Xernona Clayton Brady (née Brewster, born August 30, 1930) is an American civil rights leader and broadcasting executive.
Xernona and her twin sister Xenobia were born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, the daughters of Reverend James and Elliott (Lillie) Brewster.
Clayton began her career in the Civil Rights Movement with the National Urban League in Chicago, working undercover to investigate racial discrimination committed by employers against African Americans.
[5] In 1966, Clayton coordinated the Doctors' Committee for Implementation, a group of African American physicians who worked for and achieved the desegregation of all Atlanta hospitals.
[6][9] Clayton then headed the Atlanta Model Cities program, a federally funded group dedicated to improving the quality of desegregated neighborhoods.
She co-authored a revised edition of her late husband's biography of Martin Luther King Jr. that is titled The Peaceful Warrior.
Following her first husband's death, Clayton married Paul L. Brady, the first African American to be appointed as a Federal Administrative Law Judge,[16] in 1974.
[9] On May 1, 2011, Clayton received the James Weldon Johnson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Detroit branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
[19] In conjunction with the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the AFC Enterprises Foundation awards an annual Xernona Clayton Black Press Scholarship amounting to $10,000 to a student pursuing a doctoral degree in journalism.
[21] On International Women's Day in 2023, the City of Atlanta unveiled a statue of Clayton in the plaza also named in her honor on West Peachtree Street.