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Willie Christine King Farris (September 11, 1927 – June 29, 2023) was an American teacher and civil rights activist, the eldest sibling of Martin Luther King Jr. She taught at Spelman College and was the author of several books and was a public speaker on various topics, including the King family, multicultural education, and teaching.
Like her mother and grandmother before her, King Farris attended Spelman College in Atlanta, where she earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1948. She wanted to continue her studies at the University of Georgia but it did not admit Black students at the time.[1] King Farris then attended Columbia University in New York and received a master's degree in social foundations of education in 1950. She earned a second master's degree in special education in 1958.[1]
King Farris got her first professional job as a teacher at W.H. Crogman Elementary School in Atlanta in 1950.[2] The school primarily served students from black low-income households.[3] She returned to Spelman as director of the Freshman Reading Program in 1958. Farris held a tenured professorship in education and was director of the Learning Resources Center for 48 years before retiring in 2014.[1][4]
King Farris was, for many years, vice chair and treasurer of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and was active for several years in the International Reading Association, and various church and civic organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.[4] Farris also published a children's book, My Brother Martin,[5] as well as the autobiography, Through It All: Reflections on My Life, My Family, and My Faith.[6]
Born in Atlanta on September 11, 1927,[7] King Farris was the first child and only daughter of Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King, and was the elder sister of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and A. D. King. The three siblings spent their early years in the home of their grandfather, Adam Daniel Williams, who died on March 21, 1931. She married Isaac Newton Farris Sr. on August 19, 1960. They had two children: Isaac Newton Farris Jr., and Angela Christine Farris Watkins.[8]
King Farris endured the 1968 assassination of her brother Martin, the 1969 accidental drowning of her brother A. D., and the 1974 assassination of her mother.[9][10][11] King Farris did not return to Memphis, Tennessee, since traveling there after her brother's assassination to retrieve his body. In recent years, she attended the funerals of sister-in-law Coretta Scott King (died January 30, 2006) and niece Yolanda King (died May 15, 2007). In an interview with CNN, she said she would not attend an April 2008 event marking the 40th anniversary of her brother's assassination, because the painful memories of her last visit to Memphis still haunted her. Her husband, Isaac Newton Farris Sr., died on December 30, 2017, at the age of 83.[7]
King Farris' death was announced by her family Attorney, Antavius Weems. Farris died in Atlanta on June 29, 2023, at the age of 95.[7][12]
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Christine King Farris, Last Sibling of Martin Luther King Jr., Dies at 95
She supported him during the civil rights movement and promoted his legacy after he was assassinated.
Christine King Farris, the last living sibling of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died on Thursday. She was 95.
Her death was announced by her niece, the Rev. Bernice King, in a statement. The statement did not say where she died.
Ms. Farris, Dr. King’s older sister, supported him politically and personally. She joined him in 1965 for the March for Voting Rights in Alabama and in 1966 for the March Against Fear in Mississippi. She also lent him money so he could buy his engagement ring.
She lived through multiple tragedies over the next few years: the assassination of Dr. King in 1968; the death, by drowning, of her other brother, Alfred Daniel King, known as A.D., in his swimming pool in 1969; and the assassination of her mother, Alberta King, during a church service in 1974.
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“I think of the things that I’ve faced in my life, and sometimes I question how I’m still here,” Ms. Farris told CNN in 2008. “I’m the lone survivor in my family.”
Ms. Farris dedicated herself to promoting Dr. King’s legacy. She helped Coretta Scott King, her sister-in-law, establish the King Center, a nonprofit organization that conducts educational programs and supports research related to Dr. King, and she served as its senior vice president and treasurer.
She made herself available on both mundane and dramatic occasions to honor her family. She helped pick authentic wallpaper for a museum based in the home where she and her siblings grew up. In 2007, the year after Coretta Scott King died, Ms. Farris took her place conducting a commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Dr. King’s birthday.
This January, she was in the pews when President Biden spoke in honor of her brother.
Willie Christine King was born on Sept. 11, 1927, in Atlanta. She was the eldest child of the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Christine Williams King; Martin was born in 1929, and A.D. was born the next year.
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In 1948 she graduated from Spelman College, as her mother and grandmother had, and she later earned two master’s degrees in education from Teachers College at Columbia University — one in the social foundations of education in 1950 and one in special education in 1958. She later returned to Spelman, where she worked as an associate professor of education and the director of a learning resources center for about 50 years. She was often described as the college’s longest-serving faculty member.
In 1960, she married Isaac Newton Farris. The couple had two children, Angela Christine Farris Watkins and Isaac Newton Farris Jr. A list of Ms. Farris’s survivors was not immediately available.
Ms. Farris wrote two children’s books about her brother and, in 2009, a memoir, “Through It All: Reflections on My Life, My Family, and My Faith.” She made it her goal to describe what Dr. King was like not as a great man of history, but as a brother.
“They think he simply happened, that he appeared fully formed, without context, ready to change the world,” she wrote in her memoir. “Take it from his big sister, that’s simply not the case.”
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