Body of Coretta Scott King arrives in Atlanta

The body of Martin Luther King's wife Coretta Scott King arrived in her home city of Atlanta early today and was escorted through the darkened streets to a funeral home in the south-west part of the city.

Four police cars escorted the hearse to the Willie Watkins Funeral Home, located on a street named for the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy – the former right-hand man of King’s husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Michael Anderson, an attendant at the funeral home, said no funeral arrangements had yet been made for the woman called the “first lady of the civil rights movement”.

The 78-year-old matriarch died yesterday at an alternative medicine clinic in Mexico.

Doctors at the clinic said King was battling advanced ovarian cancer when she arrived last Thursday. They said the cause of death was respiratory failure.

King’s body was aboard a plane that landed at Fulton County Airport-Brown Field shortly after 5am local time.

President George Bush honoured King in his State of the Union address as a “beloved, graceful, courageous” woman whom he said carried on a “noble dream”.