NYSUT celebrates Black History Month with a free poster honoring Andrew Jackson Young Jr., a pioneering American politician, diplomat and civil rights leader whose career has spanned more than six decades.
Young served as executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was a close confidant of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As a strategist and negotiator, Young played key roles in the historic campaigns in Birmingham, St. Augustine, Selma and Atlanta that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In 1972, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first African American elected to Congress from Georgia since Reconstruction. Young has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, France’s Légion d’honneur, the NAACP Spingarn Medal, and more than 45 honorary degrees.
Visit nysut.org/publications to download a free copy; limited print copies are available.