305 | ‘Traveling on Hospitality’: Andrew Young remembers life on the road toward civil rights

Summary: <br> {caption}Andrew J. Young Jr. sits with other civil rights workers in a room at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968, hours after their leader, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated on the balcony of the property in Memphis, Tennessee. In a recent interview with Long Live Lodging, Young said, because of changes related to the Rev. Dr. King’s lodging plans, he believes local police conspired with others in the killing. (Photo: Withers Museum){/caption}<br> *EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second installment of a Long Live Lodging series looking at how the hospitality industry was involved in the Civil Rights Movement in mid-20th century America. The series is produced in commemoration of Black History Month. <br> ndrew Jackson Young Jr., who will turn 89 years old on March 12, has led a storied life.<br> He began his career in social service in the mid-1950s as a Baptist minister in Georgia. He went on to become executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a civil rights activist alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.<br> He served as a U.S. congressman, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and mayor of Atlanta. Read his biography <a href="https://www.andrewyoung.org/andrew-young" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.<br> Though many refer to him as <a href="https://www.andrewyoung.org/andrew-young" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ambassador Young</a>, the civil rights icon is mostly revered for his campaign for social justice as he traveled alongside the Rev. Dr. King to spread the gospel of racial equality.<br> What’s not often talked or written about is how lodging businesses enabled Young and other civil rights workers to travel throughout a segregated South.<br> In many cases, he said, they depended on the kindness of strangers who opened their homes for a night and a meal. At other times, they were able to find a motel that welcomed guests of all colors. Often, these lodging establishments were Black-owned.<br> “One of the first hotels I remember going to had no sheet rock on the wall. It had a bed and a wash pan. It looked like something out of a Western movie, very rough. But I was tired, so I slept well.<br> “This was a black owned, black-operated rooming house.<br> “That was typical of our stays in the early days. For the most part, we didn’t stay in professional lodging because there was none. But there was almost an unwritten rule that everybody who had a home had a guest room that they made available for anybody passing through.<br> “During the civil rights movement, there were no hotels in these small Southern towns where you could stay, but everybody, if they had an extra bed or a couch, you were welcomed.<br> “I slept on the floor in sleeping bags. I remember a couple of very hard iron army beds, with little thin mattresses on them.”<br> <br> {caption}NIGHT MARCH: St. Augustine, Florida, honors civil rights leader Andrew Young, who in June 1964 was beaten by members of a white mob when he led the Night March through the city to quell riots as Congress debated the Civil Rights Act. The city named the path Andrew Young Crossing in recognition of its place in the Civil Rights Movement.{/caption}<br> Black dignitaries’ favorite way station in Selma, Alabama, was the home of Amelia Boynton, a civil rights activist herself. She hosted such luminaries as the Rev. Dr. King, George Washington Carver and Langston Hughes, along with Young and others.<br> Boynton was an outspoken participant in the Civil Rights Movement. She was a key organizer of the 1965 marches from Selma to Montgomery. In the first demonstration on March 7, Alabama State Troopers attacked Boynton and others, including John Lewis and the Rev. Hosea Williams, with tear gas, whips and Billy clubs as the marchers attempted to cross the William Pettus Bridge. The incident became known as Bloody Sunday.<br> President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into l...