Early summer, possibly the Fourth of July, is the target opening date for the collection¹s first, permanent "and secure" home, on the site of the Old Why Culver City Was Chosen Marching for Civil Rights The Lady Behind the Library "Pride in culture is what my mother¹s (forty-year) collection is about," he said. Next: What Is Unusual About the Family¹s History
Courthouse, on Overland Avenue.
Across the street from the Vets Auditorium, a buzzsaw of civic activity, the Mayme A. Clayton Library will honor Mr. Clayton¹s erudite eighty-two-year-old mother and thousands of other important black pioneers.
When thefrontpageonline.com visited Mr. Clayton the other day in his strikingly artful home in Altadena, which is Pasadena adjacent, he explained
why he selected Culver City.
As he began to unspool the fascinating history of his own family, the storybook setting of his home, as a backdrop, enhanced the texture of his narrative. Positioned deep on a green property shaded by large trees, the front door is reached only by a narrow brick footpath.
Other geographic sections of Los Angeles may have seemed a more logical location, ethnically, because of their population and history. But many
potential library visitors would not travel there, Mr. Clayton said candidly, because the neighborhoods are not regarded as safe.
Conversely, Culver City is just about the safest community in Southern California, as the retired Police Chief Ted Cooke liked to say. Visitor-friendly and accessible from all areas, Mr. Clayton agreed.
Unabashedly, he is going for large audiences of every color He is clear about the kind of crowds he wants to attract. He expects to sign the papers later this month for the first one-year lease of the Culver City property because he wants his mother¹s collection, presently in disparate locations, "to be shared with people of all ages and ethnicities."
New York and Chicago already host prestigious museums of black history, he pointed out. But none exists in this half of the United States.
In a recent newsletter to prospective donors, Mr. Clayton eloquently framed his vision for the library: "In its new home, the collection will serve as a
cultural compass to a more complete understanding of American history."
Additionally, he foresees private and public schoolchildren from across Los Angeles touring the Mayme A. Clayton Library in the same wide-eyed manner they now visit the Museum of Tolerance, for example, on Pico Boulevard.
At fifty-eight years old, Mr. Clayton, who will be profiled in a second installment, is a gentleman of stature, both physically and figuratively. With the elegant precision of a radio announcer and a student of locution, loftiness of expressed purpose resonates naturally with the artist.
In his campaign to erect a monument to African Americans forgotten by the politicized arbiters of history for school textbooks, Mr. Clayton emphasized
the reward awaiting those who join up.
Placing the never-seen collection in a single building, he said, "will ensure that children will know the truth of African American history, not the latest media interpretation. We owe it to those who paved the way, and to those who will follow, to create an institution that will stand as a shining symbol of the beauty and power of the global black community."
For more than four years since retiring from Pasadena schools as an art instructor, Mr. Clayton, himself a distinctive personality, has been crusading to find a home for the unusual collection assembled by his unique mother.
He appears to be a blended package of inherited gifts – from his late father, who was stoic and disciplined, and his mother, the more overt activist.
When Mr. Clayton and his two brothers were growing up in mid-Los Angeles in the blossoming years of the civil rights movement, they enthusiastically
joined their parents in civil rights marches.
What makes the Clayton story so arresting is the gentle way in which the son – as disciplined as his father ‹ talks about the fieriest issues then and now. Mr. Clayton¹s temperament seems to be dialed to Under Control at all times.
His understated exterior notwithstanding, the inner fires burn strongly in the gentleman artist.
"Pride in my culture and my heritage is my whole purpose in life now," Mr. Clayton says.
What a cynic might have described as a throwaway slogan acquires authentic meaning when he delves into the value-components of his parents.
Comfortably retired now as a university librarian, Mayme A. Clayton. began her career in 1952 at USC, where she was the only black librarian.
"It was pretty radical for the time," Mr. Clayton says of his mother.
A native of Arkansas, she grew up in the worst of times, which, it turned out, may have energized her resolve but never was allowed to become a
handicap. A black child of the Deep South in highly problematic times, her childhood bridged the1920s when the Ku Klux Klan was being resuscitated and
the 1930s, when treating blacks as if they were animals not only was accepted but expected.
Mrs. Clayton fooled the haters. She grew up refined.
As World War II was ending, she graduated from Lincoln University of Missouri, which was formed in the state capital of Jefferson City after the
Civil War by members of the 62nd U.S. Colored Infantry.
Mayme Clayton was a mother of three sons and establishing her rare expertise in a field when her career took a definitive turn in 1959. She was
hired as a law librarian by UCLA.
As a young woman, she had developed an acute sensitivity toward history and fine volumes. This is a characteristic not commonly associated with
persons who grow up in the lap of daily oppression.
Before turning thirty, Mrs. Clayton made a life-changing decision. "She started to collect first volumes by noted black authors," said Mr. Clayton,
a fact that would not be overlooked by her employers at UCLA.
A few years after becoming a law librarian, at a time when the civil rights movement pushed black studies toward the front of university agendas,
UCLA officials met with Mrs. Clayton. "They knew she had a history of collecting African American materials," Mr. Clayton said. "They wanted her to develop a formal collection."
Today her legacy is intact because the documents she assembled have formed the research base for the African American studies program at UCLA.
