Long before one of them became a nationally honored civil rights icon with a bronze statue in downtown Atlanta, identical twins Xernona and Xenobia Brewster were known in Oklahoma as “The Brewster Twins,” a polished majorette act from Muskogee.
The sisters, born August 30, 1930, in Muskogee, emerged from a prominent Black family during segregation-era Oklahoma. Their parents, Rev. James M. Brewster Sr. and Lillie Brewster, served as administrators connected to Indian Affairs in Muskogee while Rev. Brewster also worked in ministry. The family placed a strong emphasis on education, public presentation, and achievement.
By the late 1940s, the twins had become majorettes at Manual Training High School, one of Oklahoma’s important Black schools during segregation. The girls graduated in 1948 and went on to attend Tennessee State University, then known as Tennessee State Agricultural and Industrial College. Xernona graduated with honors in 1952, majoring in music and minoring in education. While at Tennessee State, she also became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.
Though the twins first gained visibility through majorette performance, their lives soon intersected with far larger historical movements.
Xernona Clayton began working with the National Urban League in Chicago, where she reportedly worked undercover investigating racial discrimination against African Americans by employers. She later became deeply involved with the Civil Rights Movement through the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the work of Martin Luther King Jr..
Importantly, Xernona was not alone in these efforts. Historical accounts indicate that her twin sister Xenobia also participated alongside her in civil rights work, including efforts involving hospital desegregation in the South.
Over time, Xernona Clayton became one of the most influential Black women in American broadcasting and civic leadership. In 1967, she became the first African American in the South to host a daily prime-time television talk show, The Xernona Clayton Show. She later rose to become a corporate vice president at Turner Broadcasting System.
Her influence expanded even further through the founding of the Trumpet Awards Foundation, which honors African American achievement, and through her role in developing the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame.
In 1991, she wrote her autobiography, I’ve Been Marching All The Time. The following is a publisher’s description of the book:
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.
In recent years, Atlanta permanently commemorated her legacy. The city established Xernona Clayton Plaza and Xernona Clayton Way in downtown Atlanta. In 2023, an eight-foot bronze statue of Clayton was unveiled there, making her the first Black woman honored with a statue in downtown Atlanta.
Meanwhile, Xenobia Brewster married James Anthony Smith Jr. and later became known as Xenobia Brewster Smith. Xenobia died August 4, 1997, in Las Vegas at age 66.
Today, the surviving images of the Brewster twins stand as more than vintage majorette photographs. They document two young Black women from Oklahoma whose lives bridged marching band culture, higher education, civil rights activism, broadcasting history, and American public life.
For baton twirling history, the significance is difficult to overstate. Xernona Brewster Clayton may be one of the most historically consequential figures ever to emerge from American majorette culture.
