Yolanda King, dead at 51

Yolanda Denise King, daughter and eldest child of civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has died, said Steve Klein, a spokesman for the King Center.

Ms. King died late Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif., at age 51. Mr. Klein said the family did not know the cause of death but that relatives think it might have been a heart problem.

The 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 website, Ms. King described her mission as encouraging personal growth and positive social change.

Ms. 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.

The death comes just over a year after the death of her mother, Coretta Scott King — a civil rights leader in her own right — at the age of 78, of complications from ovarian cancer, and after a battle with the effects from a stroke.

The children of Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King — Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott, and Bernice Albertine — have each in their own way worked to carry on their parents' work fighting for racial equality and social justice.