Jean Young was a prominent activist for civil rights, education, and children`s welfare whose work spanned more than three decades. In 1978 she became widely known as the chairperson of the International Year of the Child. She was a strong, independent woman who was both career and family oriented. She was never overshadowed by her husband, famed civil rights leader and politician Andrew Young, but worked beside him, helping to further his causes, many of which she supported, while actively defending her own as well.

The youngest of five children, Jean Childs Young was born during the Depression on July 1, 1933, in Marion, Alabama. Her father, Norman Childs, and his family owned a combination grocery, soda fountain, and candy store. The family made candy that Norman Childs sold throughout the South. Her mother, Idella Childs, was an elementary school teacher. Andrew (Andy) Young, whom Jean Young would later marry, wrote in his spiritual memoirs, A Way Out of No Way, "Norman Childs was a black Clark Gable and Idella as fiery, independent, and as passionate a woman as Miss Scarlett ever hoped to be. This was a wonderful family."

The school system in Marion, Alabama, was characterized by the racial discrimination commonly practiced throughout the South. A potbellied stove was the only source of heat in the one-room school where Idella Childs taught, and the children sat on benches without backs. Unlike the freshly painted white school, the black school was rough clapboard, and it could only provide students with used books handed down from the white school. The situation may have agitated young Jean and perhaps she showed it. Her parents became concerned about her behavior and thought that she was developing a chip on her shoulder.

Mr. and Mrs. Childs provided a comfortable living for the family and helped to make life for the children happy. A family garden was an additional source of food and Idella Childs, who was also a seamstress, made all of the children`s clothes. Young`s solid upbringing, coupled with the positive attitude of the black community, helped her to develop a strong sense of pride. She was very affected by the tightly knit black community in Marion. She told A. Victoria Hunter for Essence magazine, October 1979.

"The problems of segregation forced people into closer-knit communities.... The fact that you could not live in certain areas, that you could not attend certain schools, that you could not go to movies or public facilities created a closer family unit and a closer community unit.... It ... tended to bind us ... in a rather unique way to one another. We were living in a hostile environment, but we had ... a closer-knit group to cope with the hostility."

Doubtless Young`s parents also helped her to develop a positive attitude. For example, they refused to allow her to work as a babysitter, as her schoolmates did, so she would avoid getting into "that maid relationship." Mr. and Mrs. Childs expected that all of their children would attend college. "That was a route out of the social dilemma," she continued in Essence.

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