Diverse Group Inducted Into Civil Rights Walk

Ted Turner, Henry Aaron and the late former Mayor Maynard Jackson Jr. were among 11 people inducted to the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame on Friday.

Members of the diverse group stood at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site with a plaque containing their footprints and had their shoes preserved in display cases.

“This is the celebration of a few brave and courageous souls, men and women whose personal sacrifice and commitment to justice was free of malice, greed and self-promotion,” Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said.

Xernona Clayton, who created the Walk of Fame, announced Friday that the gallery would have a more international flavor in the future with the addition of Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu and former South African President Nelson Mandela.

This year’s other inductees were comedian Dick Gregory, late newspaper editor and columnist Ralph McGill, U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., singer Nancy Wilson, singer Harry Belafonte, activist Addie L. Wyatt of Chicago, late chief judge of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Elbert Tuttle, and the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth of Cincinnati.

Shuttlesworth, who endured beatings, imprisonment and the bombing of his home, and Belefonte, who befriended King in the early 1950s, did not attend the ceremony.

The Walk of Fame was founded two years ago with the help of Turner to establish a tribute to those in the civil rights struggle. The walkway leads visitors on a path to the museum honoring King at the historic site near King’s Atlanta home and across the street from Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Wilson, a major figure in civil rights marches of the 1960s, said the ceremony gave her “one of the best feelings I’ve ever had in my life.”

Conyers is one of the 13 founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Aaron, one of the first blacks to integrate professional baseball in the Deep South, broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record with the Atlanta Braves in 1974 despite receiving threats and racial slurs.

Tuttle’s rulings helped ensure the desegregation of the South. Wyatt worked with King on rights marches in Alabama; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago.

McGill was the Atlanta Constitution’s Pulitzer Prize-winning voice for racial tolerance in what he called the New South in the 1940s through the 1960s. Turner, who bought the Braves in 1973, is best known for launching CNN and the Turner Broadcasting empire.

“I consider this movement part of the human rights movement,” Turner said. “Everybody is entitled to an equal chance in life.”