Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young describes 'dirty work' of civil rights movement in new documentary

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Former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young says that he was often responsible for “the dirty work” during his time fighting for civil rights with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s.

It seems an unsavory phrase. Grunt work is more like it — efforts that may not produce headlines but keep the momentum of an historic movement going.

Now 93, Young narrates “Andrew Young: The Dirty Work,” a documentary that premieres on MSNBC on Friday at 9 p.m. Eastern. Once she heard Young use the expression to describe what he did, the film's executive producer, Rachel Maddow, said she knew they had a title and a theme.

Young was anxious to cooperate when approached by Maddow. He recorded some of his memories in six separate sessions during the past few months. Left unspoken was this recognition: When it comes to hearing directly from people involved in the civil rights battle, time is running short.

Young was a recent college graduate when King first became known for his leadership role in the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott to protest racial segregation. Young wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life, but he didn’t want to become a dentist like his father. He felt a calling to join King’s movement.

When he did, in 1957, he was handed a stack of mail. His first job was to write answers to letters sent to King, who would sign the response. “He liked the way I answered them and began to ask me to do more,” Young recalled in an interview with The Associated Press. His behind-the-scenes job took shape.

“With that kind of role, you didn't get to take part in marches,” he said. “You were always in the back of the bus, the back of the line. But I really wasn't seeking any recognition. I was trying to do some things that no one else would do. I just kept doing it.”

When King prepared to take his fight against segregation to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, he asked Young if he knew any white people in the city. “I said, ‘I don’t know any Black people in Birmingham,'” he remembered. King knew that Young grew up in New Orleans — on the same block where the American Nazi party had its headquarters — and was aware than most people who worked with him had little experience with whites.

Young became, in effect, an advance man for King's campaigns. He would meet with clergy, business leaders and others in a community so they understood ahead of time what King wanted to accomplish, even if they disagreed.

Many people didn't know or understand that aspect of King's work, he said. By contrast, circumstances didn't permit that kind of planning for demonstrations after George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020, he said. The angry response was instantaneous.

One time Young made the spotlight was during civil rights demonstrations in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964. The intention was different; King wanted Young to avoid a confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan while the U.S. Senate debated the Civil Rights Act. Instead, Young was beaten up, and the resulting public revulsion helped the legislation along. “I think it was the most successful ass-whuppin' I had ever received,” Young recalls in the film.

After King was assassinated in 1968, Young anticipated staying behind the scenes to support the movement's goal of electing supporters to office. But after the killings of King and Malcolm X a few years earlier, the danger made others reluctant to run, he said.

Young ran for Congress, first losing and then winning. His growing profile led President Jimmy Carter to appoint him ambassador to the United Nations. Young later served as mayor of Atlanta in the 1980s.

“I started bumping into people and they started giving me challenges,” Young told the AP. “And that's the way my life has been for the last 75 years.”

Listening to Young talk about his experiences changed Maddow's life, she told The Associated Press, and made her realize the extent of sacrifices made by people involved in such work.

“Bravery is very romantic when you're talking about it in the abstract,” she said. “But bravery is about sacrifice and pain and loss when you're living it. I think Ambassador Young is really eloquent about that.”

She was intrigued by stories of internal conflict behind the scenes in King's movement; Young talked about almost coming to blows with a colleague in a meeting following King's assassination. While the overall destination may be clear, people don't always agree on how to get there.

Since she stopped anchoring a prime-time show five nights a week and producing other content like podcasts and films, Maddow said depicting Americans in different eras fighting against anti-Democratic or authoritarian impulses is a regular theme of her work. The Young documentary fits right in, she said.

“With what's going on in the news right now and in our country, it's never been more important I think to learn from the example of people who have been part of movements like the civil rights movement — not just morally upstanding ones but successful against incredible odds,” she said.

Every American who wants to contribute politically needs to figure out what they're good at and what they have the capacity to do, she said.

Young concludes in the film that “I have lived much of the dream that (King) was speaking about.” Even at 93, Young said he doesn't believe his work is done. Providing his reflections for “Andrew Young: The Dirty Work” is part of it.

“It was well worth my time to sit down and spell it out,” he said.

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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social