First woman and first African American to lie in honor in Georgia State Capitol rotunda

On February 4, 2006, Coretta Scott King became the first woman and the first African American to lie in honor in the rotunda of the Georgia State Capitol, a historic distinction that underscored her monumental significance in American history. Tens of thousands of mourners filed past her casket to pay their final respects, a testament to the profound impact she had on the nation.

This honor was particularly significant given Georgia's fraught history with racial segregation and its role as a former capital of the Confederacy. That the state's Capitol rotunda—a space historically reserved for honoring political figures, many of whom had upheld segregationist policies—would now host the remains of a Black woman civil rights leader represented a profound symbolic reversal and a testament to the transformative power of the movement she and her husband had led.

The lying in honor ceremony was part of a week of extensive memorial services held across Atlanta, including a funeral at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church attended by four sitting and former U.S. presidents, along with countless civil rights leaders, dignitaries, and ordinary citizens whose lives had been touched by the King family's legacy.

This unprecedented honor solidified Coretta Scott King's place not merely as an appendage to her husband's legacy, but as a towering figure in her own right—one whose life's work in civil rights, women's rights, and nonviolent activism warranted the highest state recognition ever bestowed upon an American woman or African American in Georgia's history.