[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 132 (Tuesday, September 20, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: September 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
HONORING THE LATE JEAN YOUNG
Mr. DURENBERGER. Mr. President, as we discuss the proper role of
religion in our Nation's political life, we would do well to look at
the example of men and women who have improved our society by acting on
the eternal principles taught them by a solid religious faith.
It was my great privilege to know just such a person. Jean Young, who
died last week at the age of 61, was one of the most effective
advocates for civil rights that this country ever had. She was steeped
in a Bible that taught her that all people were created equal--and the
strength of her convictions helped expand the liberty and secure the
equality of men and women the world over.
Back in 1980-82, I caught a personal glimpse of Mrs. Young's deep
faith and commitment when we served together on the National
Voluntarism Commission sponsored by the Aid Association for Lutherans.
She made a difference because she knew what counted. She had a
character based in eternal values stronger than any individual, and she
was an example to us all.
Jean Young's faith in men and women with opportunities to serve
others was unique. She knew from experience the power of loving God and
loving others as we learn to love ourselves.
She knew there is an important role in our society for Government--
but that the leadership in our Government and in our Nation must come
from people with the spirit of service and commitment. The resume of
her own life is testimony to this.
Mr. President, since the day in early December 1990 when I discovered
her illness, I had prayed every single morning for Jean Young. I mourn
her passing, but I also delight in her many gifts to all of us.
I ask my colleagues to join me in expressing warm condolences to the
Young family on the passing of this great American.
And I ask unanimous consent that the Atlanta Journal profile of Mrs.
Young be included in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
There being no objection, the profile was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Atlanta Journal, Sept. 16, 1994]
Jean Young, Ex-Mayor's Wife, Dies, Noted Children's Advocate Was 61
(By Tom Bennett)
Jean Childs Young, educator, civil rights advocate and the
wife of former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, died of cancer
today at Crawford Long Hospital of Emory University. She was
61.
A wake will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. Sunday at the First
Congregational Church, U.C.C. at 105 Courtland St. The
funeral will be at 11 a.m. Monday at the same church, with
burial at South-View Cemetery.
Although it was her husband who frequently made headlines
as a civil rights leader, congressman, diplomat and mayor,
Mrs. Young was a woman of wide-ranging accomplishments in the
fields of education and human rights.
One of her most prominent roles was as an advocate of
children's welfare. In 1979, she chaired the U.S. Commission
of the International Year of the Child, a United Nations
program designed to improve the lives of children around the
world. In that post, she developed a network of child welfare
advocates in each state.
The Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, president of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, remembers Mrs. Young as a
``great mother.''
``I think she was almost an ideal kind of mother who not
only loved her own children and family but shared that with
all children,'' Lowery said.
``As first lady of Atlanta, as wife of an ambassador, she
shared her skills, her love, her nurturing with all young
people. And I think this was a great part of her life, to
inspire and encourage young people to become useful and
creative citizens.''
Carol Muldawer, whose friendship with the Youngs began in
the 1960s, used to greet Mrs. Young with ```Hey, lady,'
because that's exactly what she was.'' Muldawer served as
administrative assistant to Young when he was mayor.
``I will always think of her as a wonderful lady * * *
someone with honesty and integrity, and the kind of person
who [when she] said she was going to do something, you could
always count on her and it would be done.''
Mrs. Young established the Atlanta Task Force on Education
when her husband was mayor, and she served seven terms as its
chairwoman. The task force sponsored the Mayors Scholars and
the ``Dream Jamboree'' at the Civic Center, which brought
together Atlanta high school seniors and recruiters from
colleges and trade schools.
Most recently, she was co-founder of the Atlanta-Fulton
Commission on Children and Youth.
While maintaining a busy schedule, Mrs. Young also served
as a stabilizing force in the Youngs' 40-year marriage. She
provided solace when her outspoken husband landed in hot
water with controversial statements or actions--as when he
said that Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini one day would be
remembered as a ``saint.''
When her husband resigned as U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations in 1979 after an unauthorized meeting with the
Palestine Liberation Organization, they ``had a crying
spell,'' Mrs. Young later recalled.
``We were sad and had some regrets that understanding did
not occur. But there was no bitterness, no lamenting, no
feeling that our lives had been destroyed. I mean, one minute
you could cry about it, and the next minute you could
laugh.''
They shared a family joke--that at any moment, after he had
said or done something controversial, he might call home and
ask, ``Are our bags packed? We may be leaving town
tomorrow.''
With her husband, Mrs. Young took part in historic civil
rights events, including the 1961 boycott of downtown lunch
counters in Atlanta, the 1964 St. Augustine marches, the 1965
Selma march for voting rights, and the 1968 Poor People's
Campaign in Washington.
The Youngs' home in southwest Atlanta was a way station for
civil rights leaders, who often stayed there overnight. In
the late 1970s, they took into their home the two children of
Robert Sobukwe, the leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress of
South Africa.
Throughout their marriage, the Youngs were unconventional,
shunning pretense and ostentation.
While heading the U.s. Mission to the United Nations, they
lived in a penthouse at the Waldorf Towers of New York's
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, but they fired the maid and the
butler. They did it, they said, because each time their son
Bo asked for a glass of water, the maid or butler delivered
it ``in a silver goblet on a doily-lined silver tray,'' Mrs.
Young recalled.
She learned she had cancer in 1991, not long after her
husband's unsuccessful campaign for governor of Georgia and
Atlanta's bid to host the 1996 Summer Olympics, which she
helped boost by traveling throughout Africa, the Middle East
and Europe to garner votes from members of the International
Olympic Committee.
Jean Childs was born July 1, 1933, in Marion, Ala.--also
the hometown of Atlanta's Coretta Scott King. They knew each
other while growing up.
She was the youngest of five children of Norman Childs, who
owned a combination grocery, soda fountain and candy store,
and Idella Young, a teacher in a one-room segregated
elementary school that had a potbellied stove for heat and
benches without backs for the children to sit on.
Jim Crow segregation was all around her. ``If five whites
came in a store after you, all five were waited on before
you,'' she recalled. Five black people in Marion were
registered to vote. The white school was freshly painted,
hers was rough clapboard. White students used school books,
then handed them down to black students. Her parents ``were
very concerned about me. They said I was developing a chip on
my shoulder.''
The American Missionary Association operated Lincoln High
School (which also produced Coretta Scott). After her
graduation, Jean Childs enrolled at Manchester College in
North Manchester, Ind., near Fort Wayne. It is affiliated
with the Church of the Brethren, a fundamental religious
group. While there, she applied to be a missionary to Angola,
a step, unbeknownst to her, that Andrew Young, then at
Hartford, Conn., Theological Seminary, also was taking. But
the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission then
had a policy against single missionaries.
In 1953, Andrew Young, a graduate of Howard University in
Washington, was pastor of a church in Marion. A New Orleans
native, he had suspended seminary classes and returned to the
South ``to be around plain, wise black folk.'' The Childs
family was in his church while Jean was away at Manchester
College.
On a visit to the Childs home, Young ``met'' her by
standing in her room and looking at her belongings--an
underlined Bible that indicated a deep religious faith; her
other books; and a Red Cross lifesaving certificate. Later,
she came home from school and Young formally met her for the
first time--while she was milking a cow.
On their first date, they drove 30 miles to Selma to swim
in a pool for black people because Marion had none.
She graduated from Manchester in 1954, and they were
married that June. It was a crucial time in the civil rights
movement--the Supreme Court had outlawed school segregation--
but their goals still lay in church, not political work.
Their first pastorate together was in Thomasville, where
Young led two small churches there and in Beachton. She
angered the conservative members of one of the congregations
by wearing shorts in public, and he angered the Ku Klux Klan
by starting a voter registration drive. They moved to New
York, where he joined the National Council of Churches.
They lived in the Connecticut suburbs. She taught in
Hartford and earned a master's degree from Queens College in
Flushing, N.Y.
But she wanted to go home ``because there was a vacuum for
trained teachers in the South.''
After they watched on television as Fisk University
students were arrested after demonstrations in Nashville in
1960, they decided to return to the South and get involved
firsthand in the movement.
In addition to being a teacher in Connecticut and
Thomasville, Mrs. Young was a coordinator of school programs
for the Atlanta city schools and was a lead teacher in the
Teacher Corps. She was a member of the team that developed
Atlanta Metropolitan College and served as its first public
relations officer and later on its board of advisers.
Among her many awards were honorary doctorates from Loyola
University in Chicago, Manchester College and New York City
Technical College of the City University of New York. She
received the 1989 NAACP Distinguished Leadership Award, the
1993 YWCA Woman of Achievement Award and the 1993 Community
Service Award from WXIA-TV/Channel 11.
She chaired the board of directors of the African American
Panoramic Experience Museum in Atlanta and served on advisory
boards of Outward Bound, UNICEF, Families First, the Georgia
Women of Achievement Museum and Habitat for Humanity.
She was a member of the First Congregational Church of
Atlanta.
Surviving in addition to her husband are four children,
Lisa Alston of Atlanta, Paula Shelton of Washington, Andrea
Young of Washington and Andrew Young III of Atlanta; her
mother, Idella J. Childs of Marion; four siblings, Normal
Childs de Paur of New York, Norman Childs of Yellow Springs,
Ohio, William Childs of Tuskegee, Ala., and Cora Childs Moore
of Marion; and seven grandchildren.
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