The actor’s parents — Betty Lou Bredemus and Walter Grady Roberts — became good friends with the civil rights leaders in the 1960s.
wrote about the racism and bigotry Bredemus and her husband faced for allowing Black children to attend their acting school.
As Obsev reported, one of those children was the Kings’ daughter Yolanda King, who died in 2007 at the age of 51. Yolanda King was cast as the love interest of a white actor in one of the school’s productions and the two shared a kiss in a scene. in 2013 detailing his experience at the Atlanta school. He revealed a car exploded near the theater after their kiss. “A man, a tangential member of the Ku Klux Klan, had seen me kiss Yolanda the day before in the same parking lot,” the author wrote. “The Klansman had come around the day before the explosion in order to make trouble.