When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was five years old he idolized his older sister, Christine. After she was baptized, Martin, born Michael, pleaded to be too. He idolized her and even asked to attend the same school she was in, even though she was sixteen months older. Such was the relationship between them, one that never changed as they grew into adulthood, and even after Martin became internationally famous. These childhood impressions of them are captured in a young adult book I wrote in I996.
During a salute to Dr. King and Coretta at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in 1960, Dr. King reflected on his early years with Christine, calling her “my darling sister who has been a real sister all across the years.” Born Willie Christine King on September 11, 1927, she, according to Taylor Branch in the first of his definitive trilogy on Dr. King’s life, “taking after her mother was a quiet girl who possessed considerable strength of character and mind. A far better student than either of her brothers, she had gifts that greatly enhanced her stature in the eyes of young M.L., who aspired to her learning but would always trip over his bad grammar and spelling.”
These attributes were embellished as a student at Spelman College, where both her mother and grandmother were graduates. She earned her bachelor’s degree in economics in 1948. Her ambition was to continue her education at the University of Georgia, but Black students were not admitted then. Among several choices was Columbia University where she received a master’s degree in social foundations of education in 1950. Eight years later she earned a second master’s degree in special education.
Christine began teaching at W.H. Crogman Elementary School in Atlanta in 1950, a school that mainly served African American students from low-income households. In 1958, having earned a second master’s degree, she returned to Spelman to direct the Freshman Reading Program. Two years later, on Aug. 19, 1960, she married Isaac Newton Farris, Sr. He died in 2017 at 83. They had two children: Isaac Newton Farris Jr., and Angela Christine Farris Watkins. For nearly a half-century, she was a tenured professor in education and director of the Learning Resources Center at the college before retiring in 2014.
For many years she was vice chair and treasurer of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and very active in the International Reading Association, and various church and civic organizations, including the NAACP and SCLC. “My Brother Martin,” a children’s book, and an autobiography, “Through It All: Reflections on My Life, My Family, and My Faith,” are among her books. In one of her books published in 2002, entitled “Growing Up With Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” she shares some vivid childhood memories, emphatically noting that “I am his older sister and I’ve known him longer than anyone else. I knew him long before the speeches he gave and the marches he led and the prizes he won.”
At Ebenezer Baptist Church, where like her tenure at Spelman, she was among the longest-serving members, Sen. Raphael Warnock, the church’s senior pastor, called her an “iteration of the American Dream. She went on to witness the long arc of American history bend from many changes, much of it pushed forward by her own brother.” His remarks were just a sample of the encomiums that flowed from various sectors of the nation upon her death on June 29 in Atlanta. She was 95.
“As her pastor,” Rev. Warnock added, “I can say that up until the very end, she embodied hope, dignity, and deep faith. Long live the memory of Christine King Farris.”