An Evening with Andrew Young (Sold Out)
The Harvey B. Gantt Center and Levine Museum of the New South welcomes Ambassador Andrew Young, one of the icons featured in Smithsonian’s Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth. the exhibition, for an evening of conversation based on the newly published memoir The Many Lives of Andrew Young.
Ernie Suggs, author and award-winning journalist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, will facilitate the conversation with Ambassador Young on stage for a conversation as they unpack details from the book, which offers a beautiful and in-depth survey of the Ambassador’s extraordinary life as a civil and human rights activist, mayor of Atlanta, U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and more.
This public conversation between Ambassador Andrew Young and author Ernie Suggs is open to all ages and backgrounds. Your ticket purchase includes a seat at JCSU’s Biddle Hall to enjoy the conversation.
Immediately following the program, Andrew Young will be available for a brief book signing. Attendees are encouraged to bring your personal copy of The Many Lives of Andrew Young. Please note: A limited amount of books will be available to purchase onsite at the program, or you may purchase a copy ahead of time at Harvey B. Gantt Center during regular business hours.
Biddle Hall at Johnson C. Smith University
100 Beatties Ford Rd, Charlotte, NC
Cost:$10 per participant
Andrew J. Young, an icon of the Civil Rights movement, worked as executive director of SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Council, where he became a top strategist and trusted friend to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and witnessed his assassination. In 1972, a predominately white district in Georgia elected Andrew Young as its representative to the United States Congress, making him the first black man to serve the state in Washington since the Reconstruction era.
Andrew Young served in Congress for three terms before being appointed United States Ambassador to the United Nations by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. In that role, he became a champion of human rights around the world, and particularly in Africa, where he spearheaded the administration’s efforts to end apartheid. In 1982, he was elected Mayor of Atlanta and, during two remarkable terms, is credited with transforming the city into an international metropolis. It was largely because of his international influence that Atlanta was chosen to host the Centennial Olympic Games in 1996, in which Ambassador Young served as co-chairman.
Since leaving public office, Andrew Young has been a sort of ambassador to the world, devoting much of his life’s work to Africa and its vast economic potential. Arguably, no one in America knows the continent and its people so well. The Andrew J. Young Foundation was created to help make his visions for the planet a reality, and he serves as Chairman of this non-profit organization. Andrew Young is the author of three books, An Easy Burden, A Way Out of No Way, and The Making of Modern Atlanta. He has produced, co-written and narrated over 30 acclaimed documentaries, including Rwanda Rising, which was chosen to open the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2007.
Sought after as an advisor to world leaders, as a speaker on the lecture circuit, and a frequent commentator on CNN and other news channels, Ambassador Young is a keen observer of politics and world events. An ordained minister with the United Church of Christ for over six decades, he continues to preach and considers the work of the Andrew J. Young Foundation an extension of his ministry and of the Civil Rights movement itself.
Ernie Suggs has been a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 1997, currently covering race and culture. At the AJC, he is also the publisher of the paper’s weekly, Black-oriented newsletter, Unapologetically ATL. Suggs earned his B.A. degree in English Literature from North Carolina Central University in 1990, where he was the editor-in-chief and sports editor of The Campus Echo. In 1996, Suggs was awarded a fellowship by the Education Writers Association, which culminated in his award-winning, Pulitzer-nominated series Fighting to Survive: Historically Black Colleges and Universities Face the 21st Century. In 2005, Suggs became the Vice President of the NABJ. He was chosen for the prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 2008, and in 2009, he joined the Nieman Foundation’s board. Suggs received the Pioneer Black Journalist Award from NABJ in 2013.
About The Many Lives of Andrew Young
Featuring hundreds of full-color photographs that capture the extraordinary life and times of Andrew Young and a captivating narrative by acclaimed Atlanta Journal-Constitution race relations reporter Ernie Suggs. Interspersed with personal accounts from Andrew Young himself, The Many Lives of Andrew Young is both a tribute to and an essential chronicle of the life of a man whose activism and service changed the face of America and whose work continues to reverberate around the world today.
The book carries a foreword by President Jimmy Carter and an introduction by Gaurav Kumar, President of The Andrew J. Young Foundation.
Men Of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth
