Bradenton event honors civil rights leader, TV pioneer Xernona Clayton

In April 1968, Xernona Clayton drove her friend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the airport, the day he flew to Memphis.

After he was assassinated, Clayton applied makeup to his bullet-damaged face to make him presentable for the thousands of people lined up to view his body. In the following years, she helped his wife, Coretta Scott King, care for their three children.

Later, she found out that black people around the country were receiving substandard hospital care and that those hospitals were receiving federal funds. She met with President Lyndon Johnson about the problem, and within weeks he ordered all hospitals to be integrated.

She was the first African-American woman to host a syndicated talk show. She became vice president of Turner Broadcasting System. She founded the Trumpet Awards, which for 25 years honored African-American achievements in a variety of fields. A street and a park in downtown Atlanta are named for her. In 2004, Mattel introduced the Xernona Clayton Barbie doll.

On Thursday, Clayton, 87, was in Bradenton for an event in her honor at the Manatee Performing Arts Center, presented by the Bradenton Area Film Commission.

“What I am proud of,” Clayton said in an interview just before the event, “is that I did what Dr. King advised, which is to do your part.”

The centerpiece of the evening was a screening of a film about Clayton. The year-old documentary, titled “A Life to Remember,” has previously screened only in Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia.

“Several people had suggested doing a film about my life,” she said. “I didn’t want my achievements glorified. That puts you in the category of being braggadocious, which of course I’m not about. So I did it myself.”

Clayton was part of the production team of the film, which begins with her modest upbringing in Muskogee, Okla., through her college years, her first marriage to Edward Clayton, the first editor of Jet magazine, and her second and current marriage to federal administrative law Judge Paul Brady.

But mostly, the film focuses on her civil rights work and her pioneering career in broadcasting. Among her TV innovations were “Black History Minutes,” short films on TBS that told about overlooked contributions of African-Americans. One segment, in 1991, featured a 29-year-old law student named Barack Obama.

After the film screening, Clayton autographed copies of her 1991 autobiography, “I’ve Been Marching All the Time.”

The title, she said, came from a conversation she had with Dr. King when she drove him to the airport that day. She had always worked behind the scenes in the civil rights movement. Dr. King asked her when she was going to march with him. But he recognized her contributions, doing things like bailing marchers out of Southern jails and arranging for hospital care for marchers who had been brutalized by police or Klansman. Her work, Dr. King allowed, was just as important to the cause as that of the marchers.

“I said, ‘That’s right. I’ve been marching all the time,’” Clayton said.