Below the Line With Civil Rights Pioneer and Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew J. Young

Welcome to Below the Line, a monthly question-and-answer column in which Chancellor Bennie L. Harris, Ph.D., of the University of South Carolina Upstate interviews a leader about change, technology, education, and leadership. This month, Dr. Harris spoke with civil and human rights pioneer Andrew J. Young, who served as Atlanta mayor and United Nations ambassador. (This interview has been edited for content, clarity, and length.)

Harris: You were born in New Orleans. Can you tell me a little about your upbringing and what it was like, and how it informed the man you are today?

Young: I was born in 1932 at the beginning of the recession and depression. It was a poor neighborhood, but not a poverty-stricken one. We owned a little house. My father was a dentist with an office there, and my mother was a teacher. There was an Irish grocery store on one corner, an Italian bar on the next, the Nazi party on the third, and a Chevrolet dealership on the fourth. There were three Black families on the block, but my brother and I were the only Black children.

I learned about nonviolence when I was 4. My daddy always said, “Don’t get mad, get smart. If you lose your temper in a fight, you’re going to lose the fight.” He told me my mind was the most powerful weapon I had. 

He took me to a segregated theater to see Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics. When Hitler walked out rather than give Owens his medal, Jesse Owens stayed cool. He won all four gold medals. His motto was that you’re never going to beat everybody in a fight, but your mind can lead you.

So stay in the fight, but let your mind lead you.

Harris: There’s a lot of discussion today about the value of education. Your father was a dentist, your mother an educator. How did your experience help you develop as a leader?

Young: There were books all around. It rained a lot in New Orleans, and we didn’t have television or cell phones. On rainy days, I’d pull a book off the shelf, or read encyclopedias. Later we got radio. I took life as it came. The blessing was that my mother and father were active church people. We went to Sunday school every Sunday, church every Sunday, and prayer meeting Wednesday night.

Harris: You’re an ordained minister as well, right?

Young: My mother and father were just good church people. They took me to church, and I accidentally became ordained. I never planned to be a pastor. 

Coming back from Howard — I went to Howard at 15 and graduated at 19 — I stopped near the South Carolina-North Carolina line at Kings Mountain. I ran up that mountain. I’d been on Howard’s track team and was in good shape, but I was running out of despair. I had a college degree and didn’t know who I was or what to do with it. When I reached the top, everything looked perfect except me. I said, “If everything else has a purpose, whoever made all this must have made one for me.”

Walking down, it hit me: if I see anything that needs doing and there’s nobody else to do it, that’s my calling.

That’s also how people got the idea I would do the dirty work. Whatever it is that needs doing and nobody wants to do, I’ll do it.

Harris: You were 19 with a degree from Howard. You had this experience, this epiphany. How did that take you into leadership roles as a congressman and mayor?

Young: Nobody wanted to work with Martin Luther King Jr. He was broke. He’d been stabbed. His house had been bombed. He’d been jailed for nothing. Sometimes we didn’t know where he was.

My wife was from Marion, Alabama, the same town as Coretta (Scott King) and Juanita Abernathy. Our wives were committed to the South. We were in New York, had bought a home, and when we saw the Nashville sit-in story, my wife said she was ready to go home. She said New York could never be her home. She wanted to be where people were dealing with the world as it was.

She had also studied New Testament non-violence. I first heard (political activist) Bayard Rustin speak in seminary, and he said repentance need not be multilateral. I wondered what he meant, but I realized you don’t need to wait for your enemy to become non-violent. You become non-violent. You take the lead in resolving conflict.

Harris: You were a key strategist during the civil rights campaigns that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. You served as executive director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. What did you learn from those experiences?

Young: There were more than 60 bombings of homes around Birmingham in 1961 to 1962. We didn’t know until Fred Shuttlesworth showed us pictures. When he asked for help, Dr. King said we couldn’t come until after the holidays and the local election. Then he turned to me and asked, “Andy, do you know any white folks in Birmingham?” I didn’t. He said I had a month to get to know some, because someone had to prepare the white community.

I called the Episcopal Diocesan House and met with the bishop. I asked him to meet with Dr. King, Reverend Abernathy, and Reverend Shuttlesworth. They explained that if we didn’t like what was going on, we would withdraw our support. We would spend money only on food and medicine for at least 90 days. With 80,000 to 90,000 Black residents, that would shut the economy down.

Harris: What did you learn about yourself during this time?

Young: I didn’t think of myself as young. I was raised to be confident. I never felt like I wasn’t in charge. At school, I was the only one with lunch money. I didn’t like the school lunch, so a few of us would put our pennies together — my quarter and whatever others scraped up — and buy cheese, bologna, bread, maybe a moon pie, and divide it.

That put me in a leadership role unconsciously. Either I shared, or somebody would beat me up and take my lunch money. So I learned it was easy to share.

Harris: You once said: “There can be no democracy without truth. There can be no truth without controversy. There can be no change without freedom. Without freedom, there can be no progress.” Do these words still ring true for you?

Young: They do. Freedom requires a struggle, and struggle should move in the direction of truth. 

Harris: When you look at the landscape today, are you surprised or hopeful?

Young: I’m not surprised, and I’m not in despair. 

Harris: As ambassador in 1977, you negotiated an end to white minority rule in Namibia and Zimbabwe. What makes a good negotiator?

Young: I respect everybody, including enemies and adversaries. They have reasons for how they feel. 

Harris: You’ve received more than 100 honorary degrees from different universities. Tell me about that.

Young: When I took the SAT in New Orleans, I didn’t get accepted to a single college I applied to. Later, the president of Spelman went to head the Educational Testing Service, and I asked him, “Can you see how dumb I was? I didn’t get accepted anywhere.” He couldn’t find my test. Then I remembered I took the SAT in a gymnasium with 1,000 white folk and me. They probably threw mine away.

I now have honorary degrees from maybe a dozen or so of the schools that rejected me — or didn’t even answer my attempt to get in.

Harris: Tell me about your efforts to address world hunger with duckweed.

Young: I was still traveling, working with an engineering firm as a consultant. I went to Uganda, and they were having problems with the dam at the beginning of the Nile. It had shut down. I was with the engineering firm trying to fix it. I had to go down in the dam. At the bottom, we found a little vine called duckweed, with tiny leaves that double their weight every day. They had grown into the dam and choked it. 

We came back and studied it. We found people in Louisiana cooking it. They were trying to make jet fuel out of it. We studied the ashes and found that 57 percent was protein. It had all 18 essential amino acids. So we’ve been trying to figure out how to grow duckweed in a way that turns it into food. 

Harris: Do you have a hero? I’m sure you are many people’s hero.

Young: I have a lot of heroes. My first hero was Jesse Owens. Then I went through sports heroes: Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson. Thurgood Marshall became one of my heroes. My sixth-grade teacher took us to federal court. I watched this tall, skinny Black man run a courtroom. He was arguing a case for equal salaries for teachers. I didn’t understand everything, but I watched the way he handled that courtroom.

He would cite a case, and the clerk would go get the book. When the clerk came back with the book, Thurgood would say, “Your honor, I think you’ll find that on page 275, upper right-hand corner.” I said, “Damn, this brother’s got it together.” I was 10 years old.

Harris: As we come to a close, reflect on your legacy. What do you want it to be?

Young: I don’t know. I don’t think about a legacy. I just hope what I’ve learned doesn’t die with me.

There’s something in my genes — the importance of doing something good for others. That’s all I’ve tried to do. But it’s not just doing something good; it’s doing the best you can.