He was a lieutenant to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In fact, he was by his side not only in life but also at King’s death at the hands of an assassin.
Andrew Young, now in his 90s, has had many titles in his lifetime: UN Ambassador, Mayor of Atlanta, Congressional Representative, Co-chair of Olympic Games, Executive Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and ordained minister of the United Church of Christ. His other titles include: civil rights leader, peacemaker, family man, and author.
Need a jolt of hope? This is a good book filled with optimism in the face of pessimism, love in a time of hate, and unity despite efforts at creating division and inequality.
Andrew Young shows how the American civil rights movement arose largely as a result of World War II and the resultant Marshall Plan. The military provided proof and a blueprint for the success of diversity, inclusion, meritocracy, and equality.
Young’s perspective is rooted in a post-colonial world and his religious faith and commitment to nonviolence.
“There were many who made the American civil rights movement possible: men and women, preachers and laypeople, students and workers, young and old. But in the 1960s, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the organization I was involved with during the civil rights movement, was largely made up of thirtyish, Southern-born, Negro preachers. We were children of the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We spent our adolescence enjoying the rise of the United States as a defender of liberty and democracy in World War I. Our high school and university life was defined and colored by the social responsibility of the Marshall Plan, a sense of world community signaled by the founding of the United Nations and, yes, the successful liberation of India from British colonialism— without violence.”
Young writes, “The former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass described the effort to end slavery as a struggle to save "black men's bodies and white men's souls." It was in this tradition that the preachers who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference decided its mission was "to redeem the soul of America."
“That soul we saw less in America's actions than in its ideals: freedom, equality, justice. While we endured segregation, we knew that America had shed the blood of hundreds of thousands of its sons and daughters in a war that ended slavery. We knew that America had risen up out of the depths of a Great Depression to defeat fascism. We had cheered the exploits of Dorie Miller and the Tuskegee Airmen and other colored soldiers who refused to let racial segregation prevent them from offering their lives for freedom and for America, and we were inspired by their example. Dorie Miller was told he could only be a cook's helper, but he dared to believe he could shoot down enemy aircraft [at Pearl Harbor]. The Tuskegee Airmen dared to believe black men could fly.
We were thought to be naive, but in truth we were visionary. We dared to believe that America could be healed of the gangrene of racism. We saw America as we could become, not just as we were.
We believed that people could change, because we were constantly aware of how far we had come, personally. But most of all, we believed that a free society was constantly changing and that we could influence those changes to accommodate the needs and aspirations of all of our citizens, and that race, creed, gender, and national origin could be strengths rather than problems.
We began with the limited goal of ending racial segregation. But we came to understand segregation as just one aspect of the barrier confronting black Americans in American society.
The March on Washington became a march for jobs and freedom, because in a nation based on free enterprise, access to jobs and money are an essential component of freedom. We came to see the war in Vietnam as a symbol of the destructive role America was playing in suppressing the cause of freedom for people of color not just at home, but around the world.
As America made the world safe for democracy, we had to make America's democracy safe for the world.
Racism, war, and poverty were anchors dragging on our society, preventing us from reaching our full potential, as if anchors from a nineteenth-century sailing ship had been attached to the space shuttle. We accepted the challenges of detaching those anchors.
We knew it was a burden, but we believed it was an easy burden in a country as great as ours. We believed that God didn't give anyone more burden than he or she had the strength to bear. Our faith made our burdens light, because we never carried them alone. Our understanding and clarity of vision was a blessing, and I was taught that God requires us to use the gifts that we have been given. Racism, war, and poverty were heavy burdens, to challenge injustice was an easy burden.
We possessed a fundamental faith in democracy and free enterprise. We learned to address the nation through a free press; we made our claims on the economy by word and deed. We believed in our American heritage-a great people in a great nation that was ready to lead humankind in a new way of thinking and working. We believed in a future that we would help to create from our faith in spite of very real fears. Martin expressed it for all of us when he constantly reminded us that ‘the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’"
Young’s view is one with a wide-aperture –– focused on the whole world and also into the future. And his love for America as well as his hope and optimism are at the center.
“America is so important to the world at this moment in history as we seek a new vision for our world. As I travel around the globe, I am reminded that the heads of state and people of nearly every country look to America for leadership. Yet, the poverty in our midst undermines our will and ability to respond to the call to global leadership and to meet the challenge of global poverty and environmental degradation—a far greater threat to future generations than even the Cold War. When I served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, I became aware of the intense appreciation that the Japanese delegation had for the U.S. role in rebuilding Japan after World War II. That experience led many Japanese businessmen to advocate a global fund for strategic infrastructure projects that would improve the environment, facilitate sustainable development, and generate jobs. They identified fifty such strategic projects, including the English Channel Tunnel (which the British built themselves), a natural gas pipeline across Africa from the Nigerian oil fields to the Mediterranean, and a sea level canal through Nicaragua. Without enthusiastic backing from the United States, a new global infrastructure fund could not move past the visioning stage, yet no nation would benefit more from such projects than the United States. For example, the practical benefits of a canal across Nicaragua to accommodate modern supertankers are at least twofold: given the cost and dangers associated with the long voyage around South America from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the canal would pay for itself in short order. Moreover, a canal under international governance would provide the basis for long-term economic growth and resulting political stability for U.S. neighbors and trading partners in Central America.
Investing in development in Central America would produce far better results in reversing the immigration flow than the punitive measures presently finding political favor.
This is the kind of forward thinking that is required from American leadership today: investing in the future to solve problems and prevent problems. How much better to build a canal than to build a wall. How much more effective to support the creation of jobs in their own regions for workers who presently risk life and limb in pursuit of a better life in the United States, rather than to put forward yet another plan for making illegal immigrants' lives only more miserable once they're here. Our nation's prosperity rests on the vision of leaders who invested in and built bridges, roads, canals, communication networks, and national parks. These are the things that make for peace.
In an expanding economy people are too busy making money and accumulating material goods to fight over ancient prejudices.
Had there been growth rather than recession in Europe when Bosnia and Serbia became independent of the former Yugoslavia, I doubt we would have seen the kind of bitter carnage that we have witnessed in that region of the world. The frustration that erupted in riots in South Central Los Angeles were rooted as much in the steady withdrawal of jobs and resources from that community as in the tragic beating of Rodney King.
Our own budget deficit has become the new excuse for ignoring growing problems in our midst and shirking our global responsibilities. But America does not have the luxury of attempting to shrink its way out of deficits; we only enlarge our problems when we withdraw resources from cities, schools, rural communities, infrastructure, parks, health care, and environmental protection. We undermine the integrity and vitality of our communities and we trigger dangerous recessions that breed conflict and violence. Surely responsible and dedicated Americans of all races can, based on the dictates of our minds as well as our hearts, pull together to meet the present challenge of poverty in all its complex manifestations both at home and
I am considerably older than I was in 1961, and I hope I'm wiser and certainly much more experienced after having moved through the Congress, the United Nations, the city of Atlanta, and the private sector. I have yet to find a reason to question or doubt the faith that we had in America then. Everything I know now convinces me that the struggle to eliminate racism, war, and poverty is a burden, but in America, with all the freedom and opportunity afforded us under our Constitution, in the most productive society in human history, it is an easy burden if we undertake it together.”
For much more about Andrew Young, readers may want to watch Rachel Maddow’s new film: “Dirty Work.” From the MSNBC website: “This gripping documentary reveals the untold story of Andrew Young — a behind-the-scenes force of the Civil Rights Movement and a quiet giant of international diplomacy. A master negotiator, strategist, and bridge-builder, Young was the man who did the essential, often thankless ‘dirty work’ that changed history, operating in the shadows while others stood in the spotlight.” Young considers the “dirty work” he did as “an easy burden.
Andrew Young celebrates black history with First Army, Fort Gillem, Georgia, in 2009 (Gayle Johnson, First Army Public Affairs Office)
