Andrew Young, a former ambassador to the United Nations, will be the keynote speaker for the 12th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Breakfast Jan. 23 at 7:30 a.m. in the Grand Hall of the Tate Student Center.
Sponsored by UGA, the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government and the Clarke County School District, the MLK Freedom Breakfast commemorates the life of the late civil rights leader. This year’s theme is “The Power of the Dream: Justice for All.”
Along with Young’s address, recipients of the President’s Fulfilling the Dream Award will be recognized at the event, which has averaged more than 600 attendees in recent years. The award highlights the work of local citizens who have made significant efforts to build bridges of unity and understanding as they strive to make King’s dream of equality and justice a reality. Nomination forms to recognize community members, UGA faculty, staff and students are available at http://t.uga.edu/Vv and are due Oct. 31.
Young has served as an ordained minister, a U.S. congressman, United Nations ambassador and was the mayor of Atlanta during the Atlanta Olympic Games. He has worked for civil and human rights and has advocated for investment in Africa through GoodWorks International.
He confronted segregation with King and was a key strategist and negotiator during the civil rights campaigns in Birmingham and Selma that resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
He was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1972, the first African-American elected from the Deep South since Reconstruction. He served on the Banking and Urban Affairs and Rules committees, sponsoring legislation that established a U.S. Institute for Peace, the African Development Bank and the Chattahoochee River National Park, while negotiating federal funds for MARTA, the Atlanta highway system and a new international airport for Atlanta. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Young to serve as the nation’s first African-American ambassador to the United Nations, where he negotiated an end to white-minority rule in Namibia and Zimbabwe.
Tickets for the breakfast are $20 and $160 for tables of eight. Tickets will not be sold the day of the event. To order tickets, see http://diversity.uga.edu/pdf/MLK_2015_Ticket_FormA.pdf; to pay online by credit card, see http://t.uga.edu/Y6.