King’s widow released from Atlanta hospital

ATLANTA (Reuters) – Coretta Scott King, the widow of slain
civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., was released from
an Atlanta hospital on Thursday after suffering a stroke in
August that left her partly paralyzed, her doctor said.

The 78-year-old King, an icon for the role she played in
the U.S. civil rights movement, will continue rehabilitation at
home six days a week.

The stroke in mid-August paralyzed King’s right side and
affected her ability to speak.

“She is saying some sentences,” Maggie Mermin, King’s
doctor, said at a media briefing outside Atlanta’s Piedmont
Hospital. “Yesterday she walked 80 feet twice.”

Mermin, who appeared with King’s two daughters, said the
civil rights matriarch was taking blood thinners to reduce the
possibility of another stroke but added there was no guarantee
against a recurrence.

“The risk is not zero. But it’s low,” Mermin said.

King continued to fight for equality for black Americans
after her husband was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, in April
1968.

She campaigned successfully for a federal holiday
celebrating his birthday and created a memorial in the Martin
Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta,
which includes archives containing her husband’s speeches and
his tomb.