Delta Air Lines has named a building at its headquarters in honor of Andrew Young, a civil rights leader, a United Nations Ambassador under Jimmy Carter and a former mayor of Atlanta.
Atlanta-based Delta dedicated the building at a ceremony Thursday attended by Young, his family, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Billy Payne, who worked with Young to bring the 1996 Olympics to the city.
The A2 Building at Delta’s headquarters by Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is now named the Ambassador Andrew J. Young International Building.
The ceremony came a day before Young’s 89th birthday.
Young sat on Delta’s board of directors from 1994 to 2004. The airline dedicated a Boeing 767 to Young in 2012, and the Delta Flight Museum plans to add an exhibit honoring him this summer. In January, he spoke on racial injustice during a Delta employee town hall meeting.
Delta also said Thursday that it contributed $1 million to the Andrew J. Young Foundation, which focuses on civil and human rights, to fund films and other projects.
Young “has had a tremendous influence on Delta, Atlanta, the state of Georgia and the world,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in a written statement. “I can’t think of a better building to bear his name than the building many new hires enter on their first day.”
Young was a close associate of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and served as executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960s. He was mayor of Atlanta from 1982 to 1990 and a U.S. Congressman from Georgia from 1973 until 1977, when he was named U.N. Ambassador.
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