Two quotes about MLK , from Vincent Lloyd:
While King famously proclaimed, in his final speech, that God had allowed him to go to the mountaintop and glimpse the promised land, Eig shows that in reality it was his wife Coretta who enabled and guided the great orator’s moral ascent. She was an activist before he was; she was outspoken on Vietnam before he was; she was forever giving him confidence when his spirits wavered. Plus, she was birthing and caring for four children and an extraordinarily busy household on a tight budget. (King donated all of his speaking fees to civil-rights work.) At the civil-rights movement’s height, Coretta traveled frequently to sing at rallies, always checking in to make sure her children made it to their extracurriculars. When King was called away from the founding meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Coretta filled in for him.
And:
We are tempted to imagine King as a moral saint, exceedingly earnest with a single-minded focus on improving the world. That is not who King was. Nor does it describe Christian saints. It is only from a secularist perspective that saintliness is measured by maximizing good actions at each moment in time. In the hagiographical tradition, Christian saints have good days and bad days. They curse God and they repent. Their virtues battle their vices. Their saintliness comes about because of their commitment to bringing the shape of their life into conformity with the life of Christ, not moment-by-moment but as a whole. And saints necessarily fail at this: a saint imitates Christ, but a saint is not Christ. Nonetheless, a saint provides inspiration for those who, similarly, wish to model their lives on perfect goodness.