Oral history interview with Andrew Young, January 31, 1974

Andrew Young was the first African American Georgia congressman since Reconstruction. First elected in 1972, Young was later appointed as ambassador to the United Nations by Jimmy Carter. Prior to his career in politics, Young grew up in New Orleans, was educated at Howard University, and then attended Hartford Seminary in the mid 1950s. Young returned to the South after seminary and became involved in the early civil rights movement in Georgia, where he worked as a minister for several years. In this interview, Young discusses the nature of racial discrimination in the South and describes his involvement in voter registration drives. Throughout the interview, he draws comparisons between race relations within Southern states and those between the North and South. According to Young, it was access to political power that ultimately altered the tides of racial prejudice in the South. He cites the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as a decisive turning point in race relations. For Young, it was the election of African Americans to positions of power that allowed African Americans to bring to fruition other advances they had made in education, business, and social standing.