The long-standing history of civil and social rights activism that will be forever linked with the King family legacy proved that it still lives on in the Sun Room of the Memorial Union Wednesday night.

Dr. Alveda C. King, the niece of legendary civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is a former Georgia state House representative, songwriter, actress, senior fellow of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, board member of the anti-abortion organization Silent No More and committee member of the Coalition of African American Pastors. She presented a lecture about the civil rights of unborn children.

“I am a civil rights activist,” King said defiantly at the outset of her speech. “But I am a feminist as well.”

King confessed to the considerably large crowd in the room that she previously had two abortions in her life, which had alienated her from her family and faith for a period of years before she became a born-again Christian in 1983. She is now currently unmarried and celibate.

“I decided that I’ve done enough destruction in my life, so I’ve [had] enough,” she said.

There was a subdued religious overtone in her speech, which King knowingly glossed over in regard to the separation of church and state, but she did tell a poignant tale in which her mother was going to abort her, but the father said he “had a dream of her and that she needed to live.”

“You see, you think it was just Martin who had a dream, but we’ve all been dreaming in my family for a long time,” she said.

In the era before abortion became legal through Roe v. Wade in 1973, King said that she had been living a “disaster,” due to her own involuntary abortion and later voluntary abortion, which she knew that both her father, the Rev. Alfred King, and her uncle would have disapproved of.

“He [Martin Luther King Jr.] couldn’t support a movement that would support abortion,” King said. “How can we keep the dream alive if we murder the children?”

One of the many targets King pursued in her lecture was “the lie that is the sexual revolution,” which she said has only brought “fornication, adultery, rape, incest, abortion, and same gender cohabitation,” which all have led to the breakdown of the family structure. King also targeted the act of abortion and the means by which it is facilitated, such as through Planned Parenthood, which gives out birth control and condoms.

King said the founder of Planned Parenthood believed African-Americans were “weeds” and that abortion is pointed toward the black community as an overt form of genocide.

Those attending the lecture came for different reasons, which could have left students divided in regard to subject matter.

“I thought it was passionate, but lacking support through research and reference,” said Andrea Foley, graduate student in art and design.