CBS 46 Atlanta - Atlantans Pay Their Respects to Coretta Scott King

CBS 46 Atlanta - Atlantans Pay Their Respects to Coretta Scott KingAtlantans Pay Their Respects to Coretta Scott King
Feb 4, 2006, 05:40 PM
Dexter King, Martin Luther King III, Yolanda King, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, Georgia first lady Mary Perdue and Gov. Sonny Perdue look on as the casket of Coretta Scott King is carried up the steps of the Capitol. (AP photo)
Dexter King, Martin Luther King III, Yolanda King, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, Georgia first lady Mary Perdue and Gov. Sonny Perdue look on as the casket of Coretta Scott King is carried up the steps of the Capitol. (AP photo)

ATLANTA (AP) -- 14-hundred people lined up outside the state Capitol to pay their respects to Coretta Scott King.

Jeenie Coston, a 48-year-old from Marietta, says she waited for more than five hours for her chance to pay tribute to the first woman and the first black person to lie in honor at the Capitol's Rotunda.

Coston says she was six years old when Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated and still remembers it.

She says if the Kings had not done what they did, she does not know where the civil rights movement would be today.

Some people threw roses at King's casket as it made its way through Atlanta's streets this morning in a horse-drawn carriage. Others shared tissue to blot their tears. One man held a portrait of Martin Luther King.

Fifty-year-old Chris Thomas flew down from Connecticut with a friend to pay his respects.

Thomas says he want to show his gratitude to a woman who was so important for the peace movement.