Coretta Scott King, speaks at the dedication ceremony of The Potters House, the new state of the art facility that is home to the ministry of Rev. T.D. Jakes in Dallas, Texas (Darrell Byers/Fort Worth-Star Telegram/KRT)

While thousands of people gathered to pay their last respects to the first lady of the civil rights movement, Coretta Scott King, Tuesday at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga., some N.C. Central University students, staff and faculty also took their time to reflect on her life.

Chancellor James H. Ammons and Provost Beverly Washington led the people who attended the event in the B.N. Duke Auditorium by highlighting the important contributions made by King to the country.

SGA President Renee Clark said King’s great impact on civil rights inspired her.

“Even after her husband died, she continued to fight for rights,” said Clark. “She was such a great person.”

King’s death also served as a revelation to some students and made them realize that the struggle for emancipation of black people from social ills needs new fighters.

“Her death alerted me that we are losing many of our black leaders and someone needs to carry the torch,” said sophomore English major Chan Hall.

“We’re not where we used to be, but we are not where we need to be.”

President Bush and four former presidents — George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — joined an estimated 10,000 mourners at the ceremony.

King, 78, died in her sleep of respiratory failure Tuesday, Jan. 31 at the Santa Monica Health Institute in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, where she was receiving holistic treatment for ovarian cancer.

King had suffered a heart attack and stroke, which left her partially paralyzed, in August.

A native of Heiberger, Ala., King was born on April 27, 1927 to Obadiah Leonard Scott and Bernice McMurray Scott.

In 1951, she earned a music degree from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Oh.

King met her her husband, Martin Luther King Jr. while she studying music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and he was a preacher-in-training at Boston University.

The two married on June 18, 1953 and moved to Montgomery, Ala. in 1954 where King began building his career as a civil rights activist and a pastor.

She was at his side during the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott.

She was at his side during his “I Have A Dream” speech before a crowd of 250,000 at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.

After King’s assassination on April 4, 1968 she raised their four children, Yolanda, Martin III, Dexter and Bernice.

In 1981, she founded the King Center in Atlanta and in 1986 she won her struggle to make her husband’s birthday, January 15, a national holiday.

In her remaining years King dedicated herself to world peace and the fight against AIDS and violence.