5/16/2007

in

Yolanda King was the first-born child of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.

Jess Boettger

The eldest child of Civil Rights activists Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King has died. Yolanda King was many things in her lifetime: actor, writer, activist, arts-lover, motivational speaker. Though King wanted to step away from the overshadowing legacy of her family, her driving purpose in life, according to her, was to infuse her work with the deeper purposes that drove her entire family.  
  
Yolanda Denise King was born November 17th, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama. She witnessed her father's assassination in 1968, and also buried her mother just a year ago, who died from ovarian cancer and the effects of a stroke.  
  
King's death seems to be unexpected. Doctors have not given an official cause of death, but cite cardiopulmonary problems as the likely culprit. King was meeting her brother Dexter King at a friend's home when she collapsed and died on Tuesday. She was 51.