Andrew Young still has the magnetism at age 91 to keep an audience hanging on his every word.
During a panel discussion this week in Stockbridge that covered a range of topics and included some of metro Atlanta’s most influential leaders in law enforcement, education and the clergy, Young held sway with the gravitas of a statesman and a sly sense of humor. The former mayor, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and civil rights activist added a historical perspective to the annual “Grits and Grace” event, which was hosted by the Henry County Sheriff’s Office.
The event was started by Henry Sheriff Reginald Scandrett, who told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Young has been a mentor since they met while he was chief deputy of the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office.
There were seven other panelists alongside Young: Atlanta police Chief Darin Schierbaum, U.S. marshal Thomas Brown, Clayton County school system Deputy Superintendent Ralph Simpson, former Georgia state Representative Alisha Thomas Searcy and pastors Jamal Bryant, Carl Nichols and Marlin Harris.
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The panel was so large and the topics so expansive that the discussion could only scratch the surface of the intertwined issues of faith, education and law enforcement. In his opening remarks, Scandrett said he was particularly concerned with the “tremendous gaps” widening between law enforcement and the community.
In response, Young shared an anecdote about his experience with jailers in Albany after Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested there in December 1961. Young, who had just moved back to the South, said King called on him to help with the Albany Movement, a campaign to end all forms of segregation in the southwest Georgia town.
“He was not prepared, because he had just gotten out of (Reidsville State Prison),” Young said of King, referring to one of the most frightening ordeals of the civil rights movement. “He really had not recovered.”
After King delivered his speech, the group started an impromptu march to the jail and many were arrested for demonstrating without a permit, including King and Ralph David Abernathy. Young said it was his job to regularly check on them in jail, and he described walking up to a huge jailer at the front desk and asking to see the two leaders, only to have the officer casually address him with a racial epithet.
King told Young he needed to visit them daily, so he would have to learn to get along with the jailers. So Young made conversation with the officer each day, and on his third visit he was invited to speak with the chief.
That police chief, Laurie Pritchett, developed a respectful relationship with King and his colleagues even as he stymied the Albany Movement. Young remembered having an evenhanded conversation with Pritchett and encouraging him to adopt a softer stance on integration.
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Several years later, Young said he got a call from an official in High Point, North Carolina, who was looking for a new police chief to integrate their force. Pritchett had applied and put down Young as one of his references. Young wasn’t sure if he could recommend Pritchett, but said he’d probably be as good as any other option.
In a 1971 New York Times article about Pritchett’s “new reputation,” a city official said, “If he was hired to repress Blacks, it certainly backfired in the face of whites.”
Young’s anecdote touched on the importance of compassion and building relationships, themes that were echoed by the modern-day leaders on the stage in Stockbridge. Multiple panelists pointed out the importance of community for the sake of mental health in both civilian life and law enforcement.
The scale of the mental health challenge is huge: In 2022, police responded to more than 9,000 calls involving mental health crises in Atlanta alone, Schierbaum said. And while Atlanta police officers receive training above the minimum required by the state, Georgia has the lowest training minimum of any state in the country, he said.
More training and support could help law enforcement officers deal with the psychological issues within their own ranks as well. As a profession, law enforcement has high levels of suicide, divorce and drug abuse, according to Scandrett. The question of how peace officers handle their exposure to traumatic events is one that weighs heavily on him.
Schierbaum said Atlanta is making progress in the mental health arena. Earlier this year, the mayor’s office created a Public Safety Wellness Unit that allows all Atlanta police officers and firefighters to speak to a mental health care professional at least once a year.
“The biggest thing is being engaged with your family, being engaged in your church, being engaged in a recreational activity that will help you to relieve that particular stress,” said Brown, the U.S. marshal.
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Scandrett asked Young if he was concerned about future generations “dropping the ball.” In response, Young told another story from his time as a seminarian in Connecticut when his wife, Jean Childs Young, was a third-grade teacher adjusting to a city classroom after leaving a small town in Alabama.
A boy in her class had been so violent that she wasn’t sure she could teach anymore, Young said. He asked to meet the boy at school, and the couple ended up inviting him home for dinner. They asked for his help cleaning up and grading class papers, and Young said he took the boy outside where they played catch with a football.
In Jean Young’s classroom the next day, the boy had moved from the back row to a desk up front and had become her staunchest ally. Young explained that the community bonds that formed naturally in his wife’s tiny hometown took more effort in the city; the student’s dangerous misbehavior was his way of “trying to establish his turf.”
In the same way the rules changed between Marion, Alabama, and Hartford, Connecticut, the rules have changed from the 1960s to the present day, Young said.
“It’s not that anything is broken down; it’s that it’s got to be revved up,” he said. “And everybody here is on the right track.”
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