<p>Yolanda King, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s eldest child who pursued her father's dream of racial harmony through drama and motivational speaking, collapsed and died Tuesday night. She was 51.</p><p>King died in Santa Monica, Calif., said Steve Klein, a spokesman for the King Center. The family did not know the cause of death, but relatives think it might have been a heart problem, he said.</p><p>Andrew Young, a lieutenant of Martin Luther King Jr.'s during the civil rights movement who remained close to the family after King's death, said Yolanda King had just spoken at an event.</p><p>"She was on the way to spend the night with Dexter," Young said, referring to her younger brother. "I understand she got to his house and came in and collapsed in the doorway. They were not able to revive her."</p><p>King became a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association after her mother suffered a stroke in August 2005, and promoted a campaign to raise awareness, especially among blacks, about stroke. A spokeswoman for the group said she last spoke on the organization's behalf on Saturday at a hospital in Langhorn, Pa.</p><p>Born on Nov. 17, 1955, in Montgomery, Ala., King was an infant when her home was bombed during the turbulent civil rights era. She was a young girl during her father's famous stay in the Birmingham, Ala., jail. She was 12 years old when he was assassinated.</p><p>"She lived with a lot of the trauma of our struggle," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, an aide of Martin Luther King Jr. "The movement was in her DNA."</p><p>As an actress, she appeared in numerous films and even played Rosa Parks in the 1978 miniseries "King." She also appeared in "Ghosts of Mississippi."</p><p>The Rev. Joseph Lowery said Wednesday he was stunned and saddened by the news of King's death.</p><p>"Yolanda was lovely. She wore the mantle of princess, and she wore it with dignity and charm," Lowery said. "She was a warm and gentle person and was thoroughly committed to the movement and found her own means of expressing that commitment through drama."</p><p>King _ an actor, speaker and producer _ was the founder and head of Higher Ground Productions, billed as a "gateway for inner peace, unity and global transformation." On her company's Web site, King described her mission as encouraging personal growth and positive social change.</p><p>"She didn't want to be a child of the movement, she wanted to be what God wanted her to be," Young said. "She could never escape being a child of the movement, though. She was really feeling that she didn't just want to be the daughter of Coretta and Martin King. That was her struggle."</p><p>King was also an author and advocate for peace and nonviolence, and held memberships in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference _ which her father co-founded in 1957 _ and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Her death comes more than a year after the death of her mother, Coretta Scott King, who died in January 2006 of ovarian cancer.</p><p>King understood well what her father was about, said U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement. Lewis said he last saw Yolanda King at Easter Sunday services for New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, where her sister, the Rev. Bernice King, preaches.</p><p>"She used her acting ability to dramatize the essence of the movement," Lewis said of Yolanda King in a telephone interview on Wednesday.</p><p>"She could motivate and inspire and tell the story. I heard her recite 'I Have A Dream' on several occasions. She made it real, made it part of her. I think her father would've been very, very proud of her," Lewis said.</p><p>King was a 1976 graduate of Smith College in Northampton, Mass., where she majored in theatre and Afro-American studies. She also earned a master's degree in theatre from New York University.</p><p>She is survived by her sister, the Rev. Bernice A. King; two brothers, Martin Luther King III and Dexter Scott King; and an extended family.</p><p>Arrangements would be announced later, the family said in a statement.</p><p>Yolanda King was the most visible and outspoken among the Kings' four children during activities honoring this year's Martin Luther King Day in January, the first since Coretta Scott King's death.</p><p>At her father's former Atlanta church, Ebenezer Baptist, she performed a series of one-actor skits that told stories including a girl's first ride on a desegregated bus and a college student's recollection of the 1963 desegregation of Birmingham, Ala.</p><p>She also urged the audience at Ebenezer to be a force for peace and love, and to use the King holiday to ask tough questions about their own beliefs on prejudice.</p><p>"We must keep reaching across the table and, in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, feed each other," King said.</p><p>When asked then by The Associated Press how she was dealing with the loss of her mother, King responded: "I connected with her spirit so strongly. I am in direct contact with her spirit, and that has given me so much peace and so much strength."</p><p>A flag at The King Center, which King's mother founded in 1968 and where Yolanda King was a board member, was lowered to half-staff on Wednesday.</p><p>____</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>HASH(0x2df0590)</p>
