Tag: Xernona Clayton

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During a reflective conversation this week in the Trumpet Awards Foundation’s 10th floor conference room overlooking the downtown skyline, Clayton discussed key moments from her trailblazing life in Atlanta, from her unexpected friendship with Calvin Craig, the grand dragon of Georgia’s Ku Klux Klan at the height of the civil rights movement, to her groundbreaking WAGA-TV The Xernona Clayton Show and the powerful final gift she was able to give to her boss Dr. King in 1968 in the hours after his assassination.

Three former U.S. presidents, civil rights leaders, family, and members of John Lewis's staff all gave speeches during the funeral service before Lewis was buried at Atlanta's South-View Cemetery.

From the moment you push the oval Polaris button inside the glass elevator of the Hyatt Regency, the stomach-flipping wonder returns. In nineteen seconds, you’re rocketed up the atrium’s hanging ivy–accented twenty-two stories, through the roof, and out into the Downtown sky. Then you ascend into the space-pod lounge, hovering 312 feet above the lobby of the forty-seven-year-old hotel.

The equivalent of Atlanta royalty—members of civil rights dynasties like the Kings, the Farrises, the Youngs, and the Lowerys; top city officials, including Mayors Reed, Franklin, and Massell; and c-level executives from The Coca-Cola Company, Delta, and Georgia-Pacific—all turned out Wednesday for the official groundbreaking of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights (NCCHR) at Pemberton Place.

Perhaps the most remarkable chapter in Xernona Clayton’s life was her influence on Calvin Craig, a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.