The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Statue will immortalize civil rights veteran
Activist and TV pioneer Xernona Clayton set to be honored in bronze.
Hours before the sun peeps over Atlanta’s skyline, Xernona Clayton pulls into her reserved parking space at 101 Marietta Street, downtown.
At 91, she still drives herself to work from her southwest Atlanta home she shares with her husband, retired Judge Paul L. Brady, and is usually in her 10th-floor office by 3:15 a.m.
Her schedule is full. She’s making plans for next year’s Trumpet Awards in Los Angeles, which she created in 1993 under the auspices of Turner Broadcasting, where she was among the first Black executives. The program honoring Black achievement was forced into a hiatus last year because of the pandemic.
She just returned from Washington, D.C., where she met with Georgia’s senators, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, both of whom will receive a special award named after Clayton, the trailblazing broadcast executive and civil rights activist.
Soon a larger-than-life version of Clayton will honor her legacy.
Colorado-based sculptor Ed Dwight, who also created the monument to Hank Aaron that now stands at Truist Park, has been commissioned to create an 8-foot bronze memorial of the diminutive Clayton, who is 4 feet, 11 inches tall. The statue, which is expected to be completed in mid- to late 2022, will be erected at Xernona Clayton Plaza in downtown Atlanta.
It will be among the few statues honoring Black women in Atlanta. Others include bronze sculptures of Rita Samuels, a civil rights advocate and former secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference under the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; and Dorothy Bolden, founder of the National Domestic Worker’s Union of America.
Clayton, a native of Muskogee, Oklahoma, was “part of the glue that kept the civil rights movement together,” said Hank Stewart, an Atlanta poet and friend. “She crossed a lot of T’s and dotted a lot of I’s. I don’t think she got her just due.”
Clayton moved to Atlanta from Los Angeles in 1967 with her husband Ed Clayton, a well-respected journalist. Why?
“Pressure from the Kings,” she said with a quiet laugh. King wanted her husband to come to the South to see what the movement was all about. Later, he introduced her to Coretta Scott King, King’s wife and also a civil rights leader. The two women bonded over a phone call. Coretta King was planning a fundraising concert tour and asked Clayton to help.
Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young said women like Clayton were critical parts of the civil rights movement.
“The wives, the women, all took a low-profile position, and I think that’s one of the few things that the movement is really missing,” he said. “We could not have had the movement without the women.”
Clayton “was always there.” “You can’t judge effectiveness by just the suffering,” said Young. When Ed Clayton died, “she didn’t leave, she stayed on and started the Trumpet Awards, which is in itself a civil rights victory. She was always finding key Black people who nobody knew and giving them attention and honors. She promoted other people, and that’s basically what a leader should do.”
Clayton worked on economic opportunities in Atlanta’s Black community. In 1968, she was working on a federal initiative to address poverty when she met Calvin Craig, a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Over time, they developed a friendship while they debated issues of race. Eventually, Craig renounced the Klan and credited Clayton with his change of heart.
She also worked with broadcast giant Ted Turner as director and vice president of public affairs at TBS, and the two remain close friends.
The idea for a monument to her was jump-started by Rick Baker, a managing director at Merrill Lynch, and Mariela Romero, regional community empowerment director for Univision in Atlanta, Raleigh, North Carolina, and Philadelphia.
Both were impressed by her accomplishments in television, civil rights, philanthropy and equal opportunity.
“We felt that she had been overlooked and not gotten the recognition that she should have,” said Baker. “She was a woman who changed many things.”
Romero added, “She has done all of those incredible things, and she has never tried to get fame for herself. It’s all about serving others. We want the new generation to know her name.”
Dwight pored through 100 photos of Clayton to find the right image. “I had to probe her mind to see where her head was,” he said.
He said his job is to make the memorial genuinely Clayton, who will have her hair in the trademark upsweep bun and adorned with a tiara.
Clayton’s offices are both history and cultural museum. There’s not 1 inch on the shelves and walls that’s not covered in awards, historic photographs, memorabilia and art.
There’s a doll in her likeness that was gifted to her by Mattel. Musician Stevie Wonder gave her one of his Hohner harmonicas that has his fingerprint clearly visible. There are photos of Clayton with former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and Martin and Coretta Scott King, Sidney Poitier and Usher.
She figures she owns more than 800 clocks in her offices and home that people — who are aware of her attention to punctuality — have given her.
“I thought at my age I had experienced all the exciting things that would happen to me,” she said. “I figured at some point it was going to run out, but I’m just blessed because they keep coming. This is one of my biggest moments and I’m thrilled.”
The idea for a monument to her was jump-started by Rick Baker, a managing director at Merrill Lynch, and Mariela Romero, regional community empowerment director for Univision in Atlanta, Raleigh, N.C., and Philadelphia.