At 90, Civil Rights Leader Andrew Young Shares the Secrets of Building A Better Society

Having just turned 90, a milestone marked with the release of a biography, Andrew Young has a few lessons for young people inspired by his legacy.

One boils down to “Capitalism, baby.” Another is, “You have no idea what hard times are.” A third might be, “You can work with Republicans. I do.”

At a book party in Atlanta’s Millennium Gate Museum last week, Young told wellwishers about the life recounted in “The Many Lives of Andrew Young,” penned by Ernie Suggs, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

It’s a coffee table book with plenty of text and hundreds of photos, many from the voluminous family archives created by Young’s mother.

His life touches a tremendous amount of history, from the civil rights movement to Selma, St Augustine, and the March on Washington. From Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis to the Atlanta mayor’s office to the United Nations. To the crowning achievement of landing the 1996 Olympics for Atlanta, marking it as a world-class city.

Coretta Scott King (5R) leads a “March on Memphis” on 9 April 1968, five days after the assassination of her husband, civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Andrew Young (3R), became U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s ambassador to the United Nations and mayor of Atlanta. (AFP/AFP/Getty Images)

Lessons learned along the way were that the world was a vast place with all kinds of people in it, that they wouldn’t all be on your side, but that they weren’t necessarily against you either. A business leader who once referred to him with the (expletive) word later became a strong supporter.

A life lesson he twice mentioned was growing up in New Orleans, where Young was born in 1932. Whites and blacks mingled more. By his family’s house, he said.

“There was an Irish grocery on

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