Yolanda King, 51; actress, child of civil rights leader

Yolanda King, an actress, producer and motivational speaker who was the eldest child of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and who turned to the performing arts to carry on her father's civil rights legacy, has died. She was 51.

King died late Tuesday in Santa Monica, said Steve Klein, a spokesman for the King Center in Atlanta. According to Klein, family members suspected her death may have been caused by a heart problem, but he provided no additional details.

In a statement, the King family called her an "advocate for peace and nonviolence, who was known and loved for her motivational and inspirational contributions to society."

Cornel West, professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton University, said King was "a fine actress and had tremendous style and grace."

"The legacy of Dr. King is this profound commitment to love and justice

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who worked closely with her father, said in a statement that "Yolanda lived with a lot of the trauma of our struggle

And Charles Steele, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which her father co-founded, told The Times that King had "definitely brought the civil rights movement alive and educated younger generations through her drama."

In 1968, the 12-year-old Yolanda learned from a television news bulletin that her father had been slain at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn.

She felt that as the oldest child she would be thrust into the role as her father's successor.

"I struggled with a lot of the legacy for a long time, probably actually into my 30s before I really made peace with it," King said in 2005 on "Western Skies," a Colorado-based public radio show.

"My father was bigger than life, an entity and everyone expected us, as his offspring, to be saintettes, these little carbon copies," King told the New York Daily News in 1996. "They're pleasantly surprised that I'm just really down-to-earth, open."

When the first national holiday honoring her father was observed in 1986, she later told People magazine that she asked herself: "What is it that you really want to do in your life?"

She answered by diving back into acting and becoming a motivational speaker.

As she noted in a 1985 speech at City University of New York, she wanted to remind young African Americans that "the civil rights movement was not a mirage