From PBS’s American Experience, transcript from a documentary on Martin Luther King Jr.:

“CORETTA SCOTT KING: Christmas will be sad for us. As it will be for many people I think this year. But I think that it doesn’t mean that we will sit around and bathe in our grief. I think that, very often, a time like this causes people to really reflect on the deeper meaning of say, Christmas or any other occasion. I remember Easter of 1963, when my husband was jailed in Birmingham. I had just had my fourth child and was still confined to my house. And he had gone to jail on Good Friday. And I was very depressed. But somehow that was the most meaningful Easter that I have ever experienced because, you know, Easter is a time of suffering. But it’s creative…you know, it can be creative suffering. And I think if we think in terms of my husband’s life and his death in those terms, then we will not be as sad. We will be hopeful, because in his death there is hope for redemption.”