Xernona Clayton Brady is an American civil rights leader who was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma on August 30, 1930. Xernona grew up in a middle-class family with her twin sister Xenobia, the daughter of Musgokee Indian affairs administrators Reverend James and Elliot Brewster. In 1952, Xernona graduated from Tennessee State Agricultural and Industrial College in Nashville, Tennessee. She majored in music and minored in education during her undergraduate studies, and she later pursued graduate studies at the University of Chicago.

She is one of the most influential leaders, having close relationships with all of the biggest names in politics, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. She is also well-known for her speech at the 2018 Women’s Leadership Conference (WLC), which took place on August 27, 2018, at the MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Xernona Clayton Salary and Earnings

Despite having studied music and education, Xernona began her Civil Rights Movement career in 1954. She worked as an undercover investigator for the National Urban League in Chicago, where she investigated racial discrimination against African Americans by employers. She moved to Atlanta in 1965 and began organizing events for Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Clayton avoided marching with Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights Movement for fear of being arrested, but she was an important member of King’s march planning committee.

She coordinated the Doctor’s Committee for Implementation, a group formed by African American doctors to achieve desegregation of all Atlanta hospitals, in 1966. They were later successful and were recognized by a number of institutions. She then oversaw the Atlanta Model Cities program, which aimed to desegregate and improve the quality of neighborhoods. She published her autobiography, ‘I’ve Been Marching All My Life,’ in 1991, which focused on her life and her views on the Civil Rights Movement.

She set records in 1967 when she became the first African American to host a Daily Talk show on television. The show was called The Xernona Clayton Show, and it aired on Atlanta’s WAGA-TV. Clayton joined Turner Broadcasting more than a decade later, where she worked as a Documentary Producer, Director of Public Relations, and Corporate Vice President for Urban Affairs before retiring in 1997.

In 2004, she was named Chair of the Trumpet Awards Foundation, a Turner Broadcasting subsidiary established to honor African Americans and their achievements. In 2004, she established the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame in Atlanta, which includes inductees such as Rosa Parks, Dorothy Height, Harry E. Johnson, and others.

She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change at the age of 88. As of 2017, her net worth is estimated to be around $86 million, and her annual salary is estimated to be around $134K.

Divorce of Xernona Clayton’s Husband

Clayton married her husband, Ed Clayton, in 1957. For a long time, until Ed’s death in 1966, she and her husband were very happy and in love.

She did not give up hope after Ed died, and she found love again. In 1974, she remarried Paul L Brady. Clayton and Brady have no children together, but they share two children from Brady’s previous marriage: Laura and Paul Jr. Clayton and Brady have stated that they are happy together and have no plans to divorce.

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