Former U.S. Ambassador and Civil Rights Leader Andrew Young Speaks at CSU Dominguez Hills

On Sept. 20, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and civil rights leader Andrew Young made a speaking appearance at California State University, Dominguez Hills. The colleague and friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed freshmen in a University 101 college success course and students from the Student Support Services program who earlier this year visited the South to explore the historic backdrop of the struggle for civil rights.

Young, who served as the first African American ambassador to the United Nations in the 1970s, before becoming a congressman and later mayor of Atlanta in the 1980s, told students to take advantage of learning both inside and outside of the classroom.

“There are two curriculums on any campus,” he said. “There’s the curriculum that is the state-provided curriculum that you get out of books. But I found is that I learned more from my [fellow] students than I did from the books.”

The New Orleans native emphasized the benefits of being a student at CSU Dominguez Hills and the opportunity to be educated at one of the most ethnically diverse institutions in the nation. He described his experiences as an undergraduate at Howard University, and the benefits of getting to know classmates from all over the world.

“I got an African view of the world, I got an Asian view of the world, and I got a European view of the world,” Young recalled. “And I was trying to put together an American view of the world. So if you don’t do anything else, develop a world view that helps you see the world as the people who live there see it.”

- Joanie Harmon

Photo above: Former civil rights leader Andrew Young meets students who visited historic sites in Alabama, including the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the Rosa Parks Museum.

Photo by Joanie Harmon