Andrew Jackson Young

Andrew Jackson Young Jr. was born March 12, 1932 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His mother was Daisy Full Young a school teacher, and his father was Andrew Jackson Young Sr., a dentist. Young’s father hired a professional boxer to teach Andrew and his brother how to fight, so they could defend themselves. From that, Andrew decided that violence was not the path he would choose to follow.

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 in pre-dentistry degree there in 1951. He felt a religious calling and entered the Turner-Boatwright Christian ministry school and earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1955. 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. He became friend and ally of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at this time. In 1060 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 capacity, one of Dr. King’s principal lieutenants. As a colleague and friend to Martin Luther King Jr. he was a strategist and negotiator during the Civil Rights Campaigns in Birmingham (1963), St. Augustine (1964), and Selma (1965) that resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act and voting rights Act. He was with King in Memphis, Tennessee, when King was assassinated in 1968. 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. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Young to serve as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Young became the first African-American to serve in the position. In 1981, after being urged by a number of people, including Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., Young ran for mayor of Atlanta. He was elected later that year and was re-elected as Mayor in 1985. He was prohibited by term limits from running for a third term. In October 1994, then-U.S. president bill Clinton, along with then- president of South Africa Nelson Mandela, established the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund (SAEDF), and named Young as its Chairman. In 1996, Young and Carlton Maters co-founded GoodWorks International, a consulting firm “offering international market access and political risk analysis in key emerging markets within Africa and the Caribbean.” Young also has been a director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, and also is the chairman of the board for the Global Initiative for the Advancement of Nutritional Therapy. From 2000 to 2001, Young served as president of the National Council of Churches. In 2003, Young founded the Andrew Young Foundation, an organization meant to support and promote education, health, leadership and human rights in the United States, Africa and the Caribbean. In 2004 Young briefly considered running for U.S. Senate from Georgia but decided not to re-enter public life. From February to August 2006, Young served as he public spokesman for the Working Families for Wal-mart, an advocacy group for the retail chain Wal-Mart. In 2007, Andrew Young Foundation produced the documentary film Rwanda Rising, about Rwanda’s progress since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Young had four children with his first wife, Jean Childs, who died of cancer in 1994. He married his second wife, Carolyn McClain, in 1995. Young himself was diagnosed with prostate cancer in September 1999, which was successfully removed with surgery in January 2000.