'We're running out of people like that now.' Andrew Young on Jesse Jackson's legacy

Caption

United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young's hand is raised by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, left, at a regular meeting of Operation Push, headed by the Rev. Jackson in Chicago, Saturday, Oct. 1, 1977. Young said at the meeting that President Carter could announce completion of an agreement on the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty during his address Tuesday to the U.N. General Assembly. Young predicted it "will be more than just an extension" of the expired treaty.

Credit: AP Photo/Charles Knoblock

The first time Andrew Young met Jesse Jackson, it was nearly midnight in Selma, Ala.

Marchers had already endured days of beatings from state troopers and local law enforcement following Bloody Sunday in 1965. Inside a church, organizers were trying to keep another crowd from heading back out into danger.

Young was exhausted, posted at the door.

"Jesse came up to me," Young recalled in an interview with GPB. "He said, 'Hey Andy, I'm Jesse Jackson. Look, you've been standing here a long time and I know you've been in this for several days. You can trust me to hold this crowd back.'"

Young agreed and when he returned, Jackson was still there.

"Somebody that comes to help you when you're tired and when you are down, that's the kind of friend you want."

Jackson, who died Tuesday at the age of 84, would go on to found the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, run for president twice, and become a political force who helped to expand the Democratic electorate.

Asked what he would miss most about his friend, Young said it was his way of thinking. 

“Jesse was always a man of ideas. He'd call me up two, three o'clock in the morning…’Andy, listen to this.’ And he'd have a new idea about something,” Young said. “We're running out of people like that now, but God has always been able to raise up a new generation of prophets when they need it.”

As another giant of the civil rights generation passes, Young reflected on the scale of the struggle they began.

"I think in some ways it happened so easy that even those of us who did it don't appreciate it enough," Young said. 

"I have a faith strong enough to believe that we shall overcome, but every time we lose someone like Jesse Jackson, it makes it a little harder."

TRANSCRIPT

Pamela Kirkland: This is Morning Edition on GPB. I'm Pamela Kirkland. The Rev. Jesse Jackson died at the age of 84 on Tuesday. A civil rights leader, two-time presidential candidate, and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Jackson helped shape modern American politics. Few people witnessed that journey more closely than former Atlanta mayor and U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Andrew Young. Ambassador Young joins me now to reflect on the life and legacy of Jackson. Welcome back to Morning Edition. 

Andrew Young:  Very good. 

Pamela Kirkland: So when did you first meet Jesse Jackson? 

Andrew Young: You know, I remember exactly the time, because it was in Selma, 1965, and we had gotten beaten up by the state patrol and the, uh — and the local sheriff's office. People get freedom high when they, because this wasn't the first night after Selma. This was a second night, a third night, and this was a new group of people coming in. And we didn't want anybody to get beat up anymore. And so we were trying to keep everybody in the church. And I had been placed on the door. And it was — it was almost midnight. And I was standing there kind of leaning against the church door half asleep. And Jesse came up to me and said "Hey Andy, I'm Jesse Jackson. Look, you've been standing here a long time and I know you've been in this for several days. You can trust me to hold this crowd back." He said, "They think they wanna get beat up, but they don't really." And he said, "I won't have any trouble." He said "Why don't you go lay down, go take a nap." And it was almost 11 o'clock at night. So I gladly said yes, and when I came back he was still there and nothing had happened. We were friends. You know, somebody who's always — somebody that comes to help you when you're tired and when you down, that's the kind of friends you want. 

Pamela Kirkland: You were both at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Can you take me back to that day? 

Andrew Young: I had been to court that morning, and he had been really feeling bad the day before. In fact, he was sick and had a fever, and yet he still went out and gave that speech about we've "been to the mountaintop and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you," but my people are going to get to the promised land. He was exhausted. But that morning, I went down to the courthouse because we had a court case on whether or not we had the right to march from Selma to Montgomery. So I came back to the Lorraine Motel, telling him that the courts had decided in our favor, and we did have the right the march. And everybody, his whole gang had gathered there and somebody brought in, well they had these big plates that were 12, 14 inches long and they were stacked up with catfish, you know, and they had catfish and coleslaw and iced tea and everybody was feeling good. And he was laughing and joking and, uh, I'd never seen him quite that exuberant, because he'd been kind of depressed a few days before. But he was very playful. And he — it was probably the only time he called me n****. He said, "Where you been little n****?" And I said, "I've been trying to keep your behind out of jail" and get you the right to march. And everybody said, "Oh, you're smart, huh?" And he had a pillow and he threw a pillow at me. And I threw it back. And then everybody pulled pillows off the bed. And it was one of the most joyous things that happened to me in the movement, except that I was the one getting beat up by the pillows. Everybody had a pillow and they beat me down between the two beds. And piled the pillows on top of me, and everybody calmed down and he went up to this room to put on a shirt and tie. He never went out in the evening without a shirt and tie, and that... Just as he came out, Jesse came up on the steps, and they all participated in that same kind of happy mood. 

Pamela Kirkland: I want to ask you, after Dr. King's death, Jesse evolved in ways that were a little less known. So in the early '80s, travels to Syria to plead for the release of this captured American pilot. He kind of ends up becoming this unofficial diplomat. And you serving as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., when you watched him negotiate those things internationally, what do you think made him effective in those situations? 

Andrew Young: Well, one thing — and this is not dismissing him. Well, it's really saying is Jesse was, Jesse was big. Jesse had played quarterback on North Carolina A&T football team, and he was at least 240 pounds and about 6'4". And he was good-looking, had a wonderful personality. You're around Jesse, you're always laughing and joking. But he was always serious about caring for people. 

Pamela Kirkland: 1984 Jesse Jackson announces he's going to run for president and there was a fear among some that if he failed to win the Democratic Party nomination that he could hurt the chances of maybe some of the other progressive candidates that were on the come up. 

Andrew Young: Well, that's — that's sort of what happened. And we tend to put the president on top of the pile. This is the president's world. The truth of it is, the Supreme Court is potentially more powerful than the president and presides over the decisions made by the presidency in many ways. And so that was the only point that Jesse and I disagreed on. And it wasn't that I didn't want a Black president but I didn't want to lose the progress that we were making, especially in the South, with voter registration, with new elected officials coming in as congressmen and mayors and beginning to get in politics at every level. Thurgood Marshall was still on the Supreme Court then, and the court was still making unanimous decisions in our favor. That's gone now. And one of the things — it's not fair to blame it on Jesse because — oh, Shirley Chisholm ran for president, and she made a good run and it made you proud to hear her running for president, but she actually registered voters but also turned other voters away. And we've been wrestling with that. Fortunately, we've had some good presidents that, even when they disagreed with us, wanted to do what was right. The first time we've people who not only disagreed with us, but who wanted to change the structure of the courts and the decision-making process for law and order in the nation is something that's come up lately. But it's something that we always had to fear. 

Pamela Kirkland: Dr. King kind of believed the movement would be something that could cost his life, which it did end up doing. And it might be something that takes a hundred years to straighten out, that this wasn't a movement that was gonna happen within a moment. Just looking at this generation of icons: so Congressman John Lewis, C.T. Vivian, James Bevel, Fred Shuttlesworth, and now Jesse Jackson, do you think- the generation today appreciates how long that this arc really is?

Andrew Young: Well, I don't think they do, and I think in some ways it happened so easy that even those of us who did it don't appreciate it enough. It depends on what you compare it to, and change is never easy in a society. There are always individual differences as well as political differences. There are egos to salve. And power struggles that need to be decided. And we can be a difficult group of people. And our Constitution has written with hope that we would be a nation united with liberty and justice for all. And that's a lofty promise. And yet we've come close to living up to it. Every now and then we fall back, but we, it's — for the most part, this has been in my lifetime, since the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt was president. I remember hearing him on the radio saying, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." And then I can remember Dr. King saying, "Truth crushed to earth will rise again. 'Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—         
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.'" And so we have had faith in God, we have faith in our Constitution, and for the most part we've had willing compliance. Only in the last few years have we had people within the government willing to openly challenge the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and almost humiliate the Congress so that it doesn't — it seems like it's almost afraid to act as an individual body. It's become a puppet of the president. 

Pamela Kirkland: Well, let me ask you, since this is the 250th anniversary of the United States of America. What happens next? 

Andrew Young: Well, one, we need to pray that the founding fathers were right, that we can be one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. And I don't doubt that. He also said that Black men and women in slavery sometimes had more faith than the founding fathers and the prophets of old. For they questioned God and said, "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" And Black men and women in slavery straightened out Jeremiah's question mark into an exclamation point and said "Yes, there is a balm in Gilead that heals the sin-sick soul. There's a balm in Gilead that makes the wounded whole." And that, these were the affirmations turned into songs by people who were enslaved. I don't question our ability to overcome in the long run, but I don't know how long the run is gonna be, and I don't want it to be too long, because we're — we're on the edge now, and I don't know whether we fall back or forward. But there's a story in the Bible that I like where Balaam was riding on a donkey, and the road had been washed out on the mountain pass. Balaam and his friends were laughing and joking, so they didn't see that the water, that the wash, the river had washed the road out. But the donkey saw the angel trying to tell them to be careful and don't go so fast. So I always say if God can speak through Balaam's ass, he can speak through us and that he will not let us fail. But in the meantime, we're a battered country right now. We're battered with new ideas. I don't know whether they're right or wrong now, but they're different. And the next few years is going to determine how well we move forward. We will make it. I mean, I have a faith strong enough to believe that we shall overcome. But every time we lose someone like Jesse Jackson, it makes it a little harder. 

Pamela Kirkland: What do you think you'll miss most about him? 

Andrew Young: Well, Jesse was always a man of ideas, and he'd call me up two, three o'clock in the morning in the middle of the night: "Andy, listen to this." And he'd have a new idea about something. "What do you think?" And I'd have to wake up and at least engage him. And we're running out of people like that now. But God has always been able to raise up a new generation of prophets when they're needed. So I'm, again, I'm a man of faith. And I not only have faith in God and I have faith in these United States, and Dr. King used to say "the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Well, that says it's not going to be easy to make things change, but we shall overcome.

Pamela Kirkland: Andrew Young is a former congressman, Atlanta mayor, and U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Thank you so much for coming back and speaking with me on Morning Edition. 

Andrew Young: Very good.