What Jonathan Majors misses when invoking Coretta Scott King as a mere "prop" for men

Bernice King has some pointed words for Jonathan Majors after a clip of the actor's GMA interview went viral in which he says his current partner actress Meagan Good supports him like "a Coretta."

Bernice, the youngest daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, took to X to address the outrage surrounding Majors namechecking Coretta. Bernice said, "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. Please understand . . . my mama was a force."

Her tweet was in response to Majors' first-ever television interview after his guilty assault conviction. An ABC News journalist, Linsey Davis asked the actor how to describe his relationship with Good, he said, “Everything has kinda gone away. And it’s just me now, you know, and my lovely, you know, partner, Meagan, and my dogs. She’s an angel. She’s held me down like a Coretta.” 

This isn't the first time that Majors has invoked the name Coretta Scott King. In December, during the trial against Majors for assaulting his ex-partner Grace Jabbari, it was revealed in an audio recording that Majors told Jabbari to behave more like Coretta and former First Lady Michelle Obama. 

Majors said, "Grace has to be of a certain mindset to support — Coretta Scott King, do you know who that is? That’s Martin Luther King’s wife. Michelle Obama, Barack Obama’s wife," Variety reported.

In the ABC News interview, Majors said that the Coretta Scott King and Michelle Obama comparisons were the actor "trying to give an analogy of what it is I'm aspiring to be, you know, these great men — Martin, President Obama — and trying to give a reference point to that.

"I was attempting, and I did a terrible job at it apparently, I was attempting to motivate, to enlighten, to give perspective as in to what it is I was hoping to get out of the relationship," he added.

However, the internet seems ambivalent about Majors' intent. The comments he has made about Coretta have sparked backlash online about "how men like Majors view Coretta as merely supplementary to MLK Jr.'s legacy. She was there only to 'hold him down,'" writer Gloria Alamrew posted on X. "Reduced to nothing more than a smiling, doting prop. Meanwhile, she was an accomplished musician, author, and a civil rights leader."

In Bernice King's post, she also shared a piece she wrote for the Huffington Post in 2017 about her mother's legacy. Starting each paragraph with "Before she was a King," to emphasize the significance of Coretta's personal experiences and advocacy before her marriage and relationship to MLK, Jr. 

"Before she was a King, my mother was a civil rights activist, a member of the NAACP and the Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committees at Antioch College," she said. "Coretta Scott was determined that her life would serve to lift others. She was already a woman of great character."