In his first interview since his misdemeanor convictions for assault and harassment, actor Jonathan Majors took a moment to perpetuate a long-standing myth about Coretta Scott King. Speaking to Linsey Davis for “Good Morning America,” Majors praised his current girlfriend, actress Meagan Good, as behaving “like a Coretta,” his shorthand for a supportive partner.
If Majors thought he was paying the ultimate compliment, then he was sorely misguided.
If Majors thought he was paying the ultimate compliment, then he was sorely misguided. His description of Good revealed his limited understanding of the life and legacy of the person he unwisely compared her to. And just as troubling, his statement minimized the important role Coretta Scott King played in shaping U.S. history.
Coretta Scott King was an ardent civil rights and human rights activist in her own right. She was much more than the supportive wife of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As the Kings’ youngest child, the Rev. Bernice A. King, powerfully argued on X, “My mother wasn’t a prop…My mama was a force.”
On this Martin Luther King Day, we would do well to remember this fact.
Coretta Scott was a committed activist long before she crossed paths with her eventual husband. She was a student at Antioch College during the 1940s. She rejected racial segregation and did not hesitate to speak out when she was barred from teaching white students at a local school because of her race, and as a result became an active member of her campus chapter of the NAACP.
In 1948, Coretta Scott publicly backed the Progressive Party’s presidential candidate Henry Wallace, who advocated for the end of racial segregation, and she attended the party’s national convention as a student delegate. These early experiences set the stage for her later political work.
Not only did she take a controversial stand against the Vietnam War, she was the one who pushed her husband to do the same.
Her 1953 marriage to Martin Luther King…
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