LITHONIA, Ga. – Four U.S. presidents joined more than 10,000 mourners Tuesday in saying goodbye to Coretta Scott King, praised by President Bush as “one of the most admired Americans of our time.”

“I’ve come today to offer the sympathy of our entire nation at the passing of a woman who worked to make our nation whole,” President Bush told King’s four children and the crowd that filled New Birth Missionary Baptist Church for her funeral.

“Coretta Scott King not only secured her husband’s legacy, she built her own,” Bush said. “Having loved a leader, she became a leader, and when she spoke, Americans listened closely.”

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin stressed that King spoke out, not just against racism, but about “the senselessness of war and the solutions for poverty.”

“She sang for liberation, she sang for those who had no earthly reason to sing a song,” with a voice that was heard “from the tintop roofs of Soweto to the bomb shelters of Baghdad,” Franklin said.

Former President Carter echoed that theme of peace, saying of the Kings, “They overcame one of the greatest challenges of life, which is to be able to wage a fierce struggle for freedom and justice and to do it peacefully.”

“Our world is a kinder and gentler place because of Coretta Scott King,” said former President Bush.

King, who carried on her husband’s dream of equality for nearly 40 years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, died Jan. 30 at the age of 78 after battling ovarian cancer and the effects of a stroke.

Former President Clinton, poet Maya Angelou and the Kings’ children were also among the more than three dozen speakers at the funeral.

The eulogy fell to the Kings’ youngest child, Bernice, a minister at the megachurch. She was 5 when her father was assassinated in 1968 and is perhaps best remembered for the photographs of her lying in her black-veiled mother’s lap during her father’s funeral. Stevie Wonder and Bebe and Cece Winans were also slated to perform.

“I don’t want us to forget that there’s a woman in there, not a symbol,” Clinton said, standing behind King’s flower-covered casket.

“A real woman who lived and breathed and got angry and got hurt and had dreams and disappointments.”

Angelou spoke of King as a sister with whom she shared her pain and laughter.

“Those of us who have gathered here . we owe something from this minute on, so this gathering is not just another footnote on the pages of history,” Angelou said.