroke.
Yolanda is an inspirational speaker and writer; Dexter is a fledgling actor who once played his own father; Martin III is head of SCLC, his father’s organization; and Bernice is a Baptist minister who is said to have inherited her father’s preaching and organizational skills, but unfortunately, that voice is now in the service, in my view, of the dark side. When she was alive, Coretta curbed and upbraided this tendency in her children, but as time has passed, they have refused to relinquish it. In the future remember this: because their last name is King, it does not mean that they automatically aspire to his good words, deeds, or worldview. Coretta knew all of the civil rights advocates who worked with her husband, especially Bayard Rustin, who was a Quaker, a singer and openly gay, who helped organize the March on Washington, and whose input was critized by the likes of J. Edgar Hoover. Coretta was not ignorant when she made those statements for gay marriage and civil rights. She knew exactly what it meant. Her children, however, seem to show little–yet–of the understanding or the compassion or the courage it took for her to keep faith with her husband’s legacy, that rights and humanity for one group could not be limited to just one group. Maybe, of course, they just don’t possess it. And that’s okay. But why flog the name and legacy? Some of this eventually is going to come due.
Preachers and ministers have long been considered both spiritual leaders…and fakes and swindlers. Martin definitely walked that fine line; Coretta must have known what she was getting into marrying a minister. But I would choose Martin over and over again, even his womanizing, over someone like Long and his counterpart, T.D. Jakes who are hooked up with the Christian reich.
The family is considering having King’s body buried at the historically black Southview Cemetery in Atlanta, said Winifred Hemphill, the cemetery association’s president.
Martin Luther King Jr. was originally buried at Southview in the same crypt that now lies in the courtyard of the King Center, near Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he preached in the years before his death. That tomb is a single-person crypt, Hemphill said.
Southview Cemetery was started by nine former slaves in 1886 and is where Martin Luther King Jr.’s parents and maternal grandparents are buried.
Coretta King should be buried next to her husband in dignity and honor as soon as humanly possible, just as Jackie Onassis was eventually interred in Arlington next to John Kennedy. We all will not see her like again for some time.
I just don’t like the way that Coretta is going to be exploited by Bush and Long, and by her children. Nobody is to be trusted.
The funeral is Tuesday.
“from intravenous infusions of hydrogen peroxide and vitamins, to ozone”…therapy. I’ve had some of this and it helped me a great deal. It is unfortunate that some people try these treatments after they are very close to death and it’s too late. Now, I am sure it will look bad for all alternative therapies.
If alternative therapies worked, they would not be alternative; they would be mainstream.
Not true at all, the pharmacuetical companies control our health care. It’s all about money. But believe what you want.
And the buzz is that Dr. and Mrs. Lowery and Miss Christine, among others of the “old guard,” even Uncle Andy, who has recently been known to jump on some very unwholesome bandwagons in the name of “bipartisan unity” do not like it either.
More buzz: When the first announcement came down that the funeral would be held at New Birth, there were some very upset people. How, it was asked, are the folks who used to go to Ebenezer to hear Martin preach, who marched with him, these people are old now, and they are not all blessed with the same fortune as Dr. Lowery and John Lewis, how are they supposed to get their frail selves all the way out to the East Jesus which is Lithonia to those whose lives have been lived right there in the city?
(Lithonia is a “satellite town” of the city of Atlanta, whereas Ebenezer, the King Center, his tomb, as well as the neighborhoods where he, and his followers lived, are in the heart of the city).
It all happened within 24 hours, but the story goes that when little birds began to suggest that displeasure over the arrangements might become public, it was announced that there would be a viewing and service at Ebenezer also, and the family accepted the offer of Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue to honor the state’s capitol rotunda by allowing Mrs. King to lie in state there. Yet more buzz: Inquiries from Washington were discreetly made, and declined, prompting a thwarted administration to announce that Bush would be flown to Lithonia to bleat over Mrs. King’s remains and inflict even more disruption on the small community than it was already in store for, with all the King issue and a host of security-requiring dignitaries descending upon the town.
There were several noticeable absences at Capitol event, in fact, other than older family members and Rep. Lewis, few were there who knew Corrie and Martin back in the day. One can draw one’s own conclusions regarding reasons. One commentator suggested devilishly that perhaps since they were all of such advanced age, perhaps they had been asked to rest up for Tuesday. Or perhaps the commentator did not know that Uncle Andy was overcoming his advanced age sufficiently to be commenting on a rival station, or that the Lowerys were, well, better that one draw one’s own conclusions about that.
And it is probably better to do the same regarding Mrs. King’s last days and her death, and confine ourselves to the fervent hope that whatever else may or may not have been the case, that she indeed passed peacefully and without pain from a life whose end was imminent in any event.
Despite his well-known failings in the marriage department, Dr. King was by anybody’s standards, a hero, a leader according to the old school definition, who led literally, getting hosed and beaten and imprisoned along with the humblest of those who believed in him, believed in the Movement, and marched beside him.
In her own way, Mrs. King took up the banner when he fell, becoming a visible symbol of Dr. King’s dream, and if her actual accomplishments fell short of her husband’s, it should be noted that so have everyone else’s. Martin Luther Kings do not come along very often.
If at times it may have appeared from the trees that Dr. King’s legacy consisted largely of infighting and squabbles, up above the forest, some things did get done, and at least none of the squabblers felt the need to organize marches supporting bigotry.
On Tuesday, a lot more than an elegant widow will be laid to rest.
And elegantly said, Duct.
Ductape, I had a feeling some of this shyt was not going down well among The Old Guard, because they know right off the bat that Eddie Long is a shyster who ain’t broke out in a sweat or nursed a wound off a cop nightstick, but has taken millions off the GOP, the Bush Administration and the Christian reich. That’s why he can afford jets.
Bernice is out of her fucking mind. And the rest of the children, too. That’s exactly how I feel. I guess she thinks that more people will be turned towards Long and her because of this questionable honor. This is not an honor. This is disrespect. Again, I think that having it at the King Center or at Ebenezer, no matter how small the venue, would have been in the spirit of her and Martin’s missions. But see, this is not what Long and Bernice King wanted to do: focus on the civil rights movement that canonized Martin and saw Coretta as its first lady.
I can well imagine what the Old Guard thinks and feels–dissed mightily–especially when Long has gotten the antichrist-among-blacks himself George along with Laura Bush to attend, and Katrina is still fresh in the minds of many.
Somewhere along the line, things are going to get a lot weirder. Don’t be surprised when the iron hits…and where.
It is distressing to see the split in the African American community over the gay rights issue. This is weakening their overall power to press for true change that would involve a redistribution of wealth.
But that may be precisely why the non-profit groups are focusing on abortion and gay rights. Their bread and butter comes from capitalism. Any change in that status quo weakens their power.
Coretta Scott King’s death is bigger blow the soul of our country I believe than many realize.
She continued throughout her life to be a tireless advocate for human rights for everyone particularly as witnessed by her commitment to the rights of gay people to simply be treated equal-no more-no less.
The sad commentary part is the division in the family who opposed her views seems to speak to what is emblematic of the rise in ‘christian’ community(and not only the christian community)who are ever more violently speaking out against the gay community.
Just how far have we come when someone with the name King can now be associated and advocates Against the rights of certain groups of people?
Having her funeral at Long’s church is simply beyond despicable and for her family to allow this is simply despicable and disgusting also.
And forget about what I think of having bush make a phony assed political speech at her funeral…I certainly won’t be able to watch as the air here is turning fucken blue just thinking about him mouthing insincere platitudes.
…so that folks can belt away after somebody’s rather asinine, self-serving commentary.