ATLANTA — Reflecting on the state of world events Wednesday at a "Prayer for Peace" event in Atlanta, Ambassador Andrew Young said the challenge of our day was "loving those who are unlovable."
Young spoke powerfully about the current war in Ukraine and said, "I can't sleep at night."
As a Civil Rights Movement luminary, Young was witness to some of the most momentous and tumultuous events in U.S. history, placing the situation in Ukraine right alongside them in stark terms.
"Never in my lifetime have I known so much rancor, so much hatred, so much bitterness, so much fear, so much potential calamity," he said, wearing a tie in the blue and yellow of Ukraine's flag. "I can't sleep at night. I worry about how we're going to come out of this."
But he invoked the success of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Montgomery bus boycott, which delivered a Supreme Court victory and the desegregation of the city's bus system just when MLK "was ready to say that they had lost."
Young said that moment was a "kind of miracle" that has stuck with him throughout his life.
"I've been in many tough spots - many, many places where life and death were at stake. But I also learned to walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil," he said. "And so at this moment in our history I call upon you to walk together with us through the valley of the shadow of death across this planet, and fear no evil."
Young, who was also once mayor of Atlanta, spoke at one of a series of events leading into his 90th birthday on Saturday.
Across the corner from Young's home, he shared, was the local headquarters of the American Nazi Party, where he could see a swastika flag hanging outside the building from his window. He said that those same people would come to his father, a dentist, for help with their teeth, not in the daytime when they could be seen but at night.
"I help them anyway, because that's my calling," he said his father told him.
"My calling is to help people who are sick," Young said. "And loving those who are unlovable is our challenge today."
You can see Young's full comments from the event in the YouTube player below.