At an event hosted by the Carter Center and Dutch Consulate of Atlanta on Feb. 28, 2024, Sweet Auburn Stories producer Royce Bable sat down with Xernona Clayton, 93, for a wide-ranging interview about her Oklahoma childhood, a stint in Hollywood, her prominence in the American civil rights movement of the 1960s and her long media career. The storytelling series began in 2019 and focuses on Black pioneers.
Located at the corner of Jesse Hill Jr. Drive and Auburn Avenue, in the heart of the Sweet Auburn District, once known as the richest stretch of Black real estate in America, the three-story Atlanta State Savings Bank building still stands. But it has been boarded up for decades. Some want to preserve the historic building.
Alonzo Franklin Herndon founded what would become the Atlanta Life Insurance Company more than a century ago. A former sharecropper, Herndon started his...