From Andrew Young
Author: Young, Andrew
Date: September 11, 1961
Location: New York, N.Y.
Genre: Letter
Details
Concerned and anxious about his new position as administrator of SCLC’s Citizenship Education Program (CEP), Young asks for “guidance and patience” as he becomes familiar with the organization. Young, who was initially hired by Highlander, admits to King that he feels “like an intruder in the SCLC,” because “you really never asked for me.”1
Dr. Martin L. King
Southern Christian Leadership Conf.
208 Auburn Ave. N.E.
Atlanta 3, Ga.
Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker
Southern Christian Leadership Conf.
208 Auburn Ave. N.E.
Atlanta 3, Ga.
Gentlemen:
The hour cometh, and I meet it with extremely mixed reactions. I will arrive in Atlanta on Thursday morning and will come to SCLC office. Today marked the end of my stay with the National Council and closed a very meaningful period of my life.2 I’ve been so secure here that moving to Atlanta seems a fearful prospect. But then the one or two Negroes are always secure in this kind of set up, so the very tokenism that makes life so good for me is also the reason I am glad to leave if it offers an opportunity to share in the struggle for a better life for all.
The thing that worries me most is the fact that I feel like an intruder in the SCLC set up. You really never asked for me. I am sure that this whole project could go on without me. But I also feel that there are things that I might contribute with the help of your guidance and patience during this awkward period of getting acquainted. I know that time is a great luxury with you folk, and I want to consume as little of your time as possible, but I do think it will be necessary for me to have the benifit of your counsel and orientation for a while so that I may learn to fit into your pattern of thinking and operating. Once I feel that I understand SCLC a bit, I will feel free to make decisions concerning the Citizenship Education Project which are in keeping with SCLC policy.
I am sorry that I could not write more, sooner, but summer is always our busiest time in the Youth Dept., and I was trying to get our house sold, consult with Hotchkiss and the Field Foundation on this in addition to the normal work load.3 Now I am anxious to get to work. The longer I sit up here, the more troubles I can anticipate.
Hoping to see you Thursday, or whenever you get back in town, I am,
Sincerely yours,
[signed] Andy
Andrew Young
1. Due to Highlander’s legal troubles the citizenship program was placed under SCLC administration, and Young was appointed to direct the program. For more on Young and his relationship to Highlander, see King to Young, 25 April 1961, pp. 206–208 in this volume. In his 1996 memoir, Young wrote that he lacked the experience to join “such a high-profile operation” and that SCLC “was dominated by emotional Baptist preachers and I was a self-contained Congregationalist” (An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America [Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008], p. 131).
2. Young served as associate director of the Department of Youth Work for the National Council of Churches from 1957 to 1961.
3. Wesley Akin Hotchkiss was the general secretary of the Division of Higher Education and the American Missionary Association of The Board of Home Missions of the Congregational and Christian Churches, which helped sponsor the Citizenship Education Project. The Field Foundation provided SCLC with an initial $26,500 grant. Due to the fact that SCLC did not have tax-exempt status, the American Missionary Association administered the funds (Maxwell Hahn to Hotchkiss, 13 July 1961).
Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954–1968, Boston University, Boston, Mass.