and Vernon at age 49 in 2009; his father, Martin Luther King Sr., also died of a heart attack in 1984. His father said in his autobiography, "Alveda had been up the night before, she said, talking with her father and watching a television movie with him. He'd seemed unusually quiet...and not very interested in the film. But he had wanted to stay up and Alveda left him sitting in an easy chair, staring at the TV, when she went off to bed... I had questions about A.D.'s death and I still have them now. He was a good swimmer. Why did he drown? I don't know – I don't know that we will ever know what happened." Naomi King, his widow, said, "There is no doubt in my mind that the system killed my husband. My Boaz was murdered." References External links 1930 births 1969 deaths African-American activists 20th-century Baptist ministers from the United States Accidental deaths in Georgia (U.S. state) Activists for African-American civil rights African-American Baptist ministers African-American Christians Deaths by drowning in the United States A. D. Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Morehouse College alumni Activists from Atlanta Activists from Birmingham, Alabama Clergy from Atlanta Baptists from Alabama Burials at South-View Cemetery