Tag: Andrew Young

Sixty years ago, as he was building the construction empire that would make him one of Atlanta’s richest and most influential men, Herman Russell fathered a daughter out of wedlock. Now, four years after his death, Joycelyn Alston is fighting her three half-siblings for a portion of their father’s vast estate.

During a rally for Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on Friday, former President Barack Obama played all of his fans' favorite hits. When someone in the crowd shouted "Obama, I love you," he replied, "I love you back." He said, "Don't boo, vote," his oft-repeated phrase from 2016, multiple times during his hour-long speech at Morehouse College.

It’s now been 15 years since Maynard Jackson’s death, but the issues explored in the new documentary film about his life—the city’s fraught racial history, the expectations placed on a black mayor, the scrutiny on minority contracts for city business—feel very relevant today.

"He wanted a world where people could be true to themselves and where the clashes of colors were forced upon you and you had to appreciate everything and everybody, different though they may be. Everything he had and everything he did had some powerful social meaning and purpose."

In the Coretta Scott King suite on the second floor of the Hyatt Regency, Kasim Reed, the 59th mayor of Atlanta, was doing something he’s never enjoyed nor been particularly good at. He was waiting.

“During the civil rights movement, we’d start our day at Busy Bee or Paschal’s,” says Andrew Young, referencing his days at the SCLC with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. “But you didn’t go to those places so much to eat as you did to meet. That’s where you found out what was going on.”

“Normally, it’s pizza,” Andrew Young jokes. That’s not exactly true. Pizza boxes might sometimes grace the table at regular family get-togethers, hosted by his son, Andrew “Bo” Young III, in his six-bedroom home in Buckhead. Most of the time, though, it’s platters of home-cooked meat and vegetables made by Bo’s wife, Angelica.

Before the Andrew J. Young Foundation's annual Leadership Awards, we sat down with the civil rights leader and former U.N Ambassador and discussed Donald Trump, mayor Kasim Reed, and fighting poverty.

The former first lady of New Orleans discusses Jim Crow, activism, and how Hurricane Katrina inspired her to write her memoir.

In 2010 Rodney Mims Cook Sr., the aging patriarch of one of Atlanta’s most prominent families, was in poor health and seemingly fading. Fearing his father didn’t have much time left, Rodney Jr. moved him into his guest house. The elder Cook one day called his son to his side and delivered a final charge: You need to rebuild Mims Park.