Fact Check: Did Martin Luther King pay for Julia Roberts birth? Family connection explored

Oscar-winner Julia Roberts' little-known connection to civil rights champion Martin Luther King Jr. has taken the internet by storm.

The fact was first revealed back in September when Gayle King, who was interviewing the Pretty Woman actress for A&E Networks and History Channel's HISTORYTalks in Washington, D.C., brought up the question, "Who paid for your hospital bill?"

The story, as revealed by the actress, goes that Roberts' parents, Walter Grady Roberts and Betty Lou Bredemus, became friends with Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, because their theater school, Actors and Writers Workshop, in Atlanta, was one of the few that would accept the King children.

At the time of Julia Roberts' birth, the Kings paid for the hospital bill and in the actress' words, "helped [them] out of a jam.”

The Erin Brockovich star's 55th birthday and a viral tweet, "Martin Luther King Jr paying for her birth is still a little known fact that sends me," caused the tidbit to be unearthed. A retweet by Zara Rahim, a former strategic advisor to Barack Obama, pushed it into hot topic territory.

Rahim added a part of the interview in her tweet, where Julia Roberts shared her connection with Martin Luther King Jr's family:

"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. And my mom was like, ‘Sure. Come on over.’ And they all became friends, and they helped us out of a jam."

---

Julia Roberts was friends with Martin Luther King Jr.'s eldest, Yolanda

Gayle King noted that the relationship between Julia Roberts’ parents and the Kings was “extraordinary” and that it created a “groundwork” that shaped the actress.

Bernice King, the youngest of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King's children, tweeted that she was glad that Julia Roberts shared the story and that "so many people have been awed by it."

The bigotry and prejudice that Betty Lou Bredemus and Walter Roberts encountered for allowing black children to join their acting school was covered by an online publication last year.

The publication mentioned that one of those kids was Yolanda King, Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King's oldest daughter.

In 2013, Georgia-based writer and performer Philip DePoy wrote an essay for ARTS ATL that described the forward-thinking and occasionally experimental work that the Actors and Writers Workshop was up to. He recalled how, as anthropomorphized animals, he and Yolanda King shared a kiss in 1965 when he was 15 and appeared in a production based on stories by Joel Chandler Harris.

Apparently, a "tangential member of the Ku Klux Klan" attacked the theater and blew up a car close to the flatbed truck that was acting as a mobile stage because DePoy was "primarily Caucasian" and Yolanda wasn't.

Julia Roberts was also friends with Yolanda King, who passed away in 2007 at 51, as a result of complications from a long-term heart condition.

Many were unable to believe that the story was legitimate, but keen-eyed fans pulled up old newspaper articles that showed the King children at the Actors and Writers Workshop.

The Notting Hill actress continues her parents' legacy of progressive thinking. In the 90s, she came under media attention after residents of Abbeyville, South Carolina, were offended by her remarks about the town being "horribly racist" and "a living hell" after her black friend was refused service at a restaurant.

Yolanda King later commented on the incident in a CNN interview and said,

"I can see her doing, I can see it pouring forth from her, and rightfully so."

In a statement at the time, Julia Roberts wrote that she "was shocked that this type of treatment still exists in America in the '90s — in the South or anywhere else."