As WSB-TV celebrates Black History Month, Xernona Clayton, one of the the last remaining Civil Rights Movement pioneers, caught up with Channel 2 Action News.
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“There was segregation everywhere,” Xernona Clayton said.
In 1965, Clayton moved to Atlanta to work alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She helped organize events for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
“I learned that there were just too many problems. I couldn’t solve them all. I was here thinking, which one would I attack?” she told Blankenship.
Clayton made it her mission to fight for hospital desegregation and even secured a meeting with then-President Lyndon B. Johnson.
“Black physicians in this city really made a difference in Atlanta because through our committee we were able to attack a lot of things that made a lot difference,” she said.
“All of the hospitals in the United States are now desegregated.”
Clayton went on to become a broadcasting pioneer. She affected change as the first African-American in the Southeast with her own television program then as a broadcasting executive for decades.
Now 95, Clayton is an inspiration to so many. And she encourages the next generation of civil rights advocates to keep pushing ahead.
“Know that this is an important period in our lives,” she said.
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