More than 30 years have passed since Dorthy Pennington attended a service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Coretta Scott King, too, was there.

“I didn’t get to meet her. I saw her from a distance,” said Pennington, an associate professor of African and African-American studies at Kansas University.

Still, Pennington said her memories of King are fond. “She was very mild-mannered, but I don’t mean that in a shy or retiring way. I mean she did not flaunt who she was,” Pennington said. “She had a Southern presence of grace and gracefulness. She was a very elegant woman and yet very accessible.

“I remember that after the service, she stayed in the back of the sanctuary and visited with anyone who wanted to visit.”

King, the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., died Tuesday. She was 78.

“Her legacy is like that of her husband’s,” said LaMerle McCoy, a well-known member of Lawrence’s black community.

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“She was a perfect example of a wife who stood by her husband – everything that he accomplished, he accomplished with her support,” McCoy said. “And after all they went through, she stood tall. She could have backed down, but she chose to stand tall.”

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. At the time, the Kings had been married almost 15 years. They had four children, ages 13, 11, 6 and 4.

Pennington said she has her spring-semester students read “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” Martin Luther King’s account of the famous bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.

During the boycott, the Kings’ home was bombed while Coretta King was home with the couple’s 2-month-old baby.

“There’s a scene in the book where her father, Obie Scott, offers to have her come home with him until the situation cools down,” Pennington said. “But she chose to stay. She shared her husband’s mission.”

Neither of the Kings are known to have visited Lawrence, though KU hosted Martin Luther King Sr. in 1979; son Martin Luther King III in 1990; and daughter Yolanda in 1993.

“This country has lost another great lady,” said the Rev. William Dulin of the Calvary Church of God and Christ. “We lost Rosa Parks not too long ago and now Mrs. King.”

Parks, a key figure in the Montgomery bus boycott, died in October. She was 92.

“When we look at the impact the legacies of these two women have had on us, I think it’s clear we have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go,” said the Rev. Verdell Taylor of the St. Luke AME Church.

“We must go forward; we must keep the dream alive.”