Marc H. Morial
President and CEO
National Urban League
“The basis of democracy is the right to vote. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since I’ve been back South to Atlanta. In the last meeting Martin Luther King Jr. had with Harry Belafonte, John Conyers of Michigan, Dick Hatcher of Gary, Indiana, and myself, he was talking about, ‘How do we take the energy and vitality of the civil rights movement and move it into politics?’ That was the last order he gave me.” – Former United Nations Ambassador and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young
On a hot, New Orleans summer day in 1947, Andrew Young was riding his bike along Esplanade Avenue with some other teenagers from the neighborhood when they decided to cool off in the shade of the elm trees nest to Delgado Museum of Art. They had barely stepped onto the grass when a police officer shook his billy club and shouted, “You little n***ers get out of here!”