The University of Missouri is pleased to announce the 2021 keynote speaker for the Annual MLK Day of Celebration, Ambassador Andrew Young!

Ambassador, Congressman, Mayor, humanitarian, ordained minister, international businessman, and sports enthusiast, Andrew Young has been serving and shaping our country for almost 50 years.

He has shared his life’s work in books including A Way Out of No Way: The Spiritual Memoirs of Andrew Young, An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America, and Walk in My Shoes: Conversations between a Civil Rights Legend and his Godson on the Journey Ahead, which was co-authored by Kabir Sehgal.

Ambassador Young has received honorary degrees from more than 100 universities and colleges in the U.S. and abroad. President Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and France awarded him the Legion d’Honneur, each representing the highest civilian honor for that particular nation. He has received the NAACP’s Springarn Medal. In 2011 he received an Emmy Lifetime Achievement award, and is portrait became part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. He serves on a number of boards, including: the Martin Luther King Center for Non-Violent Social Change, Barrick Gold, the United Nations Foundation, the Atlanta Falcons, the Andrew Young School for Policy Studies at Georgia State University, and Morehouse College.

*To read more about Ambassador Young, and his full biography, please visit the Harry Walker Agency’s website on Ambassador Young.

To view the full MLK 2021 Program, and the Zoom link on the day of the event, please see the Middleton Center's event page.