Martin Luther King's daughter dies from heart problem · 2007-05-18 13:16
Yolanda King, 51, the eldest daughter of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, has died in California.
According to Reuters, media reports said she died late on Tuesday, possibly from a heart problem.
_"Yolanda was the torch bearer for her parents and a committed activist in her own right,"_New York civil rights activist and preacher Al Sharpton said in a statement.
Her first year of life coincided with a boycott aimed at ending segregation on buses in Montgomery. The successful campaign launched the civil rights movement and gave her father a national platform.
She was too young to remember the night the family home in Montgomery was bombed by whites in a bid to halt that campaign, but civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said her life was marked by the trauma the King family experienced during the civil rights era.
King, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, was assassinated in 1968. His wife and Yolanda's mother, Coretta Scott King, was a civil rights leader in her own right who died last year.
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