Home / Full timeline / Andrew J. Young, the first Black U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations resigns after holding an unauthorized meeting with a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization.
Andrew J. Young, the first Black U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations resigns after holding an unauthorized meeting with a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization.
1979 (Aug 15)
Andrew J. Young, the Black American United States Ambassador to the United Nations, resigned, asserting that he "could not promise to muzzle himself and stay out of controversies that might prove politically [embarrassing] to President [Jimmy] Carter." The president accepted the ambassador's resignation with regret. Young indicated that he didn't "feel a bit sorry for a thing I have done. I have tried to interpret to our country some of the mood of the rest of the world. Unfortunately, but by birth, I come from the ranks of those who had known and identified with some level of oppression in the world. ... By choice," Young said, “I continued to identify with what would be called in biblical terms the least of these my brethren.... I could not say that given the same situation, I wouldn't do it again, almost exactly the same way." Because of his unorthodox approaches to diplomacy, Young's brief career as the first Black UN ambassador was marked by continued controversy. He had made American relations with African nations a priority of his mission while at the same time condemning such leading Western democracies as Great Britain and Sweden as racist. His downfall occurred after he held an unauthorized meeting in July 1979 with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a group that the United States government considered a terrorist organization. Young was also accused of first failing to inform the State Department about the talks and then of giving "only a partial and inaccurate version of events when he was asked." Following the disclosure of Young's unauthorized meeting with the PLO representative, many influential Americans, including Robert C. Byrd, majority leader of the United States Senate, called for his removal from office. Yet Black American civil rights leader Jesse Jackson defended the former ambassador and accused President Carter of sacrificing "Africa, the third world, and Black Americans," adding, "I think it's tragic."
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.