cover image I've Been Marching All the Time: An Autobiography

I've Been Marching All the Time: An Autobiography

Xernona Clayton. Longstreet Press, $17.95 (261pp) ISBN 978-0-929264-87-5

Clayton's varied career has included stints as civil rights worker with Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta, first black person to host a regular TV show in the South and ``undercover agent'' exposing job discrimination for the Urban League in Chicago. She was with King the day before he was killed, and helped Coretta Scott King through the difficult days immediately after his death. As an organizer for Atlanta's Model Cities program in the 1960s, she had sessions with Calvin Craig, then grand dragon of Georgia's Ku Klux Klan, which prompted his decision to leave the KKK and renounce his racist views. Daughter of a Baptist minister from Oklahoma, Clayton, now assistant corporate vice-president for urban affairs with the Turner Broadcasting System, writes with brio and dignity in this warm, spirited autobiography. She illuminates the overt and hidden barriers she has had to overcome. Photos. (Sept.)