December 3, 2007
Activist Andrew Young to deliver MLK Commemorative
Address
june.avignone@rochester.edu
Andrew Young
Andrew Young, business leader and former U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations, will deliver the University’s
Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Address. Young was a top aide to King
during the inception of America’s civil rights movement and was with
King in Memphis when he was assassinated in 1968. His talk, at 6:30 p.m.,
Monday, January 21, in Strong Auditorium is free and open to the public.
Young’s vision of advancing economic development
with private sector involvement was honed during leadership positions in
both public service and private industry during his nearly 50-year career.
Young was elected to two terms as Atlanta’s mayor and served in the
U.S. Congress from 1973 to 1977. When President Jimmy Carter appointed
Young to serve as ambassador to the United Nations in 1977, he became the
first African American to hold the post. In 1994, President Bill
Clinton appointed him chairman of the Southern Africa Enterprise
Development Fund, a $100 million privately managed fund to provide equity
to businesses in 11 countries.
Born in 1932 in New Orleans, Young originally planned
to follow his father’s career of dentistry. His mother, Daisy Fuller
Young, was a school teacher. At a young age, Young experienced the
segregated and overcrowded public schools of his neighborhood. After
graduating from Howard University in 1951 and receiving his divinity degree
from Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Conn., in 1955, Young became involved
in drives to register black voters and joined the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC), an American civil rights organization that
was closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr.
Young was jailed for his participation in the civil
rights demonstrations in both Alabama and Florida, and played a key role as
a mediator between black and white communities in Birmingham, Ala., in
1964. That same year, Young was named executive director of the SCLC,
becoming one of King’s principal lieutenants.
Today, Young is the cofounding principal and chairman
of GoodWorks International, a consulting firm that focuses on energizing
the private sector to advance economic development in Africa and the
Caribbean by putting executives in contact with leaders and key influences
in emerging markets. He was recently honored with the title of
national spokesperson for Operation HOPE, a national nonprofit organization
that seeks to bring economic self-sufficiency and a sustained spirit of
revitalization to America’s inner city communities, and he is the
namesake of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State
University in Atlanta.
“The Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative
Address has traditionally been given by civil rights leaders who have
spoken personally about Dr. King’s legacy, and who have inspired us
with their work toward creating an America of which Dr. King would be
proud,” says Beth Olivares, assistant dean for diversity
initiatives and cochair of the College Diversity Roundtable.
“Throughout his life and career, Ambassador Young has fought for the
spirit of compassion and creation of equal opportunity that Dr. King
embodied.”
The annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative
Address is sponsored by the College Diversity Roundtable and the Office of
the President.
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