Willie Christine King Farris was an American teacher and civil rights activist, the eldest sibling of Martin Luther King Jr. She taught at Spelman College and is the author of several books, and was a public speaker on various topics, including the King family, multicultural education, and teaching.
Christine King Farris’s cause of death
Christine King Farris, who was the last living sibling of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and wrote two children’s books on the civil rights leader’s life, died June 29 in Atlanta. She was 95.
Her niece, the Rev. Bernice King, announced the death but gave no specific cause or other details.
For decades after her brother’s assassination in 1968, Ms. Farris worked along with his widow, Coretta Scott King, to preserve and promote his legacy. But unlike her high-profile sister-in-law, Ms. Farris’s activism was often behind the scenes.
“She may not have always been on the line of the march, but that was true with a lot of the heroes of the civil rights movement,” said Marcellus Barksdale, a history professor at Morehouse College, in a 2009 interview with the Associated Press. “Because of the luminescence of Dr. King and Coretta Scott King, Christine kind of got dimmed by that, but she was no less important.”