By Leada Gore
Six years after an assassin cut down Rev. Martin Luther King, a man walked into Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and killed the late civil rights leader’s mother as she played the organ for morning services.
Alberta Williams King’s death is an often-forgotten chapter in the legacy of the civil rights struggle.
A native of Atlanta, Alberta Williams was a teacher before she married Martin L. King on Thanksgiving Day 1926. The couple had three children, with the middle one, Martin Luther King Jr. born on Jan. 15, 1929. She was a talented musician who played the organ at Ebenezer Baptist, where he husband and son were joint pastors.
Alberta King remained behind the scenes as her son rose to prominence as an international figure in the fight against segregation. One of her few public statements came as her son accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, when she recounted a time when she told her young Martin he’d have to prepare himself for a lifetime of disappointment after he was passed over in favor of a white child during a high school debate. She later said she regretted the comment.
“Black mothers,” she said, “we make our sons less.”
MLK Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968 while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. He was 39-years-old. Photos from King’s funeral show Alberta King, wearing a black dress and veil, clinging to her husband’s arm and later walking with his widow, Coretta.
Less than a year later, her youngest child, Alfred, drowned. His death came nine days before his 39th birthday.
Albert King’s death
On June 30, 1974, Alberta King had just finished playing “The Lord’s Prayer” on the organ at Ebenezer Baptist when a man shouted, “I’m taking over here!”
A young black man bolted to the pulpit and pulled out a gun, according to a recounting by Atlanta magazine. The man, later identified as Marcus Wayne Chenault Jr. of Ohio, fired his gun, hitting Alberta King, church deacon Edward Boykin and congregation member Jimmie Mitchell.
Mrs. King and Boykin were taken to the hospital where they pronounced dead. Mrs. King was 69-years-old.
The attack occurred less than 100 yards from where her son was buried.
Chenault said he was on a mission to kill all Christians and his original target was MLK Sr., considering black pastors a threat to black people. He claimed insanity in his trial but was convicted and sentenced to death in the electric chair. His sentence was later changed to life in prison, due in part to the wishes of the surviving members of the King family, who opposed capital punishment.
Chenault died in prison in 1995 at age 44.
MLK Sr. – who said at his wife’s funeral he “cannot hate any man – died in 1984. He was buried next to his wife.
