WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st March, 2022) The legacy of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is more powerful today in the United Stated and all over the world than it was 60 years ago, former US Ambassador to the United Nations and a close friend of Dr. King, Andrew Young, told Sputnik.
"The very fact that we are talking about him now, 60 years later, says to me that we did not kill him. We only released his spirit, and the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King is more powerful and more prevalent all over the world now than it was 60 years ago," Young, who was next to Dr. King when he was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, said.
When asked to specify signs of Dr. King's legacy in today's social and political life in the United States, Young pointed out that an increasing number of African Americans have been elected to various positions.
"I would say that we have more African American representatives in Congress than ever before. We have more women and Hispanics than ever before. We are in the process of integrating. Our regions have become one, so you can move from one state to another with no problem. This is part of Dr. King's legacy," he said.
Young, who besides being a diplomat also served as a Mayor of Atlanta, pointed out that many more African Americans today are able to obtain a good education and the unemployment rate in their communities is at an all-time low.
"In Georgia, a state numbering nine to ten million people, we have half a million students in colleges and universities. We now have the world's busiest airport in Atlanta. When Martin Luther King was alive, it was a small airport and it was still segregated. And we changed all of that," he said.
Commenting on the Black Lives Matter movement and the related protests in the past two yeas, Young said that most of them were peaceful and most people were not engaged in violence. However, he said some extremists used the rallies to achieve their own goals.
"The violence was on the fascists' side. Black Americans did not go around the streets with guns," he said.
In connection to such events, Young recalled Dr. King's maxim that "we must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
Young expressed confidence that African Americans today feel they are better off than most people on Earth except white Americans.
"I am very comfortable with my life in the United States. Yes, I have problems, but these are problems that I was able to solve without violence," he said.
Andrew Young served as a US ambassador to the United Nations from 1977-1979 during the Carter administration. Young was elected to serve in the US House of Representatives in 1972 and became the Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, in 1981.
