JACKSON, Miss. – “Healthcare is not about health. Healthcare is about defeating Obama, and making him a one-term president,” said Ambassador Andrew Young at Jackson State University, Thursday, Feb. 25.
“Everybody needs healthcare!” he added, igniting a rousing applause from the audience.
Young, the 14th United States Ambassador to the United Nation, was in Jackson as the keynote speaker for The Margaret Walker Alexander National Research Center’s 44th Annual Birthday Convocation in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The event was scheduled for January, but was rescheduled due to the city’s water crisis.
Young, also an ordained minister, served as King’s top aid during the civil rights movement.
He presented a chronological history of the movement and how it has brought us to the point of where the nation is today with its first black president. He said the president needs the support the people.
“I’m just saying that instead of criticizing Obama, let’s realize that John Kennedy wouldn’t have been a great president if Mississippi and the Freedom Riders hadn’t made it,” he said. “It was Mississippi and the Freedom Riders that educated the candidate, and if John Kennedy goes down in history as a great president, it was largely because he responded to the conditions that were set upon us.”
He also pointed out that it took the rallying of King and the people of the civil rights movement to give President Lyndon B. Johnson the power he needed to get the Voting Rights Act passed.
“I’m saying that even in the present, a president doesn’t have the power. The people have to rally to give him the power,” Young said. “Now, nobody’s rallying but these Tea Party folk.”
Young said African Americans have made progress, but the focus now needs to be different. That focus is economics.
He shared with the audience how he and Mayor Maynard Jackson, as back-to-back mayors of Atlanta, both worked hard to make sure that minority businesses (including women) got their proportional share of the economic pie. He cited bringing the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games to Atlanta under his administration as a good example of sharing the economic power. Despite any opposition, he said, “We were people working together as brothers and sisters, rather than ‘perishing as fools’ as Martin warned us.”
“Black and white is much less significant than green,” he said. “If you can get people to stop thinking black and white and start thinking green, it’s amazing how brotherly we could become.”
Young is described as perhaps the most iconic, living figure of the civil rights movement. As one of King’s most trusted advisors, Young was at his side the day he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968. In addition to becoming a UN ambassador, his civil rights activism led him to become a three-term United States congressman.
Students say they learned a great deal from Young’s speech.
“His message was a wakeup call to all of us,” said Lafeyounda Brooks, former student chapter president of the NAACP at JSU. “I plan to go into politics, so his speech was very motivational and it helped me to better understand the struggle,” Brooks added. The future government leader concurs with Young that the now generation of African Americans needs to educate themselves more in finance and business ownership. Brooks is a junior political science major from Macon, Miss.
“Ambassador Young’s message made me realize at this point in my life I need to take responsibility for my race, for my people – not referring to color, but mankind in general,” said Denise Black, a senior Mass Communication major, from Lithonia, Calif. “We are still fighting a battle, but it’s just another form. It’s time to strap for war because if we continue to sit and do nothing, our ancestors years’ of work, blood, sweat and tears were all in vain.”
The King celebration also included an awards luncheon whereby Young and three other veteran civil rights activists were recipients of the 2010 “For My People” Awards. They were community activist L.C. Dorsey, Ph.D. of the Delta Health, former director Alferdteen Harrison, Ph.D. of the Alexander Center, and archivist Clarence Hunter, Ph.D. of the Tougaloo College Amistad Research Center.
The awards, established in memory of acclaimed author Margaret Walker Alexander, were presented at the “For My People” Awards Luncheon sponsored annually by Jackson attorney Isaac Byrd.
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