In the last year of his life, Gene Young was a regular at the Eudora Welty Library. The civil rights activist would bring a briefcase full of newspaper clippings and photos showing his arrests, speeches and involvement in the Civil Rights Movement that started when he was a child.

The first time Young was arrested he was 12 years old. He was accompanying his brother to protest Jackson police arresting Freedom Riders at the downtown bus station in 1963. Police arrested Young, who was a bystander, and took him to the state fairgrounds where they locked him in a livestock compound and forced him to sleep on the concrete floor for three days.

The event would serve as a catalyst for a life spent sharing stories and speaking for those without a voice.

On Wednesday, March 30, Young passed away at the age of 60 after a battle with cancer. Friends and family honored his life during his funeral Saturday at Black Chapel Church in Jackson. 

"Dr. Young was a fierce fighter and a person who stood up for social justice all his life," Leslie McLemore, director of The Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Democracy and Citizenship at Jackson State University, said about his college of 35 years. "Throughout his life, he fought for the underdog."

McLemore said Young was a gifted storyteller who cited Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. as his heroes.

"Dr. Young loved to engage in conversations, and any venue that would afford him the opportunity, he took advantage of it," McLemore said. "At heart, he was a real engager and a man of ideas."

One of the clippings Young commonly carried showed a photograph of him in Time Magazine getting his hair cut in a Kansas City barbershop in 1964. While Young was attending a civil-rights convention in Kansas City, a barber at the hotel's barbershop refused to give him a haircut. Young and other NAACP members called the press and protested outside the shop, and the barber conceded. 

In 1974, while attending the University of Connecticut, where he earned his master's and doctoral degrees in higher education, police arrested Young while he and other students were staging a protest in the University's library against the school's curriculum, which taught genetic inferiority. 

Young graduated from Lanier High School and then from Jackson State University in 1972. After working as director of black studies at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., for six years, Young moved back to Mississippi where he worked as an administrator at JSU until his retirement in 2009.

Previous Comments

ID

162994

Comment

Dr. Young was a teasure to Jackson and Mississippi. Peace to you, Bro. Stomp loud enough for us to hear ya down here!!!!

Author

Queen601

Date

2011-04-04T16:04:28-06:00

ID

163005

Comment

He is a kind and positive soul.

Author

Aeroscout

Date

2011-04-05T19:26:18-06:00