Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In people who only stayed on for that season: Teresa Graves, Jeremy Lloyd, Pamela Rodgers, and Byron Gilliam. Lily Tomlin joined in the middle of the season. Jo Anne Worley, Goldie Hawn, and Judy Carne left after the season. The 1970–71 season brought new additions to the cast include tall, lanky, sad-eyed Dennis Allen, who alternately played quietly zany characters and straight man for anybody's jokes; comic actress Ann Elder, who also contributed to scripts, tap dancer Barbara Sharma, and Johnny Brown. Arte Johnson, who created many memorable characters, insisted on star billing, apart from the rest of the cast. The
Carl Rowan bus boycott in 1955, resulting from Rosa Parks's refusal to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger. As the only black reporter covering the story for a national newspaper, Rowan struck a special friendship with the boycott's leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr. When news of an unlikely compromise settlement of the boycott came to Rowan's attention across the Associated Press wire, he notified King, who made quick steps to discredit the story, which was about to appear in a Montgomery newspaper, thus ensuring the continuance of the boycott. Founded in 1987 by Rowan, Project Excellence was a college