Clayton, Xernona
1930-present · Contribution: 1967-1997
Became the first Black person in the American South to host a regularly scheduled prime-time television talk show when Themes and Variations (later The Xernona Clayton Show) premiered on Atlanta’s WAGA-TV in 1967, then spent three decades as a pioneering Turner Broadcasting executive
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Impact on the world
After working alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, Clayton pointed out the near-total absence of Black faces on Atlanta television and was hired by WAGA-TV to host her own show, drawing guests including Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, Mahalia Jackson, and Sidney Poitier over its eight-year run; in one celebrated episode, she engaged Georgia Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon Calvin Craig in a televised dialogue that led him to publicly renounce the Klan. She joined Ted Turner’s fledgling Turner Broadcasting System in 1979 as a documentary producer and rose to corporate vice president for urban affairs by 1988, becoming one of the highest-ranking Black executives, and among the first Black women corporate officers, at a major American media company. In 1993 Clayton founded the Trumpet Awards to honor African American achievement across fields, an annual televised event distributed to more than 185 countries, and in 2004 she created the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame at Atlanta’s Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site; a statue of Clayton was unveiled on Atlanta’s downtown walk of fame in 2023.
Life & background
Born August 30, 1930, in Muskogee, Oklahoma, to a Baptist minister father and mother who administered Native American affairs, Clayton graduated from Tennessee State University in 1952 and worked undercover for the Chicago Urban League investigating employment discrimination before moving to Atlanta in 1965 at Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal request. She hosted her Atlanta talk show from 1967 to 1975, spent nearly 30 years at Turner Broadcasting System from 1979 to 1997, and continues to lead the Trumpet Awards Foundation she founded in 1993; she lives in Atlanta and remains active in civic life past age 95.
Sources
- BlackPast.org; Encyclopedia.com; The HistoryMakers
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