Why Georgia Senate runoffs may hinge on Black voting rights
Andrew Young looks at the long line of mostly Black voters that wraps around the C.T. Martin Natatorium and Recreation Center on a dark, cold, and wet morning on the first day of early voting for Georgia’s Senate runoff elections, and his eyes brim with tears.
“People died for this right,” says the former Atlanta mayor, congressman, United Nations ambassador, and civil rights activist. “I knew many of them.”
He recalls the first voter registration drive he worked on ahead of the 1956 elections, when the Ku Klux Klan rallied nearby. A friend to the late Georgia Rep. John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Young helped organize the 1960s civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, and he was with Dr. King in Memphis when he was assassinated in 1968. Mr. Young’s life has been dedicated to making a line like this happen.
“If Lewis were here, he’d be tearing up with me,” Mr. Young tells the Monitor. “They’d be tears of joy.”
Years of work by activists like Mr. Young
High stakes for the U.S. SenateConcerns in Georgia date back to 1860sA nationwide movement
