When Julia Roberts was born in Smyrna, Georgia, 55 years ago, a couple stepped in and covered her parents’ hospital bill. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, were there.
The previously unknown story has suddenly reappeared on social media. On Oct. 21, a fan retweeted a video compilation of Roberts, writing, “Martin Luther King Jr paying for her birth is still a little-known truth that sends me.”
While many individuals were moved, others questioned whether it was true.
However, it became evident a few days later that the Kings’ generous deed was far from fiction. To commemorate Roberts’ birthday on Oct. 28, social media influencer Zara Rahim uploaded a video clip on Twitter in which Roberts verifies the claim during an interview with television personality Gayle King.
“Who paid for the hospital bill on the day you were born?”
“King inquired of Roberts at HISTORYTalks, a September event in Washington, D.C., presented by the History Channel and A&E Networks.
“Her research is quite good,” remarked a shocked Roberts.
Then Roberts made a firm statement: “The King family paid for my hospital cost.”
“Not my family,” King replied, clarifying that Roberts was referring to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. “Why did they do that? ”
“My parents couldn’t pay for the hospital bill,” Roberts said.
She added that her parents, Walter and Betty Roberts, operated the Actors and Writers Workshop in Atlanta, which they invited the King children to join.
“One day Coretta Scott King called my mother and asked if her kids could be part of the school because they were having a hard time finding a place that would accept her kids,” Julia Roberts said. “My mom was like, ‘Sure, come on over.’ And so they just all became friends, and they helped us out of a jam.”
Bernice King, the youngest child of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, tweeted on Sunday that she was happy for the attention the tale was receiving, and that “so many people have been astonished by it.” I’m familiar with the narrative, but it’s poignant to be reminded of my parents’ generosity and impact.”
While the story of Roberts’ hospital bill was not well known until recently, anecdotes of the two families and their connection in the 1960s, a time of Jim Crow laws and segregation in the South, had previously been reported.
Julia Roberts, her mother, and Yolanda King — the firstborn child of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King — were featured in a CNN interview in 2001.
“It was an extended family, it really was. And all of these Black kids and White kids getting along, no problems,” Yolanda King said.
Phillip DePoy, a Georgia-based novelist, wrote an article in 2013 on the families’ relationship and how it led to instability and targeting. He told a story about being a 15-year-old lad in a show put on by the Roberts’ theater organization in 1965. He and Yolanda King kissed in the play based on a story by writer Joel Chandler Harris, causing a commotion.
“I was primarily Caucasian, and Yolanda wasn’t,” wrote DePoy, who did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post. “That’s what the trouble was about.”
According to him, “a tangential member of the Ku Klux Klan” witnessed the kiss and blew up a vehicle parked nearby. “The cops who had been watching the show just wandered over, talked to him, put him in handcuffs and took him away with very little energy.”
In addition to recounting the incident, DePoy discussed the influence the Roberts family had on individuals who attended their drama school — and the Atlanta performing community in general.
“Yolanda King spent the rest of her life involved in theater; my brother, Scott DePoy, who had joined the workshop before I had, continues to work all over the Southeast. Eric Roberts eventually went to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London,” he wrote.