Do you recognize civil rights icon in an area college class photo?

Among the faces within an Antioch College class photograph taken in 1945 is a future Civil Rights pioneer.

Coretta Scott King, labeled number 355 in the photo, graduated from Antioch College in 1951. The photo was taken the year she enrolled.

King, who was raised in Alabama, followed her older sister Edythe to Antioch and studied music and education in the college’s Interracial Education Scholarship program.

She married Martin Luther King Jr. in 1953, two years after graduating and moving from Yellow Springs to Boston, where she attended the New England Conservatory of Music.

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The couple returned to Yellow Springs in 1965 so Dr. King could address that year’s Antioch College graduating class.

Of Antioch, King said, “All men of good will are indebted to this institution for its heritage. I am indebted to Antioch for having given me a marvelous wife.”

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