As a senior aide to Martin Luther King Jr. in the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) during the 1960s,
Andrew Young helped shape the civil rights movement
and its philosophy of nonviolent resistance. When he was
sworn into Congress in 1973, Young worked to bring King’s
vision of human rights to the nation and the world. Young’s
experiences in the grass-roots politics of the civil rights
movement and his diplomatic perspective allowed him to
take principled but pragmatic stands for his constituents.
Looking back on his decision to run for the House, Young
remembered viewing “political office as a way of sustaining
what we had done and needed to do again rather than as a
deviation from our history of collective struggle.”1
Andrew Jackson Young Jr. was born in New Orleans,
Louisiana, on March 12, 1932, to Andrew and Daisy
Fuller Young. His father was a dentist, and his mother was
a schoolteacher. Growing up, Andrew and his younger
brother Walt lived in what was described as “a middleclass,
predominantly Irish and Italian” community in
New Orleans; they were the only Black children in the
neighborhood. After graduating from Gilbert Academy in
1947, he attended Dillard University, a historically Black
university in New Orleans, Louisiana, for one year and then transferred to Howard University, a historically Black
university in Washington, DC. Young earned a bachelor’s
degree in biology in 1951. After graduating from Howard,
Young considered a career in dentistry, but decided to join
the ministry instead. He attended the Hartford Theological
Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut, earning a bachelor of
divinity degree in 1955, and was ordained a minister in
the United Church of Christ. After graduating from the
seminary, Young served as a pastor and teacher in Marion,
Alabama, and in Thomasville and Beachton, Georgia,
until he was invited to work in the Youth Work Division
of the National Council of Churches in New York City,
where he served as assistant director from 1957 to 1961.
In 1961, Young returned to the South to participate in a
voter education program sponsored by the United Church
of Christ. He moved from New York to Atlanta and joined
the SCLC. Young married the former Jean Childs, a teacher,
in 1954. They had four children: Andrea, Lisa, Paula, and
Andrew III. After his wife died of cancer in 1994, Young
married Carolyn Watson, an elementary school teacher.2
Young first became connected with the SCLC through
his work organizing a citizenship education program in
Dorchester, Georgia. By mid-1962, he began to work closely with Reverend King’s staff. When King and Ralph
Abernathy, another SCLC leader, were arrested and
imprisoned for seven weeks for training students to register
voters, they relied on Young to handle various duties while
they were incarcerated in Albany, Georgia. Young also served
as a mediator between the SCLC and the Albany police. He
subsequently volunteered to mediate between the SCLC and
White southerners during other demonstrations. In 1964,
King named Young executive director of the SCLC. In his
leadership role, Young provided logistical and legal support
for prominent demonstrations and legislation such as the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.3
When civil rights activist and member of the Georgia
house of representatives Julian Bond declined to run in
the Democratic primary for the congressional district
encompassing metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia, and its
northern suburbs, Young resigned from the SCLC in
1970 to enter the race. Young suggested his campaign
was motivated by the belief that he could initiate change
from inside the political power structure, rather than
from outside: “There just comes a time when any social
movement has to come in off the street and enter
politics.” Young advocated what he called the New South
Coalition, which he defined as “black votes, liberal votes,
[and] white labor votes.” It was a balancing act, he said.
“The problem is to involve those new white voters without
stirring up the dyed-in-the-wool racists in the process.”
Young and other Atlanta politicians such as then-Mayor
Sam Massell and future Mayor Maynard Jackson, who
would become the first African American to lead a major
southern city, relied upon the New South Coalition as
a base of electoral support. In the Democratic primary,
Young defeated Wyman C. Lowe, a White lawyer, in a
runoff election, with 60 percent of the vote. In the general
election, however Young lost to two-term incumbent
Republican Standish Fletcher Thompson, who garnered 57
percent of the vote. After his loss, Young chaired Atlanta’s
Community Relations Commission, a city-run agency
created as a community sounding board to hear claims of
discrimination and monitor race relations. This position
allowed Young to acclimate himself with the political
environment of Georgia’s Fifth District and provided him
greater exposure to local constituents.4
In 1972, Young orchestrated a second campaign for the
House when the incumbent, Thompson, ran for the U.S.
Senate. After defeating three opponents in the Democratic primary with 60 percent of the vote, he ran in the general
election against Republican Rodney Cook, a veteran
politician who served four terms in the Georgia house
and was also an Atlanta alderman. As part of his platform,
Young described a four-point plan for improving public
education that advocated federal and state grants instead of
property taxes for funding, greater community involvement,
a curriculum that was relevant to its urban constituents,
and racial integration at all levels of the system. Young
also directed an aggressive voter registration drive and a
coordinated media blitz. He benefited from redistricting that
added African-American communities while reducing the
number of conservative White voters. After redistricting, the
proportion of Black voters increased from about 30 percent
to 38 percent. On Election Day, Young defeated Cook in the
majority-White district, winning an estimated 95 percent of
the Black vote and 23 percent of the White vote.5
Young was the first Black Representative from Georgia
since Jefferson F. Long’s election a century earlier. Young
and fellow first-term Representative Barbara Jordan of Texas
served as the first Black Members from former-Confederate
states since 1901. “I consider this victory a little more
than just being the first Black man to go to Congress from
this deep South state,” Young noted. “I see this as a citywide
mandate of people of both races working together
to achieve the kind of representation that this area so
badly needs.” Young comfortably won re-election in 1974
and 1976.6
During the 93rd Congress (1973–1975) Young served
on the Committee on Banking and Currency. In the 94th
Congress (1975–1977), he left Banking and Currency to
become the first Black Representative appointed to the
House Rules Committee. The Rules Committee, one of
the most powerful panels in the House, controls the flow of
legislation to the House Floor. Young remained on the Rules
Committee for the remainder of his career. Young also joined
the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), where he was elected
treasurer and was an executive committee member.7
During his first term, Young worked to direct
government resources to underserved communities
and promoted expanded political participation in civic
affairs. One of his early initiatives was an amendment to
the Urban Mass Transportation Assistance Act, legislation
that facilitated the building of mass transit systems such
as MARTA in Atlanta. Young’s amendment, which he
sponsored from his seat on the Banking and Currency Committee, would have required federal funding of
projects to be dependent on the participation of local
advisory councils that reviewed planning, construction,
and operations of mass transportation systems. For Young,
local advisory councils promised to help incorporate new
and diverse voices into regional decision-making processes.
Moreover, the councils would enable local communities
to exercise more control over the distribution of funds for
building and maintaining important infrastructure projects.
“I hope we can begin to write mass transit bills so that the
people who live in the inner city can be in on the early
planning . . . and be in on the contracts.” During debate
on the legislation, however, the House voted in favor of an
amendment to remove Young’s citizen advisory councils.8
Young’s approach to lawmaking was reflected in his
constituent services. He made it a point to visit his district
on weekends because he understood the importance of
being visible in his community and among Black voters in
Atlanta. “[W]e’re terribly cynical about people we don’t see,”
Young once remarked about politicians generally. “We don’t
read too much about our men in the paper, so it’s their
physical presence and accessibility that counts.”9
Young established a liberal voting record on domestic
issues. He rejected cuts in federal spending for people with
low incomes while supporting an increase in wages for
young workers and domestic workers. “Domestic workers
ought to be included in any minimum wage considerations
for our society has thrived too long on their suffering
and sacrifice,” he said in 1973. Young also criticized cuts
to rural spending programs by the Richard M. Nixon
administration. He argued that both Black and White
middle-class families could suffer because of Nixon’s
economic policies, such as the federal moratorium on
financing new housing. Throughout his congressional career,
both on his own and through the CBC, Young challenged
President Nixon to preserve legislation that benefited his
Black constituents. He denounced the Nixon administration
for an antibusing bill and for failing to support mass
transit. In a CBC forum called the “True State of the
Union,” Young declared, “the overall goal [for Congress]
must be to return the economy to a system which generates
growth and production instead of death and destruction,”
and to “provide the aggressive leadership in rebuilding an
economy of peace and justice.”10
In the House, Young developed a keen interest in
U.S. foreign policy, especially concerning Africa, Asia, and Latin America. One of his earliest bills called for barring
U.S. government contracts to companies that practiced
racial discrimination in South Africa. In July 1973, Young
successfully lobbied for a provision in a foreign aid bill that
authorized the President to cancel aid that Portugal would
use for military action in its African colonies. “This House,”
Young implored, “should take a very simple step to indicate
that we will no longer participate, directly or indirectly, in
the Portuguese crimes against the African people of Angola,
Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique.” The amendment passed
the House. Young also supported the United Nations
sanctions against Rhodesia and called for a boycott of
chrome from the White-minority controlled African
country. In 1975, Young testified before the Senate against
the nomination of Nathaniel Davis for Assistant Secretary of
State for African Affairs, due to his ambassadorship to Chile
during a CIA-sponsored coup d’état against its president in
1973. Young also made congressional visits to South Africa
in 1972 and to Zambia, Kenya, and Nigeria in 1975.11
In the summer of 1975, Young worked to pass an
extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As a member
of the Rules Committee, he introduced the legislation for
debate and delivered remarks outlining the successes of the
Voting Rights Act: increasing the number of Black elected
officials in the South, boosting Black voter turnout, and
initiating monitoring by federal examiners and observers.
He believed the Voting Rights Act was necessary to ensure
minority participation in voting and argued that the act
allowed politicians to appeal to a cross-section of society
instead of only to a privileged few. “There was a time, when,
in order to be elected from our part of the country, you had
to present yourself at your worst,” Young observed. “The
man who was the chairman of my campaign . . . had to
run as a segregationist when he wanted to run statewide.”
Following these deliberations, the House voted 341 to 70
to extend coverage of the Voting Rights Act.12
For the remainder of the Congress, Young continued
to seek ways to improve the lives of his constituents. He
sponsored bills that outlined comprehensive health care
plans and testified on behalf of bills that supported economic
development in his district and in Africa. Young sponsored
the Food Stamp Act of 1976, which proposed an overhaul of
the anti-hunger program to make it more readily accessible
by eliminating the requirement to purchase stamps.13
Young worked successfully with Republicans across the
aisle by approaching them one-on-one to discuss political issues. He reached compromises with political allies
and opponents using negotiating skills he honed in the
SCLC. Although Young clearly staked out liberal positions,
he exhibited a shrewd political pragmatism that surprised
his allies. New York Representative Shirley Chisholm
noted that Young had “an ability to mediate, arbitrate—to speak with all kinds of persons within the Republican
and Democratic parties.” Young himself observed that
“[s]ome of the people I disagree with the most are some
of the people I have come to respect the most . . . I can
usually swing Democratic support, but unless you can get
Republican support, nothing happens around here. I’m not
going to ask them . . . to do anything that’s going to hurt
them politically and they know better than to ask me.”
In October 1973, after the resignation of Vice President
Spiro T. Agnew, Young was the only CBC member who
voted for Republican Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford
of Michigan to succeed Agnew. “I decided that here was
a guy I wanted to give a chance,” Young said of his vote.
“He was certainly better than a Reagan or any of the other
alternatives at the time. Besides, Atlanta was going to need
to work very closely with the next administration.”14
During the early 1970s, Young became acquainted
with James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, who was the governor of
Georgia. Carter’s sincerity and the men’s mutual interest
in promoting human rights formed the basis for a strong
relationship. The Georgia Representative supported Carter’s
bid for the presidency in 1976 with a seconding speech
at the Democratic National Convention in New York
City and he organized voter registration drives in urban
areas for the successful Carter campaign. On January 29,
1977, after accepting President Carter’s offer to serve as
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Young resigned
from Congress.15
As the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations,
Young became the initial point of contact for the Carter
administration’s foreign policy in Africa and Asia in an
era when the United States competed for influence with
the Soviet Union in developing countries. By using the
network of contacts that had been developing since the
1950s, he played an active role in articulating Carter’s
position on human rights in Rhodesia, South Africa, and
Angola. Young resigned the ambassadorship in 1979 in the
wake of severe criticism following his meeting with Zehdi
Labib Terzi, the U.N. observer for the Palestine Liberation
Organization. From 1982 to 1990, he served as mayor of Atlanta. He traveled extensively to promote Atlanta’s
reputation as a financial competitor on the world stage.
While mayor, Young also played an active role in bringing
the 1996 Olympic Games to Atlanta. In 1990, he launched
a gubernatorial bid, but lost to Lieutenant Governor Zell
Bryan Miller, who garnered 65 percent of the vote in a
runoff election. He eventually formed a consulting firm
dedicated to fostering economic development in Africa
and the Caribbean. In 2003, Young considered a run for
the U.S. Senate, but declined because “[w]inning would
mean I would spend the next seven years of my life in
Washington, and Washington is not always the center of
action.” Young remains involved with several consulting
firms and nonprofit organizations in the Atlanta area.16
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