TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/071690/0716520.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 12.4 KB | 245 lines

                                                                                PROFILE, Page 66

Georgia Is Much on His Mind


ANDREW YOUNG, running for Governor, finds success may be a
liability: his achievements make some blacks and rural whites
uneasy

By GARRY WILLS


    In the basement of a church in Macon, Ga., officers of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference are holding their
annual meeting in mid-June. Joseph Lowery, the organization's
president, says, "The S.C.L.C. does not endorse candidates. But
I does." Yet Lowery marks several points of disagreement with
the man who would be Georgia's Governor -- for example, the
candidate's newfound support for capital punishment. Even
members of Dr. King's organization, for which Young worked in
the glory days of the '60s, will give him only qualified
support. The Rev. Mr. Lowery continues, "I support Andrew Young,
not because he is colored -- for one thing, he ain't all that
colored."

    Others laugh more heartily at this than Young does. The
exact degree of Young's blackness has always been a matter of
debate in and around the S.C.L.C. Nor does Lowery let the
matter drop. "We were just over in Cape Town, where they have
all these degrees of color -- whites, Indians, coloreds,
blacks. I don't know just where I'd put you, Andy" -- with an
appraising look at him across the dais -- "somewhere between
white and Indian and colored."

    But Young is plenty black enough to scare rural whites, as
he campaigns in the country towns trying to become the first
black Governor elected in the Deep South. His urbane background
and contacts, suspect qualities to some black activists, make
him even more menacing to poor whites. He is not only "uppity."
He is up, while they are still down. As a woman in Baxby, Ga.,
told a reporter following Young, "I think the coloreds are
trying to overpower. That's the way most everyone feels.
They're trying to overpower the whites." She is turning against
Young the credentials he offers to voters: his success at
bringing new business and wealth into Atlanta during his eight
years as its mayor.

    He takes his Atlanta record with him into parts of the state
that consider that metropolis a den of sin and crime. To hear
Young speak, he loosed a shower of gold over the city -- 1,000
new companies located there (300 from overseas), $70 billion
invested ($11 billion from overseas), 700,000 new jobs created.
Yet to critics, Atlanta should be his burden, not his boost.
Lester Maddox, the clownish ex-Governor running for his old
job, said to Young in a televised debate, "You ran Crime City."
FBI statistics show a 50% increase in the crime rate during
Young's eight years in office.

    Young says he can do for Georgia what he did for Atlanta --
and his foes treat that as a threat. Young talks green while
people are still thinking black. He moves about the state in
his GMC van, speaking quietly about increased exports of
Georgia pecans and carpets. He was accused of absenteeism
during his years as mayor -- "Globetrotter Andy," Maddox calls
him. But Young says he was using his international contacts to
bring jobs into the state or find buyers for its products.
"Last summer I took 30 small businessmen to Jamaica, Trinidad
and Barbados, and we came back with $134 million in contracts.

    "I came into office when Reagan was cutting off funds from
Washington. But there is always loose capital in the world
money markets, and I know where it is, because of my experience
as an ambassador and Congressman on the banking committee."
Even during the campaign he has flown to London to do work as
a consultant for an engineering company, and to Japan for a
meeting of the International Olympic Committee. When not
crossing one or another ocean, he has raised money from
celebrity friends in Hollywood and New York City (Norman Lear
welcoming him on the West Coast, Gloria Steinem on the East).

    Young, who speaks in the fluting accents of Southern
civility, has always had a quiet dignity in his dealings with
whites. Even as a young pastor in the 1950s in Thomasville,
Ga., he jolted that little community by going to the front
doors of white townspeople, not to the side or back entries.
He is used to having gates open for him. He grew up in New
Orleans, the son of a prosperous light-skinned dentist who
liked to stress the family's "Indian blood." When he played
with white boys, it was because he owned the ball and bat. When
he studied theology, it was not with Southern Baptists but with
white Congregationalists in Connecticut. Baffled in his
attempt to become a missionary to Africa, he became a New York
bureaucrat in the National Council of Churches. Returning to
the South in the late '50s, it was with Marshall Field
Foundation money to start literacy programs for blacks.

    When he joined Dr. King's cause, he became the negotiator
with white sheriffs and FBI agents. S.C.L.C. veteran Hosea
Williams says, "I would go into a town and rile up the blacks
and make the whites say, `What will these crazy niggers do
next?' and then in would come nice little Andy saying, `There
are some points we would like to discuss with you.'" When
Williams called Young an Uncle Tom, "he jumped on me
physically, right in front of Dr. King."

    Young has been an ambassador between different worlds from
his childhood on. A Southerner in the North, then a partial
outsider in the South, he could talk to all sides. In the 1976
presidential campaign, he convinced Northern liberals that
Jimmy Carter was acceptable on racial matters. When Carter
asked him to be ambassador to the U.N., Young said Barbara
Jordan was better qualified. Carter, according to Young,
replied, "You're right. But you have the one thing she doesn't
have -- a connection with Dr. King. If we are to be convincing
on the matter of human rights around the world, we have to show
we take them seriously at home."

    If anyone can straddle the differences between white and
black in Georgia, between urban sophistication and rural
conservatism, Young seems to have the proper credentials. Even
after noting his differences with the candidate, the Rev. Mr.
Lowery went on at the S.C.L.C. meeting to say, "Never in the
history of Georgia has this state had a man offer himself for
Governor with the qualifications and the background in
government of Andrew Young."

    But this may be the toughest assignment Young has taken on
in his distinguished career. By his staff's assessment, he
needs to get almost all the black vote and 25% of the white
vote in the final election. But polls in mid-June on the
five-man primary race to be decided on July 17 showed him
getting only 65% of the blacks and 12% of the whites for a
combined vote of 30%. (Jesse Jackson won 40% in Georgia's 1988
primary.) Young's figures have actually slipped -- from 16% of
the white vote in April, and 21% last November. Young blames
that slide on the fact that he did not start running television
ads till after the poll was taken, while his principal
opponent, lieutenant governor Zell Miller, was catching up
through a heavy advertising outlay.

    Miller and Young were tied at 30% each a month before the
primary. If neither gets over 50% in this first election, they
go into a runoff race to choose the Democratic nominee on Aug.
7. Jesse Jackson and the A.C.L.U. oppose Southern runoffs, on
the grounds that they give the white candidates' supporters a
chance to team up against a black candidate. But Young earned
the boos of Jackson delegates at the Democratic National
Convention in 1984 when he supported runoffs as part of the
Mondale platform. Young narrowly lost the primary in his first
run at the mayoralty but won in the runoff. There is a suit in
court against the Georgia runoff this year, but Young is
opposed to the suit. He will take his chance on the runoff.

    Though the odds are against him, he is hoping for help from
Democratic factionalism. Zell Miller, who has been lieutenant
governor for 16 years, feuds regularly with the powerful
speaker of Georgia's House, Tom Murphy -- most recently over
a state lottery proposal backed by Miller and opposed by
Murphy. Young has been courting Murphy, praising his wisdom in
dealing with Atlanta while Young was mayor. Murphy likes to
handpick his candidates for Governor -- he put up the
incumbent, Joe Frank Harris, in 1982. But Murphy's candidate
this year -- state representative Lauren ("Bubba") McDonald --
got only 6% in the June poll (2 points ahead of Lester Maddox).
Young's backers are hoping Murphy, deprived of McDonald in the
runoff, will let party insiders know he would like Miller to
lose.

    But atavistic Democratic ties may make such considerations
irrelevant. If it looks as if Young cannot win against a strong
Republican, then Democrats will take Miller, or anyone else,
rather than surrender a statehouse that has been theirs for 120
years.

    Young argues that he can win if his party will only give him
its nomination. He has waged a long campaign with the help of
Atlanta powers like the Coca-Cola Co. and Turner Broadcasting
to win the 1996 Olympics from such contenders as Montreal,
Athens and Manchester, England. The Olympic Committee will make
its decision on Sept. 18 in Tokyo, with Young present. He hopes
to come back from Japan with the promise of another shower of
coins over his adopted city, enough to sweep him into office.

    With all aspects of his recent career, he places great trust
in the effects of economic development. His black critics say
he has given up the cause of the poor except as the
beneficiaries of trickle-down from Atlanta's wealthy. One
weakness in his position is that he hopes blacks will forget
their uneasiness about his commitment to them and rally around
him because he is black (as the Rev. Mr. Lowery predicts they
will do), while he is asking whites to forget such racial
matters and vote their pocketbooks.

    Young seems to judge everything these days as it might be
seen from a corporate executive's window. Even with the
S.C.L.C. leaders in Macon he traced his accomplishments in
terms of first-class airplane travelers: "There used to be a
time when I knew every black flying on an airplane out of
Atlanta -- particularly every one in first class. When I get
on a plane now, there are a whole lot of black folk flying,
even in first class, that I don't even know." It is a tellingly
selective measure of social progress. Speaking to a group of
teenage athletes at an "Olympic camp" held one Saturday at the
Emory University gym, he said, "The Olympics are the one thing
that captures the imagination of the entire planet. It engages
the loyalties of people like you, and kings and queens and
Presidents and the chief executive officers of major
corporations."

    Nonetheless, Young insists that he is still in politics for
the reasons that drew him to office in the first place -- "to
feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the poor." He arrived
at his blackness by way of his religion. Brought up on
classical music, he schooled himself in jazz and the blues
while preparing for his ministry in the South. He still
preaches on Sundays, on the assigned text of Scripture at
whatever church invites him. His attitude toward staffers is
that of a pastor -- he gives advice more readily than he takes
it, but it is the advice of one who cares about the spiritual
welfare of those around him. While he rained wealth on Atlanta,
none of it stuck to him. He still lives in the modest house he
bought on his S.C.L.C. salary.

    More than some others, he chose his blackness. He left
relative affluence to face death with Dr. King. "Martin always
said, `Don't worry, Andy, I'll preach you the best eulogy you
ever heard of.'" There is a toughness in him that came out in
his answer to Lowery's careful endorsement in Macon. After
thanking Lowery and speaking of his economic hopes for Georgia,
Young turned to the subject of color in South Africa, a country
he has known well from his seminary days onward. "One of the
criteria for deciding between colored, Asians and blacks is the
comb test. If the comb can get through your hair without getting
interrupted, then you colored. But if the comb gets hung up,
then you black. I am now 58 years old, and never have I ever
been able to get a comb through my hair without getting a
fractured arm." It brought him the only resounding applause of
the day. How black is Andy Young? As black as he needs to be.