A tribute to Coretta Scott King.

Four U.S. Presidents--including President George W. Bush--were there. So were poets, civil-rights leaders, and a former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Most important, perhaps, were the thousands of ordinary citizens who went to pay their respects and be a part of history.

"Who could have brought this crowd together but Coretta?" said the Reverend Joseph E. Lowery, a civil-rights leader.

The extraordinary funeral of Coretta Scott King, who died on January 31 at the age of 78, celebrated an extraordinary life.

Coretta Scott grew up in a two-room house on a farm in Alabama. As a child, she picked cotton to help support her family during the Great Depression. Passionately devoted to civil rights, she was destined to make history after meeting Martin Luther King Jr., her future husband.

After King's assassination in 1968, Coretta raised their four young children alone. She also continued her work in the civil-rights movement, leading the effort for a national holiday in her husband's honor and founding the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia.

"One of the greats has passed on," said a mourner after Coretta Scott King's funeral, "and she has passed the torch back to every one of us."