Coretta Scott King was newly widowed with four young children nearly four decades ago, when she envisioned a memorial to her martyred husband, Martin Luther King Jr.

The memorial would be dedicated to advancing the Nobel Peace Prize winner's ideals. At the end of Coretta Scott King's life, the King Center was the focus of a bitter dispute between her children over its future.

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Almost immediately after her husband's assassination in April 1968, Coretta King incorporated the non-profit Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change in Washington, D.C., then tapped a well of public sympathy to raise funds to build and sustain it.

Initially located in the basement of the King family home on Sunset Avenue in Vine City, the center began amassing property in the early 1970s for a permanent site.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center, as it was known in 1970, paid $10 for property at 842 Beckwith St. S.W., according to Fulton County property records. For the next decade, the center was housed on Beckwith Street.

In 1971, Alberta Williams King, the civil rights leader's mother, donated Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth home at 501 Auburn Ave. to the center. The following year, the center paid $16,000 for property on Boulevard and Auburn. And the year after that, it paid $10 for property at 453 Auburn Ave.

The King Center grew out of a powerful moment in history, according to Colorado theologian Vincent Harding, the center's first director.

"The goals were being worked out ... at a point of great debate within the nation around the whole meaning of King and the Southern freedom movement and how it related to the rise of black power and to the rise of the urban explosions all over the country in the '60s," he said. "So this was not a situation in which one could have a kind of cool and reflective set of opportunities to work things out. Things were worked out in the midst of tremendous furor and debate and search for understanding."

By 1981, Coretta King had enough money — $8 million — to build the King Center at 449 Auburn Ave. She became its first president and chief executive officer. The center comprised Freedom Hall, a reflective pool and King's crypt, and an administration and archives building.

One of the center's first goals was the gathering of documentation about King and the civil rights movement, Harding said.

The so-called Library Documentation Project evolved into the center's King Library and Archive, which includes the records of various civil rights organizations, the private papers of individuals involved in the struggle, as well as audio-visual and oral history collections.

"It was Mrs. King's absolute drive that made [the King Center] happen," said Digby Diehl, a California writer who collaborated with her on her unpublished memoirs. "And she was extraordinary, in my opinion, in bringing together the forces that made it possible, including the United States government ... and a variety of very powerful people in corporations to support the effort."

Under her leadership, the King Center offered nonviolence training workshops, held community meetings in Freedom Hall, exhibited artifacts of King, Mahatma Gandhi and Rosa Parks, and housed the archives of major civil rights organizations. The King Center also sponsored a day-care center that was housed in a city-owned community center.

"One of the things that amazed me about Mrs. King was ... how much of a participant she was in every aspect of [her husband's] work while he was alive and how remarkably she picked up the mantle when he was assassinated," Diehl said.

In its heyday, the King Center attracted visitors from all over the globe, including presidents and prime ministers.

While working to create the center, Coretta King simultaneously lobbied Congress to make her husband's Jan. 15th birthday a federal holiday. And after President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday bill into law in 1983, the King Center's annual birthday celebration lured celebrities like Harry Belafonte, Kris Kristofferson, Stevie Wonder, Bono and Oprah Winfrey.

The holiday observance, held every third Monday in January, included lectures and panels, films and musical entertainment, the black-tie Salute to Greatness fund-raising banquet, an ecumenical service at Ebenezer Baptist Church and a community-service summit.

Stanford University historian Clayborne Carson, editor of the King Papers Project, said he does not believe people gave Coretta King enough credit for what she achieved.

"If she hadn't been as dedicated and energetic as she was, the King Center wouldn't exist and the King holiday wouldn't exist," he said.

In 1994, the King Center board elected Coretta King's younger son, Dexter Scott King, to head the organization. Almost immediately, he became embroiled in a dispute with the National Park Service over its plans to open a visitor center across the street. The dispute was resolved in time for the Park Service to dedicate the visitor center in July 1996, on the eve of the Summer Olympics.

It was the second time around for Dexter King, who had spent four months in 1989 as president before resigning, reportedly over a dispute with the board. This time, the board dwindled from dozens of national and community leaders to nine members — all except one, former ambassador Andrew Young, are members of the King family.

"At its height, the center was an incredibly important educational and informational center not only for the city of Atlanta but for the whole world," Diehl said. "It was very important to her," Diehl said of the center. "She wanted very much to have a place like this to carry on his work, and it did for a long time."

Under Dexter King, the center's mission became to "educate the world about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s philosophy and methods of nonviolence in order to create the Beloved Community," according to the King Center website.

He concentrated on licensing his father's words and image, and he began to use technology, film, television and the Internet to reach a new audience. In 2000, he moved to California to pursue a career in entertainment but remained head of the King Center.

During his decade-long leadership of the King Center, Dexter King cut programs and staffing and allowed the center's physical plant to fall into disrepair. An assessment by the National Park Service released in February 2005 determined that the King Center needed $11 million in structural and mechanical repairs.

In an interview with PBS at Ebenezer Baptist Church during the 2005 holiday weekend, Coretta King shared her memories of life with Dr. King.

''As we were thrust into the cause, it was my cause, too,'' she said. "I married the man and the cause."

She also reiterated her commitment to the King Center.

In the spring of 2005, her health began to deteriorate. In August, she had a heart attack and a debilitating stroke that left her partially paralyzed and unable to speak. While she was recuperating from the stroke, her sons began publicly feuding over who would run the King Center.

On Aug. 22, the board elevated Martin King III to chairman of the board and voted Dexter King out. But one month later, Dexter King appointed eight new board members, who voted him back in and replaced Martin with their cousin, Isaac Farris.

Just before Christmas, while Coretta King sought holistic health treatment in Florida, her nephew, Isaac Farris — the King Center's new president and CEO — announced that the center's board was exploring the possibility of selling the Atlanta landmark to the federal government.

Dexter and Yolanda King, 50, have supported negotiations to sell the King Center. Bernice King, 42, and Martin Luther King III, 48, have strongly opposed the sale and have waged a public battle to block it.

In a co-written opinion published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bernice and Martin King said that, while they are not opposed to the government's involvement in the King Center, the vision to sell the center is "nearsighted and misguided."

"We believe that the King Center is both a physical memorial (the facilities along with our father's tomb) and a living legacy (the programs for justice, equality and community), and that they are spiritually indivisible. We believe that selling the memorial will compromise the legacy," they wrote.

On the day the nation celebrated the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 77th birthday, Dexter King, who has taken over leadership of the Atlanta landmark that honors his father's legacy, defended efforts to sell the King Center to the federal government, despite the split it has caused in his family.

"The thing that people don't know is that from the beginning the National Park Service has envisioned buying this property," Dexter King, 45, said in an interview. "This is not something new. My mother finally agreed that it made sense. One of her greatest regrets was she did not provide an endowment for the center when she was younger and had the energy to do that. ... This sale would provide an endowment."