The King Center announced that prominent activist "Christine King Farris," sister of the late American civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr., passed away today at the age of 95. The center stated that Farris died peacefully surrounded by her family in Atlanta, Georgia. Christine King participated in historic events of the civil rights movement, such as the 1965 march between Selma and Montgomery in Alabama and the “March Against Fear” in Mississippi in 1966. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee by “James Earl Ray” in 1968. That same year, Farris co-founded the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta with his widow, Coretta Scott King.
Following the assassination, she faced many tragedies in the subsequent years, including the drowning of her brother Alfred Daniel King, known as A.D., in his swimming pool in 1969, and the assassination of their mother, Alberta King, during a church service in 1974. Christine King was born on September 11, 1927, in Atlanta, and earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Spelman College in 1948 before attending Columbia University in New York, where she obtained two master's degrees in education. She married Isaac Newton Farris in 1960 and gave birth to two children, Angela and Isaac Jr.
