A day after Jonathan Majors invoked the name of Coretta Scott King in a TV interview following his domestic violence conviction, her daughter took to social media to declare: “My mother wasn’t a prop.”
“She was a peace advocate before she met my father and was instrumental in him speaking out against the Vietnam War,” Bernice King wrote on X. “Please understand…my mama was a force.”
Though she did not mention Majors, her post was widely interpreted as a clapback to the former Marvel star’s references to Martin Luther King Jr.’s wife.
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During Majors’ trial, the jury heard an audio recording in which he berated his then-girlfriend, accuser Grace Jabbari, about how she should support a “great man” like himself.
“He told Grace Jabbari that she needs to live up to the standards of Coretta Scott King and Michelle Obama to make sacrifices for him,” a prosecutor told jurors, who went on to convict him of assaulting Jabbari.
In an ABC News interview that aired this week, Majors was asked about it.
“It was me trying to give an analogy of what it is I’m trying to be, you know, these great men—Martin [Luther King Jr.], President Obama—and trying to give a reference point to that,” he said. “One of the things I also say is like, I need her—in that case Grace—to make the same sacrifices I am making.”
Despite the eyebrows he raised by making the comparison the first time, Majors then did it again, saying his new girlfriend, actress Meagan Good, has “held me down like a Coretta.”
That did not sit well with Candace McDuffie, a writer for The Root, who wrote a column titled “Why Jonathan Majors Should Keep ‘Coretta Scott King’ Out His Mouth.”
“Coretta wasn’t some ornamental prop whose only function was to hold up her husband,” she wrote. “She was a Civil Rights leader in her own right and according to her granddaughter, Yolanda Renee King, was the reason Martin Luther King Jr. got involved in the movement.
“To relegate his girlfriends to the background—and then comparing them to Coretta—is ignorant and wrong. Majors should stop this clown behavior once and for all.”
