[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.

                          ____________________