Published Feb. 8, 2006
Tributes at Coretta Scott King’s funeral Tuesday at times tilted politically as several speakers, including former President Jimmy Carter, used the occasion to criticize President Bush, who sat nearby, a captive audience.
The Rev. Joseph Lowery, a friend and former lieutenant of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., launched his criticism with a rhyme and a smile as Bush and first lady Laura Bush sat behind him on the stage of the 10,000-seat New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.
Lowery, 84, recounted Coretta Scott King’s battles against racial discrimination and homophobia before pausing to apologize to poet Maya Angelou, apparently for his fractured prose. The church tittered with laughter. Then Lowery dug in.
“We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction,” Lowery said. His words were met by “oohs” and a long, loud applause. “But Coretta knew, and we knew, there were weapons of misdirection right here.
“Millions without health insurance, poverty abound. For war billions more, but no more for the poor.”
Bush was first to his feet after Lowery’s speech. He smiled and hugged the reverend as he turned around from the pulpit.
Carter said Correta Scott King and her husband were “violated” by “government wiretapping and government surveillance,” a thinly veiled reference to the current administration’s domestic surveillance program.
He added that the struggle for equal rights was not over. “All we have to do is remember the color of the faces in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, those who were most devastated by [Hurricane] Katrina,” he said.
Both speakers drew massive applause, although the support was not unanimous.
Steven Byrd, 38, of Ellenwood, said he felt a moment of sympathy for Bush during the pointed criticisms.
“I saw him turn red,” said Byrd, who was at the church. “Respectfully, those types of digs should have been left out of this kind of gathering. "
Others said that Bush was rarely confronted in person with opposing views and that Coretta Scott King’s life was political, so why shouldn’t this be true of her funeral?
The criticisms were “something he needed to hear,” Teya Lucas, 23, of Atlanta, said. “If it made him uncomfortable, then we did our part. You could see he was uneasy in his body language.
“It’s one thing to hear it in the White House,” she said. “but it’s another to come here and hear it. And to see people.”
The rhetoric Tuesday was a continuation, if not milder and more diplomatic, of what started the previous evening at a service at Ebenezer Baptist Church. The Monday service was a musical homage to the civil rights movement, and leaders who were not invited to speak at the funeral Tuesday used the pulpit to tear into the administration’s policies.
On Monday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson openly questioned why Bush would attend.
“I’m not sure the Pharaoh went to Moses’ funeral,” Jackson said. “Mr. Bush, honor Dr. King. Feed the hungry in the Katrina zone. Remember the homeless and helpless.”
Democratic State Rep. Calvin Smyre, who was at Tuesday’s service, said the rhetoric was appropriate, given the Kings’ life mission.
Besides, Smyre said of the president, “He’s a big boy. He can handle it.”
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