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February 4, 2010

Statesman, pacifist, civil rights icon Rev. Andrew Young going strong at 78

By Brian M. Boyce

TERRE HAUTE — Unless one knew his biography, they’d never guess he’ll turn 78 in a few weeks.

The Rev. Andrew Young’s day began Thursday at 5 a.m. in the White House’s prayer breakfast, where U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama sang from a shared hymnal. And as the clock’s hands rolled toward 5 p.m., the man described as a “civil rights icon” and “piece of American history” was in Terre Haute, lacing tales of 200-strong mobs of Klansmen with philosophical debates of German pacifist theology juxtaposed to that of Mahatma Gandhi’s.

Students and members of the Indiana State University community met with Young before his 7 p.m. speech in Tilson Auditorium that night, which would wrap up some 16 hours after his day had begun.

A dentist’s son raised in the segregated Deep South, Young is an ordained minister, a former U.S. congressman, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the two-term mayor of Atlanta who brought the 1996 Summer Olympic Games to that city.

Along the way he served as a lieutenant to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., registering African-Americans to vote and fighting for civil rights during the 1960s. He was with King when the latter was assassinated.

“I did follow my father, but I didn’t become a dentist,” he laughed after a question-answer period with the students.

Young recalled his father as a “wise man who cared about people,” and a counselor they came to for advice as much as teeth-cleaning.

But after half a century of work, as eclectic as highly-charged, he said, “I see myself primarily as a pastor, and even a preacher,” noting with a grin, “and my dad sure did preach a lot at me.”

Young said he hopes to share his experiences with a younger generation, one facing problems of “crisis” proportions, with just as many similarities as differences to those faced in the past.

“I think race relations, frankly, are pretty good,” said the man once jailed in Selma, Ala. and St. Augustine, Fla. for civil rights demonstrations. Much like a good marriage, the partners might not always agree on everything, but the overall relationship is strong, he said.

The problems of the modern time have less to do with black, white and brown, but instead are primarily green. While discrimination against African-Americans affected 10 to 12 percent of the population, poverty issues and the economy are hitting more than 30 percent across all lines.

When the U.S. culture replaced the economic philosophies he’d grown up with, those of a relatively “compassionate capitalist” John Maynard Keynes, with the “cut-throat capitalism” of Milton Friedman, the results were to its detriment, he said.

In fact, he reiterated a recent meeting with college students, where those in attendance asked him for help getting into law school. Young said America doesn’t need any more lawyers. What it needs are more economists, and specifically more economists from places like Indiana and Georgia instead of Harvard and the University of Chicago. People born without trust funds who know the difference between theory and reality, and who have seen the impact of poverty, are desperately needed in the discussion of economic policy, he said.

Still, for all the things that have changed in America, Young said much is still the same. Almost 200 years before his 1932 birth, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were battling over the nation’s direction in a most personal and, at times, brutally ruthless manner. And those debates of fiscal philosophy are still raging today, with sides as equally entrenched as they were then, he said, mentioning the number of Republicans who called President Franklin D. Roosevelt a communist long before the relatively tame bickering of modern politics was imagined.

“You have one of the few senators in America that is not partisan,” the Democrat said as an offering of hope, singling out Indiana’s Republican Sen. Richard Lugar as an official who votes with the American people in mind, not his re-election campaign.

“You don’t need everybody to agree on everything,” he explained, noting that one can question another’s judgment or opinion without name-calling. Most government officials, he said, want what’s best for the country. The problem is each one brings a different perspective from a different background, and when the interests of consumers are pitted against health insurance companies against doctors against lawyers, rich and poor, the debate becomes complex.

As for himself, Young said he will always bring the perspective of a pastor to the table, because at his heart that’s what he’ll always be. Recalling his first 35- and 15-member churches on a dual charge in small, southern towns, he said, “I learned more in those little country churches than I did in seminary.”

Professionally, though he’s an international businessman today, he said his two terms as mayor of Atlanta were a high mark, even though they came after terms as a congressman and U.N. ambassador.

“I really have enjoyed everything I’ve done,” he said. “The one I say I liked best was mayor.”

As a congressman, one needs to rally hundreds of other congressman to even consider the passage of a single bill. As an ambassador, one needs to wade through the red tape of White House and international bureaucracy. But in Atlanta, “you could do crazy things and get them done as mayor,” he laughed.

And history would go on to judge some of those wild and crazy ideas as most effective.

“When we first started talking about the Olympics, the newspapers thought we were crazy,” he said of his deeply-entrenched campaign to bring the 1996 Summer Olympics there. But, “I saw the Olympics as a way to create a couple hundred thousand jobs and bring a couple billion dollars of investment into my city.”

Establishing the airport in Atlanta as a hub for international transport was also scoffed at. He noted that Delta Airlines wouldn’t even consider his pitch for transport to Africa until after the company went bankrupt. But by that time, the airlines that had listened were making big bucks with international flights out of the city, and when Delta finally came around, they wound up with their two most profitable lines going there.

After this life, when he’s called to judgment, Young said he will be asked if he fed the hungry and sheltered the homeless. And as mayor, the answer won’t be found in his work door-to-door. His dedication to creating jobs will be the question, he said.

“I acted like the city was my church, and I pastored it,” he said, adding that he also got to ride on fire trucks and play with the street department’s jackhammers. “I was like a big kid,” he laughed.

And one of the most important lessons learned from history, the one to pass on to future generations, is that violence never works.

While in seminary during the 1950s, scholarly debate was hosted regarding the value of pacifism. Should the German churches have remained passive while Adolf Hitler’s Nazis took over, or should they have taken up arms, he said of the questions. But his thoughts remained on the teachings of Gandhi, because in the end, he was the one who came closest to actually winning.

“I don’t think violence works,” he told ISU students. “Who won the second world war? Germany and Japan,” he laughed. “They ended up with all the money,” he said, explaining that the U.S. ended up rebuilding those nations, as it has Korea and will eventually in Iraq. “And what did we win?”

But Gandhi’s work brought about change, as did the work of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, where the people today are infinitely better off for having started a civil war, he said.

“Almost all social change is incremental, because we don’t change as much as we grow,” he said.

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