In the midst of laying her to rest, attendees of the Coretta Scott King funeral used the six-hour service as a political forum.
Speakers such as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, her husband and former President Bill Clinton, singer Stevie Wonder and President Bush were among the 10,000 mourners gathered at New Birth Baptist Church in Atlanta to remember the civil rights activist.
The Rev. Joseph Lowery said, "We now know there are no weapons of mass destruction over there, but Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here."
Former President Jimmy Carter also said the Kings were "targets of secret government wiretapping," referring to controversial National Security Administration surveillance tactics.
David Madlock, an instructor of political science at The University of Memphis, thought King should have been admired, not exploited.
"I thought funerals were supposed to be used as a place to say how a person lived their life - not as a platform to stick political needles in people," he said. "I think that because King was an activist, they felt that they could use the funeral as a forum to talk about controversial issues.
"But it was not the time or the place to bring it up. People should be remembering why King was important to women and African-Americans."
Some students agreed that a funeral was not the place to bring up the country's problems.
"She was an activist, but she should have been remembered peacefully," said Crystal Brown, a freshman nursing major.
However, some people think King would want to be remembered through her activism by carrying it on.
"It reminds us that just because she's dead, (that) doesn't mean that her activism is going to stop," said Neili Jones, a junior family consumer science major. "It may not have been the right place, but in remembering Coretta, maybe it was."
