Civil rights icon Andrew Young passes baton to ASU students: 'Take it the next mile'

In the 1960s, Andrew Young served as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s righthand man and worked tirelessly to implore Congress to pass both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On Thursday, he was back in Montgomery to implore Alabama State University students to "finish the job."

Young, a champion for human rights, was the keynote speaker at ASU's Civil Rights Symposium. In his more than 65-year career, Young has served as the mayor of Atlanta, a member of Congress, an ordained minister and the African-American U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. As an ambassador to the United Nations, helped to put an end to white minority rule in Namibia and Zimbabwe.

Here are three of the messages he shared with ASU students.

George Floyd and civil rights progress

Young called the death of George Floyd "tragic" but he also noted that the Attorney General Keith Ellison, who is Black, was placed in charge of prosecuting the case.

"We are making progress in spite of the fact that we still have many, many problems," Young told students. "So that’s your job. Your job is to finish the job...

"We’re celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Montgomery (bus) boycott with Rosa Parks. And if it hadn’t been for Montgomery, if it hadn’t been for this institution, no telling where we’d be in this world. So, God has blessed you. Pass on your blessings to the rest of us and take it the next mile, or two miles, or 10,000 miles."

His childhood under a swastika

Young said he grew up three blocks away from a Nazi party headquarters in New Orleans and that he still remembers the swastika hanging over the place where he went to wait for a bus to elementary school. He was four years old the first time he asked his father why the swastika was there. His father was a dentist from rural Franklin who spent spent time sewing up the gums of boxers in the neighborhood.

The response left a mark on him.

"He said, 'White supremacy is a sickness, and you know that God created of one blood all the nations of the world. They don’t know that, and they don’t want to admit that. That’s their problem with God. That doesn’t have to be your problem,'

"... He said, 'You can argue about it. You can differ, but don’t ever get mad in an argument. He said if you lose your temper in a fight, you’re going to lose the fight.'"

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A standoff with the Klan

Another defining moment in Young's life was a talk he had with his wife, Jean Childs Young, before confronting a group of Ku Klux Klansmen outside their home, with their three-month-old baby inside. His wife, he said, was a good shot with a rifle but was also a very religious woman who had trained in nonviolence.

"I said 'Baby, I want you to sit up in this window with this rifle, and I’m going down and I’m going to talk to them, but I need you backing me.' She said, 'I can’t do that.'"

Instead, she reminded him that he's a preacher. "I said, 'What’s that got to do with it?' She said, 'If you ever forget that under that sheet is the heart of a child of God, you need to quit preaching.'"

"Well when you marry women like that ... they will keep you straight," Young said.

Alex Gladden is the Montgomery Advertiser's public safety reporter. She can be reached at agladden@gannett.com or 479-926-9570.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Civil rights icon Andrew Young passes baton to ASU students