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- [00:00]
Pamela Kirkland
DBHDD is urging Georgians to store and lock away all medications to prevent theft and keep them away from children and pets. Old medications can be disposed of at Dropbox locations. Dropbox locations can be found@opioidresponse.info.
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Andrew Young
Welcome to.
- [00:21]
Pamela Kirkland
A special edition of Georgia Today. I'm Pamela Kirkland, host of GPB's Morning Edition. Normally on this podcast, you'll hear stories from the GPB news team all across the on this bonus episode, we're celebrating the birthday of an icon. Ambassador Andrew Young has lived nearly a century of American history. In the 1960s, Young worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Shaping the civil rights movement. In the 1970s, he served as US congressman in Georgia's 5th district and was later appointed by fellow Georgian former President Jimmy Carter to serve as the United States Ambassador to the United nations. In the 1980s, he became the mayor of Atlanta. Ambassador Young turns 93 years old this month. I recently sat down with him in the GPB studios to talk about his memories of the civil rights movement and his own legacy.
- [01:26]
Andrew Young
So you turn 93 in just a few days. Quite the milestone. Looking back, do you feel like it's gone by really quickly or really slowly?
- [01:37]
I don't know. I really. I don't know how to gauge it. It's a funny thing about birthdays. Everybody has them, but nobody knows what to do with them. And some people like to have parties. Some people like to be alone. I don't like to celebrate mine, but they always celebrate it because I'm always doing something and something I'm doing wants to celebrate.
- [02:06]
Someone's always going to celebrate for you.
- [02:10]
Now it's I'm trying to get a foundation going that will help continue my work after I'm gone.
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Your foundation does a lot of work now, too. I heard you tell a story once that after you graduated from Howard University, when you were 19, you were in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, and you ran up the mountain and you got to the top and you said you thought to yourself, okay, if everything else on this earth has purpose, I also must have some kind of purpose. Looking back now, what do you think your purpose is?
- [02:48]
Is my purpose is to do God's will each and every minute of my life. And to kind of figure out exactly what that is is quite a challenge. It's worked out pretty good for me because I had a college degree, but it was in biology and chemistry, and I had decided I didn't want to be a dentist. But I knew that there must be some purpose for Me. And the basis of knowing my purpose is that there's something I can do that nobody else can do. And that's what's happened to me. I have done what nobody else wanted to do. Like, I mean, when I came home from college, I had a new minister, and he asked me to drive him out to Texas to a conference because he was from the north and was afraid to drive in the South. And so I agreed to drive with him to Lake Brownwood, Texas. And when we got there, I realized that he and I were the only two black people there. But what was in some ways scarier for him, we hadn't seen anybody black since we left Houston. And we'd been driving up in the Panhandle maybe another five or six hours. And it's so that I'm there with a group of young people who were really trying to serve God by renewing their faith and helping other young people to strengthen their faith and become more active in the church. And they wanted it to be an interracial group, only there was nobody there black but me and my. And my pastor. And so they asked me to volunteer. Well, that was. Clearly, there was nobody else, and I couldn't say no to that, so I ended up saying yes. And I found myself a few weeks later in Hartford, Connecticut, which is where they assigned me to go to work with the church's youth groups. They didn't have a place for me to stay, so they. They called the Hartford Theological Seminary and asked if they had an extra room. And they gave me their guest room. And I walked around the campus. And I'd never been on a seminary campus before. Didn't know what a seminary was almost. And yet I hit it off. Well, it was a great big country white boy. He was about 6, 3 or 4, and almost 275 pounds. And we bumped into each other on the campus. And he. He said, what's a fellow like you doing at a place like this? Are you running from some girl or you're trying to stay out of the Army? Well, I had been given an honorable discharge from ROTC because I had a broken arm and couldn't hold a gun right. And, you know, it was close enough to me to like. To like what he said. How did he figure me out so quick? And so I walked around, and the. The door to the administration building was open, and I walked in and there was a. The dean's office. And I went. Went into the dean's office. The door was open, and I went in to introduce myself. And just thank him for letting me stay there. And I asked if I could, would it be all right for me to sit in on a couple of classes? I said, I'm. I haven't been that active in church since my Sunday school days, and it'd be good if I could do a kind of refresher course in Old Testament, New Testament. And he said, well, if you can take three courses, if you can sit in on three courses, I can give you a scholarship. And so he said, we have a. A new young fellow who just got his doctorate in Edinburgh, Scotland, and you would enjoy sitting in on his classes. I said, well, fine. And so he gave me a scholarship. And my work with the churches was after 3:00 and my classes were in the morning, so it worked out. But then once I got there, I liked books. So I walked around the library and looking at books in the bookstore, and they said, you know, you seem to like books. Would you mind coming in here once a week and handling the mail for people who write here to buy books? And they said, we pay you so much an hour, I forget how much it was. But I walked into the place, I had a job, volunteer. But then as that began to wind down, I kept getting other opportunities, and it just made me feel like I belong here. It was also the seminary trained missionaries going all over the world. So it was a totally international gathering with probably 40 or 50 nationalities there studying. And it just, it was good.
- [08:54]
And all from one road trip. Who knew that that is where you would end up? And ultimately after seminary school, it's a panel at Talladega College where you end up meeting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- [09:07]
Well, yeah, but before that, I got a call from my conference superintendent of the Congregational Churches, and he asked me, would I go to pastor a little church in Maran, Alabama? Well, I'd never been to Marion, Alabama. Never been to Alabama much. And I said, no, I'm sorry, but I've already decided that I'm gonna go to New York and I have a. A job at a settlement house helping young people, and I'm going to train for the 1952 Olympics. And he came right back at me and he said, well, those are noble goals. He said, but if you don't go to New York, there'll be 50 other people who want to go. And he said, everybody wants to go to the Olympics, so they're not going to miss you if you don't go. But if you don't go to Marion, Alabama, we'll probably lose a church. And I Said to myself, damn. And I mean, he put it in just such a way that I couldn't say no. So I found myself in a little English Ford that I bought and driving down to Marion, Alabama for the summer. And I. I cried half the way because I didn't want to be going there. I didn't know what I was going into. But as soon as I got there and found out where I was going, the first family I visited, there was a Bible on the table. And I opened the Bible and it was underlined. And I said, who reads the Bible? And said, oh, this is my daughter's Bible. She had to take a course in New Testament, non violence. Well, I wasn't much into nonviolence then, but to have somebody reading the Bible. I had just met Byrd, Rustin and Hartford had two Quaker professors. I had. Two of my professors were Quakers and they are strong in nonviolence. And I'd been reading nonviolent books in seminary. And it just. Then I looked up and there was a basketball letter. And I said, one of your boys play basketball? She said, yeah, both of my boys played basketball, but that's my baby daughter's basket letter. And then to blow it all out of proportion, I looked at the next frame and there was a senior life saving certificate with Gene Childs name on it. And I said, I was on Howard University swimming team. And I come down here and here's a woman with a Bible and a basketball letter and a swimming and a lifeguard certificate. And I'd never seen her, but I'd seen her mom and daddy. And I said, I guess the Lord sent me here to get a wife. And. And I decided before I met her that that's the woman. That's what I was there for. And it took her a while to warm up to me, but we eventually married. Well, the next summer she got a. She got a job in Austria and her school paid for her to go to Austria to work with refugees. And I decided I was going to tag along. And I had been by that time in seminary. I was in seminary, but I was washing dishes, I was mailing books. They had two elderly people in a furnace. I mean, I had to tend to their furnace. They were right across the street. But I had four jobs and I was going to school and I had more money than I've had in a long time, so I paid my own way to Europe and we got married the next summer. Mm.
- [13:30]
And it was your wife at the time and Coretta Scott King who got along so, so well.
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Well, they not only got along well, but they. Coretta was from Marion, Alabama, too, and went to the same high school. And so she and Jean knew each other. And when I. I came back to this little church in Thomasville, Georgia, and my fraternity had a Religious Emphasis week, and they had invited Martin Luther King to come to speak, and then they were afraid that he might have to cancel, so they invited me as a backup, and both of us showed up. So that's how I got to meet him. But there again, I mean, I haven't done a thing for myself, but everything in my life is laid out for me. And so that's the way I've lived my life since. Because that worked out so well now. I say it worked out well now, but the church in Marion was no great church. I had about 25 members. And the trip to Europe was wonderful because we went to about 10, 11 countries with a group of students. And then I worked in a refugee camp building houses for refugees coming across from behind the Iron Curtain. And they had 14 different nationalities in that work camp. So I was really getting an education without knowing it.
- [15:18]
Yeah, absolutely.
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I was being prepared for the rest of my life.
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And looking back on that and just thinking about, as you said, how things were just laid out for you. I've heard you say before, you don't believe in coincidences, but you do.
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I think coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. And I figured all these things happening to me couldn't be without meaning. And in order to define the meaning of those things, I had to believe in God and that there was somebody in control of heaven and earth. And just like he commissioned the trees to shine and to grow and the cornfield to look good and the sky to be blue, there was something for me to do, and I was being dragged into it slowly but wonderfully.
- [16:19]
I want to fast forward a little bit to the civil rights movement. And I think a lot of people, when they look back at that movement as this massive force that changed America. But in the moment while you were there, did it feel that way, or did it feel like you were constantly fighting an uphill battle?
- [16:38]
No, it felt very easy to me because I left the little church I had in Thomasville, Georgia. In fact, they put me out. My conference superintendent said that they were looking for someone to work in youth work at the National Council of Churches in New York. And that's the same group I volunteered for before I went to seminary. And they were offering me a job as an associate director of youth work. But I was in Thomasville and enjoying it. And the conference superintendent said, you've done a good job of opening this church and fixing up the parsonage. And we really wish you'd go, he said, because we have another young minister and his wife that can go right in there and they're short. They don't have any. They only have one other black executive at the National Council of Churches. And we wish you'd take that job in New York. Well, I took the job in New York and that worked out right.
- [17:51]
I want to, I also want to ask you, this month marks the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. There were so many moments when everything seemed like it was on the line. Selma, Birmingham, Memphis. What do you remember the most about Bloody Sunday and that, that day?
- [18:13]
Well, unfortunately, what I remember was that Dr. King told me not to march, and otherwise I'd have been in the front line getting beat up. And. But he was coming over that afternoon, first place. The march on Bloody Sunday was a mistake. It was the first Sunday in March and we thought it was the second Sunday, or at least the people did. And the difference is that none of the ministers, ministers have to be in their churches on first Sunday. And so all of the ministers were in the, we had churches were in their churches. Back in Atlanta, Joe Lowry was in Nashville, I think, or somewhere mobile. But two or three hundred people showed up wanting to march from Selma to Montgomery. And so I, I called Dr. King and talked to him while he was in his pulpit, and he said, I said, we can't turn these people around. I said, now there's a group of policemen at the bottom of the hill. They're not going to let them go far, and I don't know whether they're going to arrest them. I just turned them around and he said, well, don't you go. Let. Well, Hosea. And John Lewis was representing Stick, and Hosea was representing sclc. And he said, I'll be over there this afternoon and you don't get arrested. And that's what we thought might happen. And so I was, I prayed to get, get them going, but I stayed in the back of the line. So I was not in the, I was not in the tumble and rough, but I, I, this was 65, and I had had a pretty good beating in 1964 in, in St. Augustine. And so I, I kind of knew what it was like and I wasn't anxious to repeat it, but I would have. And because we didn't know. And in fact, Bevel and I. James Bevel, Used to say that we could talk the police out of beating us up because we never stopped talking. We never stopped reasoning with them. And it wasn't police that beat me up in St. Augustine. It was the Ku Klux Klan who had been deputized by the sheriff. But anyway, I didn't need another meeting. But that was a moment that we did not plan that way. And what we didn't know was that in the cities of the north, most of the cities, you know, from Washington up to Boston and all the way out to Chicago, there were snowstorms. And the movie that was playing on TV was Judgment at Nuremberg, which is Hitler's persecution of the Jews. And when the film was over, they cut to Bloody Sunday, and people saw the relationship. They saw Hitler in Nazi Germany and they saw Sheriff Jim Clark in Selma, and they made a connection. And that's what awakened the Congress and the citizenry and especially President Lyndon Johnson.
- [22:08]
As you had come from a meeting at the White House prior, and Martin Luther King Jr. Famously told you, we've got to get the President some power. And you wondered, how exactly are we supposed to do that? And that's kind of what Bloody Sunday ended up doing.
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Well, it did. It gave him the power. Not because. Just because we got beat up, but because we got beat up trying to get the right to vote. And people at home were looking at Hitler trying to take over Germany and persecuting citizens from one end of Germany to the other and one end of Europe to the other. So it was God's way of empowering Lyndon Johnson to get enough votes to pass the Civil Rights Act.
- [22:58]
I want to ask you about this group you were with. You mentioned John Lewis, Hosea Williams, Connecticut. Vivian, you have called yourself kind of the point guard of the movement in the sense that you knew you needed to pass the ball. You knew you were mediating all of these great personalities, but really, really strong willed, very passionate people at the same time. What was it like playing that role?
- [23:25]
It was miserable because I don't care what was going on. I was always wrong. I was never as militant as Jose wanted me to be, see? And I was never as humble as Bevel wanted me to be. I mean, I was always wrong because everybody wanted to be next to Martin Luther King, and I got there before anybody else. But, I mean, he'd been around the movement. All of them had been around the movement, and all of them knew him. But when I came to Atlanta, there was no staff but his secretary, Dora McDonald, and I wasn't even working for SCLC but I had an office across the hall and Dora asked me, I said if I can do anything to help, let me know. And she said, well, the One problem that Dr. King has that he's never been able to find much help in is he gets so much mail and would you mind helping him answer his mail? I said, no, I'd be glad to try. And she gave me a big egg crate packed with lettuce tied up in bundles of a hundred. And I don't know how many hundred there were in there, but I. I was, I was in Atlanta by myself. My wife was back in Marion, Alabama, and I was staying at the Butler street ymca. So every night I'd take a bunch of these letters home and write answer a bunch of them. And we finally started catching up and was something nobody else wanted to do. And so that let Dr. King know that he could depend on me. If I said I was going to do something, I got it done. And so he began to give him more, just more stuff to do.
- [25:29]
And you've said the one thing you never did was write any speeches for him, but you also felt like he didn't need a speechwriter.
- [25:36]
Well, no, what he would ask me to do is the first one was a group of black psychiatrists. And he said, I didn't know they had that many black psychiatrists to have an organization. He said, look them up and see what they're doing. And so I found a way to look them up even before artificial intelligence. And. But I found out and I. I just wrote a paragraph about what their business was and, and I put one or two points about, you know, this is you. This is what I think you need to talk about. And I don't remember what it was, but I would do that from time to time. If he was going to speak to somebody that he didn't know anything about, I'd do the research, background research.
- [26:32]
How do you think your life would be different if you hadn't met Dr. King?
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I don't know. I. I think in some ways. See, I had been in New York three years before I came back and I probably would have done something around New York. I don't know what. But by that time I knew Dave Dinkins, who was running for mayor. And I mean, I was pretty well connected to the New York politics. I don't, I never, never wanted to live in New York and my wife certainly didn't. And I don't know, it couldn't. My life couldn't have been any better.
- [27:18]
Than it has Been speaking of politics, former congressman, former two term mayor of Atlanta. What did working in politics, being in politics teach you about power and how power can be used either for, for good or maybe not so good?
- [27:35]
Well, being in Congress and being in politics let me understand that power was, I don't know what word to say. Dr. King used to say that the thing about power is the especially people power and God's power is the less you use it, the more you have. And that you shouldn't throw your power around and abuse it, taking advantage of anybody else. And that the less power, the more you share power, the more you have. And I think that's the lesson I learned from politics, and especially in Atlanta. I wouldn't have been in, I probably wouldn't have been elected if Sam Masell hadn't asked me to moderate the Citizens Review Board, that, to deal with the conflicts in the city generally. And that summer there were about five or six strikes that were all racial overtones. Well, I mean, I'd been doing that all my life, see. And so it wasn't hard for me. And I had the respect that people gave me because I had been with Dr. King. And so I could go into a factory and I could ask who really was calling the shots and I could go directly to the CEO and kind of explain to what the grievances were and, and kind of work out a solution. Now, there were other members of that Citizen Review Board, Community Relations Council, we called it, and. But it meant that before I came to, back to Atlanta, I was in Charleston, South Carolina, and there'd been a, there'd been a strike going on in a hospital for I think almost three years. I just said, I met with the strikers, the, who were women hospital workers and I knew what they wanted. And I just said, who are you talking to? And nobody was talking to anybody. So I picked up the phone. Actually, it was more detailed than that. I found an article in Newsweek, I think that said that the head of the hospital was the son of missionaries who'd been in Africa. And I said, he's probably a good guy. And he was. But he was in a position that was terribly frustrating and he didn't know what to do and it pushed him backwards. And he was beginning to get meaner and meaner because he was frustrated. And so I just picked up the phone and called him and asked if I could come see him. And he said, yeah. He said, who? He said, who's coming with you? I said, I can come by myself or I can bring my assistant he said, well, you bring your assistant and I'll bring mine. His assistant was Stephen Colbert's father. And so he had been in New York and had worked with these unions in New York. And once I started talking with him, he knew everybody by name, but getting us together in the superintendent of the hospital's office. And in another two weeks, the hospital was settled, and they'd been out for three weeks, three years. And that's. I mean, it's easy to settle problems if you don't mind talking to people and if you don't mind listening to people. You have to talk to everybody, and you have to listen to everybody.
- [31:52]
And we've. We've spoken a couple times, and I think that's something that I've noticed pretty much every time that we talk, whether we're talking about the civil Rights movement and you are the person who is not afraid to go into a room full of white people because you're not completely uncomfortable.
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You know how I grew up?
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Yes.
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I grew up in New Orleans. And there was an Irish grocery store on one corner, and the next corner was an Italian bar. The Nazi party was on the third corner and a Chevrolet dealership around the fourth corner. And, I mean, I was going back and forth between in that neighborhood, I mean, as early as 2 years old, because I had a big German shepherd. And my parents didn't bother. I mean, I don't know whether they cared, but they trusted me to buddy. And I'd learned to get along with people. The Nazi party was particularly difficult. But my father said, you know, he said, you know that God created of one blood all nations of the world. Now, they don't believe that. They believe that white is more important than anybody else. So they are white supremacists. He said, now, you don't have to convert them. See, their problem is not with you. Their problem is with God. You let God deal with them, and you just mind your own business. And he took me to the movie to see Jesse owens in the 1936 Olympics. Said I was four years old. So that's why I feel like Atlanta won the 1996 Olympics. When I went in to the 1936 Olympic movie story and saw Jesse Owens, because that made me want to know everything about the Olympics. It made me want to be an Olympian. And when it came time to, Billy Payne came to me and said, do you think we could bring the Olympics to Atlanta? My answer was immediately, yes. Now, everybody else thought no. I mean, everybody in City hall thought that we'd leave the city in debt, and it was too big for Atlanta. Atlanta wasn't ready for this yet, but it was one of the best Olympics we've ever had.
- [34:24]
You always seemed so confident in your decisions in, you know, the. The things you had to do as mayor, as Congressman, as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. i mean, were there any moments where you kind of doubted what you needed to do? You had, you know, when you were ambassador, President Jimmy Carter tasked you with some pretty lofty goals in terms of restoring US Relations with the continent of Africa.
- [34:52]
You.
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You've had such big visions and big accomplishments. Was there ever a moment where you.
- [34:58]
Were down there Again? It's the way I was raised. There was a student from Liberia that was in charge of the boys basketball team at the YMCA in New Orleans. So, I mean, from 10 years old, I was dealing with people from Africa. I went to Howard University, and all the smartest guys in the school were Africans. And I not only learned from them, but I respected them. And I learned a lot about their view of their culture, but I saw myself as part of that culture that was whisked away from the shores of Africa and brought here in slavery. And so that's what I went to Africa with. And I would say quite. I said, look, the Olympics needs to be in Atlanta. Now, you may not know Atlanta and you. But it's not our fault that your ancestors sold our ancestors into slavery. I said, we've done a pretty good job within Atlanta getting along with everybody, and if we were still here and did this on the African continent, you'd be breaking your neck to get the Olympics in that city. And I said, we just happen to be in Georgia, but we still need you to support us like we are an African city. And so. But again, we said the same thing to almost everybody because. Well, I didn't know. I didn't know we had a big Polish community here until we started going after the Olympics and the Polish community, which was right over there behind Georgia Tech one while. And they went on their own and invited the Polish committee and entertain them in their homes, and everybody did what they were supposed to do. I think we had 1100 churches that organized to invite people from other countries to come to Atlanta for the Olympics. And it was just a total city. And. But it was Billy Payne's vision, and he got that idea. I mean, Billy was a all American football player, Georgia, and he had a bad back and his. He had a heart attack at 32 and recovering. He wanted to do something to help his church, and he. He helped Them raise money to rebuild the sanctuary at the Dunwoody Presbyterian Church. And when he came home, he was sitting there feeling pretty proud. And the movie 17 Days of Glory came on about the Olympics. And he says to his wife, Martha, do you think we could bring the Olympics to Atlanta? Of course, she tells him, he's crazy. He needs a rest. Which is what my wife said, too. But the idea hit solid ground, and he's written a very good book saying, your friends will never let you fail. And it's what happened. All of his friends from all around, from University of Georgia and all the other schools, and we had a committee of ex jocks or wannabes, and I say exiles, people who had outgrown the Junior League and were in the late 30s looking for something to do. And we all just happened to be in the same place in the right time. And Billy had the right idea. And I never doubted that we could win the Olympics. I didn't know how we raised the money, but we raised two and a half billion dollars private money, no government money, no city money, no state money, and everything paid for itself. And we had almost $100 million. 100. Yeah, it was $100 million left over, and that's what went into the Centennial park and other things. But it was a phenomenal success.
- [39:57]
And we still talk about it to this to this day. I want to talk about the state of the nation right now, and I just want to ask you what this moment feels like to you. Having been through so much and having seen so much. What does the current state of the nation, country feel like?
- [40:18]
Well, I think that if I was not a man of faith, I would be scared to death, because we're in. We're in rugged waters now. I grew up. I was born in 1932, and I think I was 4 or 5 years old when Franklin Roosevelt said, after the bombing of Pearl harbor, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And I think that's been my patriotic claim to sanity. And I believe that. Say, and so I'm not afraid, but I don't know what the future may hold, but I do know who holds the future. And so I'm really calm, and I put myself at ease with Martin Luther King's a lot of his statements. Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again. Now, the first thing I did when I was in Congress was end the tariff, because tariffs are punishment to the people who have to pay them. And it was. Scott Sidell was running a textile company, and they were charging tariff to pay on the Chemicals that they put into cotton to make it wash and wear. And there was nobody in America making that. So it was, it was, it was not a tariff that was helping America. So that's the first thing, first vote I passed in 1973 when I went to Congress. And so tariffs just are not good unless the President is trying to play some games. And I don't know the rules of those games, but I just figured this is a great enough country is strong enough. And there was not a landslide victory. It was really just a couple of hundred thousand votes in 48 states that made the difference. And so I have confidence in the American people and I have confidence in the power of God. And I think we're going to work this out. Now, how, I don't know.
- [43:00]
Some may argue that they feel like we're reliving history, that some of the fights today over diversity initiatives kind of echo the battles of the 1960s. Do you see it that way?
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I don't. I think that there's a misunderstanding of what might have happened in the 60s. But the country has done better since the end of the Second World War than it has ever done in our entire national history. And we've had more peace on Earth. Like, I have been able to travel, I think, to 151 different countries. Now, most of those I was not traveling as an ambassador and I was, you know, hitchhiking the streets of Europe and I was wandering around Africa by myself or with my family. And everywhere I've been in the world, I've been welcomed. And people love America because they see us as being fair to everybody. Now, if people are now trying to figure out how it's fair to put tariffs on your friends and they'll work that out. In fact, they're working it out already. But it's. It's. Well, I don't know what it is, but I'm. I'm not uncomfortable. And I think that. Well, I go back to Martin Luther King. Truth crushed to earth, will rise again. He said it over and over. Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. Yet that scaffold sways the future. And behind the dim unknown standeth God within the shadows, keeping watch above his own. And I think as bad as we are, as weak as we are, as confused as we are and as crazy as we can be, I think God has blessed this country. And those blessings we have learned through Jesus of Nazareth don't end when we sin. That it's a forgiving God and we're loading up the balance pretty heavy now. But still. Still, you know, when I had to make a remark at President Carter's funeral and he wrote the. He wrote a one line from Book of Ephesians in the fourth chapter, be kind and forgiving, as God in Christ has forgiven us. And I don't know why he put that down, and I don't know when he put it down, but that's what they handed me to talk about. And I figured that's. That's a good message, that we have to be kind to each other and we have to be forgiving because all men sin and fall short of the glory of God and women do, too.
- [46:41]
What do you hope that your legacy will be?
- [46:44]
You know, I don't think in those terms. I'm very proud of my family and my friends. I've been blessed with four children, and I got nine grandchildren and two great grandchildren. And, you know, I don't know that any of them is perfect. All of them think they are perfect, and they all want to be perfect. And that's enough for me because I'm far from perfect and never been even close.
- [47:20]
And we started this conversation talking about purpose. And I asked you what you think your purpose is. I wonder, for people who maybe felt like you when you were 19, standing on top of that mountain, trying to figure out what your purpose here was, what advice would you have to people who haven't figured out maybe what they're. They're here to do quite yet?
- [47:42]
I tell you what, just go out anytime and look up and look around and see what you see. And if you're in Atlanta, any direction in which you look is amazing. And when I look, I remember coming in through Atlanta the first time, and I had just. Well, it was 1952, and I was riding down past De Leon, and a big rat crossed the road, and it might have been a possum, but it was. It was. It was almost. And. But I slowed down for the rat because I figured the rats had more rights than black folk in Georgia. But that was before I knew Georgia, so. And I have lived in Georgia now since 1950s, and it's been a wonderful life. And I can't think of any place I'd want to be, rather live. I've been to all of these countries and all of these islands, and they're all beautiful. But after. After a week or so, I'm ready to come back to Atlanta. And I think we have made enormous progress here. We've come a long, long way, but we still got a long Way to go. And I don't doubt that we will make it.
- [49:22]
Lastly, because I don't think people realize you come into this building and come to work more often than not. Do you see yourself slowing down anytime soon?
- [49:33]
No, and I don't. I think you have to be careful slowing down because one of the things I notice is that, well, I guess about 6 years ago I had a staph infection that I picked up not in Africa, but in a New York hospital. And it grew in me and it really knocked me out. And I was laid out for about six weeks and I got really weak and it was hard to get up and walk. And it, it's not something I like. And I like being able to get up and go. I'm angry because they took my driver's license away from me.
- [50:23]
Oh, no.
- [50:25]
Because I still, I love to drive and I did. And I, I got a new electric car that I haven't been able to drive, but it's still good to go. Well, I drove all the way down to Thomasville. Somebody drove me and, and we filled up with electricity when we got there and it didn't cost but $18 for a 300 mile trip. And it's, you know, I'm constantly enjoying the progress and the blessings of life.
- [51:05]
Ambassador Andrew Young, thank you so much for speaking with me again.
- [51:09]
God bless you.
- [51:11]
Pamela Kirkland
Thanks for listening to this special episode of Georgia Today. Stay up to date on all the news GPB has to offer by subscribing to this podcast.
- [51:37]
NPR Up First Host
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