Atlanta
In the workplace of civil rights icon Andrew Young there’s a placing photograph that took on new which means this week.
It reveals the man Young referred to as his greatest pal — the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — watching tv as President Lyndon Johnson delivers a speech urging Congress to move voting rights laws. It was March 15, 1965, per week after demonstrators marching for equal entry to the poll have been overwhelmed and tear-gassed by state troopers in Selma, Alabama. Millions of Americans watched Johnson finish his speech with an allusion to the civil rights motion’s anthem, declaring, “And we shall overcome.”
Young was in the room with King that day. After Johnson’s speech ended, he glanced over at his pal and noticed one thing he’d by no means seen earlier than: King shedding tears of pleasure.
Six months later, the Voting Rights Act handed with overwhelming bipartisan help from lawmakers and the American public. The regulation would defend the rights of minority voters, as well as the aged and poor, and have become generally known as the “crown jewel” of the civil rights motion. Many imagine the US did not become a real democracy till it was handed.
But that photograph of King might now symbolize one thing else — a relic from a bygone period. That’s as a result of the Supreme Court on Wednesday, in rejecting a contested congressional map in Louisiana, further weakened what’s left of the Voting Rights Act. The Rev. Al Sharpton said the determination put a “bullet in the heart of the voting rights movement.”
For Young, although, the court docket’s determination isn’t simply political – it’s additionally private. He marched alongside King for voting rights and helped draft the landmark regulation. Now 94, he has lived lengthy sufficient to see its doable demise.
It’s lots to course of for Young, the former Atlanta mayor and US Ambassador to the United Nations. He spoke to NCS the day earlier than the Supreme Court’s determination and have become offended when requested about its potential implications.
“The Supreme Court will go to hell if they try to reverse it,” he stated.
Young stated he believes the Voting Rights Act created a greater America. He cited NASA’s current Artemis II mission, which featured 4 astronauts — a girl, a Black man and two White males on the first human flight to the moon in additional than 50 years — as a snapshot of the inclusive nation the regulation helped create.
“I don’t know why the Supreme Court … thinks that by backtracking on 250 years of constitutional government that’s going to do any better for the citizens of this nation,” he advised NCS.
“We have come so close to making this Earth look like the kingdom of God.”
For many observers, the court docket’s determination was not a shock. The Voting Rights Act has been underneath authorized and political assault for years – particularly underneath the current conservative Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts.
Conservative critics argue the regulation infringes on the equal sovereignty of states and that the federal authorities shouldn’t intervene with state elections. The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as soon as dismissed the act as a “racial entitlement.”
When reminded of those arguments towards the landmark civil rights regulation, Young’s response was terse.
“Bullsh*t,” he stated. “I’ve heard those arguments all my life.”
The battle for voting equality was one among the civil rights motion’s bloodiest and most harrowing struggles. Before the regulation’s passage, Black individuals have been fired from their jobs, pushed from their houses, overwhelmed and assassinated whereas attempting to vote.
Young bears his share of scars. He was knocked unconscious whereas main a civil rights march in St. Augustine, Florida in 1964. He retains a framed {photograph} of that assault on his workplace wall.
“I’ve been beat up and I’ve been jailed and the amazing thing to me is it didn’t even hurt,” Young advised NCS. “I had bruises throughout my physique, however I didn’t actually have a headache although I had a knot on my head. “
He stated he and others persevered due to their beliefs.
“We have been willing to live and die for the United States of America – not for what it is, but for what we know it can become,” Young stated.
Asked if he ever imagined years in the past that the Voting Rights Act can be hanging on for pricey life, Young stated, “No, I didn’t think it would ever get back to this.”
But he hasn’t misplaced hope.
Young predicts the Supreme Court’s determination will finally backfire and can mobilize Black voters and others.
“There’ll be a judgment day soon … that judgment day is Election Day,” he stated. “I believe that the more people try to push you back, the faster we will push forward.”
Young works out of a constructing close to downtown Atlanta, not removed from a avenue named after him. Walking into his workplace is like getting into a time capsule stuffed with mementos documenting America’s sweeping evolution on race.
Framed pictures of Young marching and conferring with King adorn the partitions, alongside photos of him laughing with baseball nice Hank Aaron, tennis ace Arthur Ashe and entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.
His cabinets are full of books about social justice and historical past, alongside awards from Young’s seven a long time of public service. He was the first African American from Georgia elected to Congress since Reconstruction.
He now does a lot of his work via the Andrew Young Foundation, a nonprofit that helps meals safety and financial improvement. He strikes gingerly however still preaches each third Sunday at the First Congregational Church UCC in Atlanta and comes into his workplace about twice per week.
On the day he spoke to NCS, Young additionally powered via a sequence of different interviews and conferences with out taking a break for lunch. He greeted well-wishers who stopped by with a smile and a hearty “Good to see ya.’’
He has little interest in retiring.
“Do you know anybody that’s retired that’s not bored?” he stated. “You spend your time looking for somebody to play golf with and then when you get to the fairway, you can’t get the damn thing to go straight anyhow.”
But lately Young has confronted many private losses.
A daughter, Lisa Young Alston, died final yr at 67. Already in 2026 he’s misplaced two shut mates: the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Bernard Lafayette Jr., a dapper, soft-spoken man who was one among the civil rights motion’s most brave activists. He misplaced one other pal, President Jimmy Carter, two years in the past. Other longtime mates and colleagues in the civil rights second, resembling Rep. John Lewis and the Rev. C.T. Vivian, are additionally gone.
Young is one among the few remaining figures from King’s internal circle, says Ernie Suggs, writer of “The Many Lives of Andrew Young.”
“He says he doesn’t like going to funerals because he always has to speak,” stated Suggs, a reporter at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “He graciously does it, but it’s taxing.”
When requested if it’s exhausting to say goodbye to outdated mates like Jackson, Young gave a stunning reply.
“I don’t miss them because they’re with me,” he stated. “Hardly a day comes by when I don’t think of something that Martin Luther King said to me.”
He stays satisfied God remains to be at work in America
But hope is a muscle that Young has been flexing all his life.
He is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and approaches mortality with the perspective of a pastor.
“I’m a Christian and I believe that there is life beyond this life. I cannot conceive of the non-existence of humanity. I put my trust in the Lord,” he stated.
“I’m convinced that God is on the side of the least of these, his children,” Young added. “A just society is a society in which all of God’s children have rights and opportunities that are protected by the Constitution.”
When requested about how these dismayed by the Supreme Court’s determination ought to keep it up, a faint smile unfold throughout Young’s face and a faraway look got here into his eyes.
He then quoted a gospel tune that was sung in Selma and all through the civil rights motion.
“You know that tune, ‘I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired’? ’’he stated. He then paraphrased a part of the tune:
“We’ve come too far from where we started from, and nobody told me the way would be easy. But I don’t believe He brought us this far to leave us.”
John Blake is a NCS senior author and writer of the award-winning memoir, “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.”