ANDREW YOUNG

'Andrew Jackson Young, Jr.' (born March 12, 1932) is an American civil rights activist, former mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, and was the United States' first African-American ambassador to the United Nations. Young is the namesake of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. International Boulevard, near the Centennial Olympic Park, has been re-named Andrew Young International Boulevard, in honor of his efforts to secure the Olympic bid for Atlanta.

Contents

Background

Early life

Education

Civil rights

Career

Congress

Diplomatic career

Atlanta mayor

Private citizen

References

External links

Background

Early life

Andrew Young's mother, Daisy Fuller Young, was a school teacher, and his father, Andrew Jackson Young, Sr., was a dentist. Young was supposed to become a singer, but the struggle to survive in the South, the experience in segregated and over-crowded public schools, and growing up in an integrated lower-class neighborhood developed a social conscience which led him to the Congregational Christian (now United Church of Christ) ministry upon graduation from Howard University in 1951.

Education

After beginning his higher education at Dillard University, Young transferred to Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1947, and received his Bachelor of Science and pre-medical degrees there in 1951. He originally had planned to follow his father's career of dentistry, but then felt a religious calling. He entered the ministry and received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut in 1955.
Young is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first inter-collegiate Greek-letter organization established for African Americans.

Civil rights

Young was appointed to serve as pastor of a church in Marion, Alabama. It was there in Marion that he met Jean Childs, who later became his wife. Also while in Marion, Young began to study the writings of Mohandas Gandhi. Young became interested in Gandhi's concept of non-violent resistance as a tactic for social change. He encouraged African-Americans to register to vote in Alabama, and sometimes faced death threats while doing so. He became a friend and ally of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at this time. In 1957, Young moved to New York City to accept a job with the National Council of Churches. However, as the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum, Young decided that his place was back in the South. He moved to Atlanta, Georgia and again worked on drives to register black voters. In 1960 he joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Young was jailed for his participation in civil rights demonstrations, both in Selma, Alabama and in St. Augustine, Florida. Young played a key role in the events in Birmingham, Alabama serving as a mediator between the white and black communities. In 1964 Young was named executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), becoming, in that capacity, one of Dr. King's principal lieutenants. He was with King in Memphis, Tennessee when King was assassinated in 1968.

Career

Congress

In 1970 Andrew Young ran as a Democrat for Congress from Georgia, but was unsuccessful. He ran again in 1972 and won. He later was re-elected in 1974 and in 1976. During his four-plus years in Congress he was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and he was involved in several debates regarding foreign relations including the decision to stop supporting the Portuguese attempts to hold on to their colonies in southern Africa.

Diplomatic career

In 1977 President Jimmy Carter appointed Young Ambassador to the U.N. His controversial statements made headlines almost from the start. His greatest contribution was helping end segregation in Zimbabwe Rhodesia. He also improved U.S. relations with Nigeria. He was criticized for many of his statements, such as his suggestion that Cuban troops brought stability to Angola. However, President Carter continued to support his ambassador until 1979 when, contrary to U.S. policy and statute, he met with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization. When the occurrence of that meeting was revealed, Young's public statements were perceived as evasive by Administration critics. Ultimately, Young resigned.
During the 1980 presidential race there was some controversy about a statement made by Young, according to the ''New York Times'' edition of Oct. 16, 1980, page B-6:
"Speaking to a crowd made up almost entirely of whites, Mr. Reagan said, 'I believe in state's rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can at the private level.' The Republican Presidential nominee added that, if elected, he would re-order priorities and 'restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them.'
Commenting on the remark at The Ohio State University, Young said, "If he had gone to Biloxi, and talked about state's rights, if he had gone to New Orleans, or Birmingham, I would not have gotten upset. But when you go to Philadelphia, Mississippi where James Chaney, Andy Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were killed--murdered--by the sheriff and the deputy sheriff and a government posse protecting state's rights, and you go down there and start talking about state's rights, that looks like a code word to me that it's going to be all right to kill niggers when he's President."
These remarks were denounced by the Reagan campaign and repudiated by the Carter campaign.

Atlanta mayor

In 1981, Young was elected mayor of Atlanta, succeeding Maynard Jackson. He was re-elected in 1985. As mayor, Young brought the city to national prominence by encouraging international investment which, in turn, improved the Atlanta economy after it was hit hard by recession. He was instrumental in bringing the 1988 Democratic National Convention to Atlanta.

Private citizen

Young ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Georgia in 1990, losing in the Democratic primary run-off to future Governor Zell Miller. However, while running for the Statehouse, he simultaneously was serving as a co-chairman of a committee which, at the time, was attempting to bring the 1996 Summer Olympics to Atlanta. Though his successor, Maynard Jackson, was able to enjoy the spotlight when the announcement came that Atlanta had won the right to host the Summer Games, Young almost certainly was more instrumental in the success of the Atlanta bid.
Today, Young is co-chairman of Good Works International, a consulting firm "offering international market access and political risk analysis in key emerging markets within Africa and the Caribbean." The company's Web site also notes that "GWI principals have backgrounds in human rights and public service. The concept of enhancing the greater good is intrinsic to our business endeavors." Nike is one of Good Works' most visible corporate clients. In the late 1990s, at the height of controversy over the company's labor practices, Young led a delegation to report on Nike operations in Vietnam. Anti-sweatshop activists derided the report as a whitewash and raised concerns that Nike was trading on Young's background as a civil-rights activist to improve Nike's corporate image. Young also is a director of the Drum Major Institute, and also is the chairman of the board for the [Global Initiative for the Advancement of Nutritional Therapy]
★ [1].
In 2004 Young briefly considered running for U.S. Senate after the incumbent, Zell Miller, announced his retirement, but decided not to re-enter public life.
In February, 2006 Young accepted a position as chairman of Working Families for Wal-Mart, a grass-roots organization sponsored by the corporate giant as a public response to widespread criticism that many of the company's American employees and their children are on public assistance, that the company uses child labor, that the company discriminates against female and African-American employees, and that workers manufacturing Wal-Mart products are subjected to abusive conditions and sub-poverty wages.
In an interview in 2006 a ''Los Angeles Sentinel'' correspondent asked Young whether he worried that Wal-Mart causes smaller, mom-and-pop stores to close. He replied with comments that were criticized as racist:
Following the wide-spread publication of these comments, Young announced on August 17, 2006 that he had ended his involvement with Working Families for Wal-Mart.

References

Andrew Young, ''An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America'' New York: HarperCollins, 1996.

Bartlett Jones, ''Flawed Triumphs: Andy Young at the United Nations'' Lanham: University Press of America, 1996.

Andrew DeRoche, ''Andrew Young: Civil Rights Ambassador'' Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2003.

External links

★ Young's Presidential Medal of Freedom

★ Transcript, Andrew J. Young, Jr., Oral History Interview I, 6/18/70, by Thomas H. Baker, Internet Copy, LBJ Library. Accessed April 3, 2005.

★ Oral history interview by Jack Bass and Walter DeVries, January 1974 (Southern Oral History Program, UNC-Chapel Hill)

★ Biography (entry in the New Georgia Encyclopedia)

★ Andrew Young Global Health Institute, a project of the Global Initiative for the Advancement of Nutritional Therapy

★ Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

★ Andrew Young biography and video interview excerpts by The National Visionary Leadership Project

★ Good Works International, founder

★ Andrew Young's federal campaign contribution report

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