Coretta Scott was raised on a farm in Perry County, Alabama by parents Bernice and Obadiah Scott.

AP

Coretta Scott met Martin Luther King Jr. in Boston.

She was exposed to the injustices of a segregated society as a child. A young Coretta walked five miles a day to attend class at a one-room schoolhouse in Marion, Alabama while her white neighbors rode buses to a nearby all-white school.

She was an excellent student and was valedictorian of the 1945 graduating class at Lincoln High School. She received a scholarship to Antioch College in Ohio where she joined the NAACP and other civil rights groups.

After graduating from Antioch with a B.A. in music and education, Scott moved to Boston to study concert singing at the New England Conservatory of Music.

It was a move that would forever change her life.

While in Boston, she met a young theology student named Martin Luther King, Jr.

Read more about King's life