The park, conceived and funded by lifelong friend and Aaron's founder Charlie Loudermilk, tells the story of Andrew Young's life and his contributions to Atlanta, the United States and the world.

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Aaron Rents founder Charlie Loudermilk (right) has been a strong supporter of Andrew Young for decades. He co-chaired Young's first Atlanta mayoral campaign in 1981. Young photo from 1977 Foreign Relations subcommittee on African Affairs hearing. Loudermilk photo from the 2007 grand opening of Aaron's 1,500th store in Mansfield Texas.

In a ceremony to be held this morning, the City of Atlanta will dedicate the Andrew Young Tribute at Walton Spring Park. The project was conceived and funded by lifelong friend and Aaron Rents (NYSE:RNT) founder Charlie Loudermilk and led by downtown development association Central Atlanta Progress.

Four years in the making, the Tribute honors Andrew Young's journey from minister to Mayor of Atlanta to international statesman. The Tribute includes an art piece by Atlanta sculptor Curtis Patterson, a bronze statue by North Carolina sculptor Johnpaul Harris, and a redesigned park by the Atlanta office of EDAW.

The design of the park tells the story of Young's life and his contributions to Atlanta, the United States and the world as a minister, civil rights leader, Mayor, United Nations Ambassador and Olympic visionary.

Among those speaking will be Ambassador Andrew Young, Aaron's founder Charles Loudermilk, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and Congressman John Lewis.

Andrew Young Biography:
The grandson of a prosperous "bayou entrepreneur," Andrew Jackson Young Jr. was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 12, 1932. His father, Andrew J. Young, was a well-to-do dentist; his mother, Daisy (Fuller) Young, a teacher. Reared in what he has described as a "black bourgeois" environment, he and his younger brother Walter grew up as the only black children in a middle- class, predominantly Irish and Italian neighborhood. According to Young, his parents went "to great lengths" to shield him from racism and taught him to be proud of his heritage. "I was taught to fight when people called me nigger," he said, as quoted in Time magazine in 1970. "That's when I learned that negotiating was better than fighting."

Young learned to read and write before he reached school age and began his formal education in the third grade of a segregated black elementary school. Following his graduation from Gilbert Academy, a private high school, in 1947, he enrolled at Dillard University in New Orleans. The fol lowing year, he transferred to Howard University in Washington, D.C. as a premed student. Young had intended to become a dentist but, after obtaining his B.S. degree in 1951, began to have sec ond thoughts about his career. Inspired by a dedicated clergyman, he finally decided to enter the ministry. At the Hartford Theological Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut, he studied, among other things, the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and became convinced that he could, in his words, "change this country without violence."

Graduated in 1955 with a B.D. degree, Young was ordained a minister in the United Church of Christ, a largely white denomination with a demonstrated interest in social action. Denied permission to establish a mission in Angola, then a Portuguese colony, he returned to the South, where he pastored churches in Marion, Alabama, and in Thomasville and Beachton, Georgia. As the civil rights movement gained momentum, Young organized his church members into community action groups and, despite repeated threats from the Ku Klux Klan, spearheaded a voter registration drive in his district.

Hired by the National Council of Churches in 1957, Young spent the next four years in New York City, working almost exclusively with white youths. Eager to take part in the accelerating effort to end segregation, he readily accepted when United Church of Christ officials asked him to administer a voter education and registration project funded by the Field Foundation. In the course of his work, Young often collaborated with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the largest and most influential of the civil rights groups. He eventually joined that organization late in 1961, rising to the post of executive director in 1964.

Along with other black leaders, Young helped draft the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As the SCLC's top strategist, he developed training programs for local black leaders, many of whom have since become sheriffs or mayors, and led the behind-the-scenes negotiations with white businessmen and politicians that resulted in phased programs of desegregation in many Southern cities. Often marching in the front lines of Dr. King's nonviolent protest demonstrations, he directed the massive campaign against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama and was in charge of the demonstration on May 3, 1963. He later walked at Dr. King's side through threatening and jeering crowds in a demonstration for open occupancy in Chicago.

After Dr. King's assassination in April 1968, Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, King's trusted lieutenant, took over the leadership of the SCLC and immediately named Young his executive vice-president. Together the two men mapped out their strategy for a Poor People's Campaign, climaxing in a mass march on Washington, D.C. in May 1968 to pressure Congress to enact antipoverty legislation. At first the SCLC was strengthened by a tremendous influx of funds and volunteers following King's death, but it lost both contributions and volunteer help to the growing peace movement in the late 1960's. Recognizing that the SCLC was no longer strong enough to take on any national issues, Young outlined a conservative new course for the organization in mid-1969, in which he stressed voter registration and political action campaigns.Convinced that the "power in America is in the political structure," Andrew Young resigned from the SCLC in 1970 to run for the United States House of Representatives from Georgia's predominantly white Fifth Congressional District.

With the support of Abernathy, Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King's widow, and Julian Bond, the black Georgia state legislator who attracted national attention at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, Young put together a biracial political organization of hard-working volunteers, many of them veterans of the civil rights movement. Preaching conciliation and moderation, he easily defeated Lonnie King, a black, and two white contenders for the Democratic nomination in the primary in September 1970. His opponent in the general election was the two-term incumbent Fletcher Thompson, a conservative Republican and Nixon supporter, who contended that Young's election would lead to the collapse of western civilization. Aided by the votes of nervous, middle-class whites, Thompson defeated Young by more than 20,000 votes.

After his defeat, Young took a job as chairman of the Atlanta Community Relations Commission. Two years later he resigned to make a second run for Congress. Since his first attempt, the Fifth Congressional District had been redistricted by court order to reflect the state's changing demography. Consequently, the proportion of registered black voters increased from less than 30 percent to about 44 percent. Running on a progressive platform symbolized by such catchy slogans as "Think Young" and "Young Ideas For Atlanta," Young appealed to blacks and to white liberals. In the November general election he took virtually the entire black vote and about 25 percent of the white vote, defeating his moderate Republican opponent, Rodney M. Cook by 72,289 votes to 64,495 votes. He returned to Congress in landslide victories of 72 percent in 1974 and 80 percent in 1976.

During his freshman term in office Young established a reputation as a conscientious, hard-working Representative, attuned to the needs and desires of his constituents. Despite the pressure of legislative duties and his work on the House Banking and Currency Committee, he made frequent weekend visits to his district. "That's doubly important where black people are concerned," he explained to Hamilton Bims in an interview for Ebony in 1973. "We're terribly cynical about people we don't see. We don't read too much about our men in the paper, so it's their physical presence and accessibility that counts."

On the House floor Young repeatedly rejected attempts to cut domestic appropriations for the poor. He voted to increase the minimum wage and to extend its coverage to domestic workers, to broaden the food stamp program, to establish a federal day-care program, and to create federally funded public service jobs for the unemployed. Appalled at the rising cost of medical care Young introduced a bill outlining a comprehensive national health care plan. He has also taken stands supporting busing to end racial segregation in the schools, tax reform, simplified voter registration, and the public financing of Congressional elections. An ardent conservationist, he voted for the establishment of minimum federal standards for surface mining and land reclamation and for the creation of a national land use program. Also, a having been long opposed to the war in Vietnam, Young joined his colleagues in the House and Senate in overriding Nixon's veto of the War Powers Bill limiting executive war-making powers. Committed to majority rule in Africa, he introduced legislation prohibiting aid to Portuguese military factions in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau--all former Portuguese colonies.

Young first met Jimmy Carter when the latter was campaigning for the governorship of Georgia in 1970. Impressed by his ability and political expertise, Governor Carter openly sought the younger man's advice and frequently conferred with him on matters of special interest to blacks. Although he originally preferred a more liberal Democratic aspirant to the Presidency, Young eventually concluded that Carter, because of his "great understanding and sympathy for blacks and poor people," was the only candidate who could deliver the South and insure a Democratic victory in 1976.

Generally credited with mustering black support for Carter, Young delivered one of the seconding speeches placing the Governor's name in nomination at the Democratic National Convention in New York City in July 1976. To counteract Republican gains in the public opinion polls, Young mobilized a massive door-to-door voter registration drive in the inner cities, netting 3,104,000 new, predominantly Democratic voters. His efforts paid off on election day, when Carter defeated Ford by slightly more than 1,744,000 votes. Young is the only person to whom Carter has openly acknowledged a political debt.

In mid-November President-elect Carter chose Young to represent the new Administration at a meeting of American and African leaders in Lesotho, South Africa. Young's grasp of the situation on the troubled continent led Carter to nominate him for the post of American Ambassador to the United Nations on December 16, 1976. At first Young hesitated, but he finally accepted after receiving assurances from Carter that he would have a role in the formulation of foreign policy. At his confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 25, 1977 Young replied to the Senators' probing questions with characteristic frankness. Unanimously endorsed by the Committee, Young was quickly approved by the full Senate.

On January 31, 1977 Ambassador Young presented his credentials to Kurt Waldheim, the Secretary General of the United Nations, and, after making a round of courtesy calls, set to work housecleaning the United States Mission. Distrustful of foreign service professionals, he brought his own staff to the mission and hired women and Hispanics and other minorities for diversity. Young envisioned an international system of "five worlds," in which the United States is no longer a dominant power: the industrial nations; the oil-rich and mineral-rich emerging nations; developing countries, such as the People's Republic of China, Kenya, and India; the "poorest of the poor" nations; and the multinational corporations. Young believes that to survive in that new world, the United States must "get on the right side of the moral issues."

The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 engendered a new political landscape - one where Young found little opportunity to continue in his role as UN ambassador. Upon his return to Atlanta in 1980, he focused his attention on developing "Young Ideas," a nonprofit consulting company dedicated to improving relations between the developing world and the US. However, the timing of his arrival coincided with the end of Maynard Jackson's tenure as Atlanta's first African-American mayor. The city's white elite would want a white mayor, and Jackson knew that it would take an exceptional black candidate to maintain the post. Young was enthusiastic about taking on the challenge, and forged ahead to garner support for a mayoral run. Although the white establishment supported state legislator Sidney Marcus, Young enlisted the backing of the African-American community, as well as influential white supporters such as Republican furniture magnate Charles Loudermilk and Ivan Allen Jr. Young edged out Marcus in the general election, 41 to 39 percent, then overwhelmingly won the run-off (as two-thirds of the city population was African-American).

Young was a tireless booster of the city, applying his skill and knowledge in foreign affairs in promoting Atlanta as an international city. Young spent a good deal of his time as traveling across the nation and the globe, soliciting business and investment for the city and fostering relationships with dignitaries. As Young put it, "All I have to do, really, is go around the world bragging about what we are doing - what you are doing - because I am probably not here long enough to do anything." The efforts were successful, as Atlanta strengthened itself as a player not only in the national but world economy, drawing foreign investment and business presence. After leaving office after 8 years as mayor (he was reelected in a landslide in 1986), Atlanta boasted the presence of 15 foreign chambers of commerce (compared to two a decade earlier), and 39 foreign consulates. Hartsfield International Airport added direct flights to Italy, Japan , Switzerland, Ireland, Germany and France. The most notable international presence came from Asia - Young encouraged immigration from Korea, and in the 1980's more than 15,000 settled in Atlanta, opening more than 500 small businesses. At the end of his tenure, Japan had invested $1.2 billion in the local economy, opened 68 new facilities, and created 11,000 new jobs for Atlanta.

Towards the end of his reign as mayor, Young focused his efforts on attracting the 1996 Olympics to the city. During visits to Tokyo he consulted with Japan's IOC representatives. He lobbied Sweden's IOC representative who accompanied the Swedish King and Queen to a formal visit to Atlanta. At the Seoul Games in 1988, Young met with over 30 IOC committee members, and hosted 29 of the 92 members in Atlanta over a two-week period in 1989. These tireless efforts resulting in a resounding confirmation of Atlanta as host of the Centennial Olympic Games in September 1990. IOC members noted Young's enthusiasm in promoting Atlanta - all the while managing a bid for the 1990 Democratic gubernatorial primary. In this quest, he was ultimately unsuccessful in defeating Zell Miller for the nomination.

Having left the mayor's office in 1990 for his failed governor's bid, Young was now free to pursue a range of philanthropic, dignitary and private-sector challenges. In the early 1990's, he joined the Law Companies Group as a consultant, and quickly advanced from chair of the international branch to vice chair of the organization. In 1994, then-President Bill Clinton appointed him to oversee the $100 million Southern Africa Development Fund. 1994 also saw tragedy enter Young's life, as he lost wife Jean to cancer, and Young found his new incarnation as a "private sector diplomat" somewhat therapeutic, as he also served as co-chairman of the Atlanta Olympic Organizing Committee, and in 1995 became chair of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.

In 1996, he co-founded GoodWorks International, whose mission is to promote education and build capacity in Africa and the Caribbean, and foster improved US-Africa and US-Caribbean relations. His involvement in this organization continues to the present in his capacity as Chairman. He also played a key role as Master of Ceremonies at the 2000 National Summit on Africa, which provided him a key forum to pronounce his vision for Africa by increasing investment, expanding trade, and facilitating cooperation between corporations and African governments. He also currently serves as Distinguished Executive Fellow at Georgia State University.

Source: Central Atlanta Progress.