Civil Rights Luminary Andrew J. Young Named Keynote Speaker for Kansas Bar Association Annual Meeting

The Kansas Bar Association is honored to announce that Andrew J. Young, an icon of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, will be the keynote speaker at the association’s 2024 Annual Meeting in Topeka. The theme of this year’s meeting is, “Civil Rights: 70 Years of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ... We’ve Come a Long Way.”

“Having Mr. Young as our keynote speaker is a special opportunity for our members to learn from one of the few remaining direct observers and participants of the Civil Rights movement,” said KBA President-Elect Mark Dupree. “Hearing him speak about his life’s work as an activist, minister, congressman, ambassador, mayor, entrepreneur, and presidential adviser, just to name a few, is uniquely special.”

Young is currently the chairman of the Andrew J. Young Foundation, an organization he and his wife, Carolyn McClain Young, founded in 2003 to support and promote education, health, leadership, and human rights in the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean.

Young earned a divinity degree from Hareord Seminary in 1955, and was appointed pastor of a church in Marion, Alabama, shortly thereafer. During his time there he met and became friends with Martin Luther King Jr., working with him to encourage African Americans to register to vote. Young was with King when he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968.

During the early 1960s, Young was a key strategist and negotiator in the civil rights campaigns in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, St. Augustine, Florida, and Atlanta, all of which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Young was named executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1964.

In 1972, Young was elected to the House of Representatives and served three terms before being appointed United States Ambassador to the United Nations in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. Young served as mayor of Atlanta for two terms, from 1982 to 1990, and is credited with transforming the city into a thriving metropolis.

Young also serves on the boards of the Martin Luther King Center for Non-Violent Social Change, Morehouse College, Americas Mart, and the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State where he has been an instructor. He is the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the French Legion d’Honneur and has received honorary degrees from more than 100 colleges and universities.