The video clip went viral when Zara Rahim, a former strategic adviser to President Barack Obama tweeted the interview clip.
It might come as a surprise for many that late civil rights activists Martin Luther King Jr and his wife, Coretta Scott King, paid for actor Julia Roberts's hospital bill when she was born. They were close friends of the actor's parents.
Today is Julia Roberts birthday! 55 years ago MLK and Coretta Scott King paid for her parents hospital bill after she was born. Can’t stop thinking about this since I read it. Here she is talking about it with @GayleKing https://t.co/5HvpNSUIYb pic.twitter.com/147x6d807W
— Zara Rahim (@ZaraRahim) October 28, 2022
In a series called HISTORYTalks, the CBS News Reporter Gayle King asked her, "Who paid for your hospital bill?" She responded, "Her research is really good. The King family paid for my hospital bill." Roberts was born on October 29, 1967, in Smyrna in Georgia. When asked why they paid for the bill, the actor said, "Obviously my parents couldn't pay for the hospital bill, my parents had a theater school called, The Actors And Writers Workshop. One day, Coretta Scott King called my mother and asked if her kids could be part of the school as they were having a hard time finding a place that would accept her kids. My mom said, 'Sure, come on over.' And they just all became friends and they helped us out of a jam."
The video clip went viral when Zara Rahim, a former strategic adviser to President Barack Obama tweeted the interview clip to wish the actor her 55th birthday, as reported by the Huffington Post. The tweet has 46,000 likes and more than 8,000 retweets. One person commented below the video, “Wow, I didn’t know that. MLK and his family set the bar very high. Bless them.” Another said, "I've always found Julia Roberts to be an amazing actress, and definitely in my top 3 of all time. This story leaves me with a lot of PURE joy because now I've learned she is an amazing human being as well."
I've always found Julia Roberts to be an amazing actress, and definitely in my top 3 of all times. This story leaves me with a lot of PURE joy because now I've learned she is an amazing human being as well.❤❤❤
— Let's GROW (@PURE_Seminar) October 29, 2022
Segregation kept Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughters from attending white schools. Reportedly, a man who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan came and heckled the actors who were performing with Yolanda, the King's eldest daughter, on the first day. The next day, he blew up a Buick outside the school after she kissed Philip DePoy, a white actor in the theater, he wrote in an essay for ARTS ATL in 2013.
"I kissed a girl, and 10 yards away a Buick exploded. I was on the back of a flatbed truck that had been converted into a swamp. I was a fox. The girl was a terrapin. We were in Atlanta, it was a very nice summer day in 1965, and I was 15 years old. The girl was Yolanda King, daughter of Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr. I was primarily Caucasian and Yolanda wasn’t. That’s what the trouble was about. I don’t know who owned the Buick, but I know who blew it up," he wrote. “In the ’60s, you didn’t have little Black children interacting with little white kids in an acting school, and your parents were like, ‘Come on in,’” Gayle King said. “I think that’s extraordinary, and it sort of lays the groundwork for who you are.”
References:
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Jemal Countess
