Economic inequality, not racial problems, is the main challenge facing the United States and the world, civil-rights leader and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young said Friday morning in Little Rock.
Young's speech kicked off the three-day Civil War to Civil Rights: Social Conscience Gathering 2015 hosted by the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site.
The event, with more than 250 attendees, continues today and Sunday at the Embassy Suites Little Rock.
"What we're dealing with now -- all of us -- is that we have not yet integrated the economy," Young told attendees. "To be in democracy without the right to vote makes you a slave. But to be in capitalism or free enterprise without access to capital means you're still a slave.
"Our problem is that we are fooling with symbols and forgetting the substance. It ain't about the flag; it's about the money. It's not race. It's economics."
The weekend event commemorates the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service and the 50th anniversary of the Civil and Voting Rights acts.
The gathering's panel discussions are intended to educate residents while urging them to participate more in their communities and move from awareness to action.
"We're bringing people together to dialogue, to discuss best practices and how we can move forward for global equality," said Robin White, superintendent for the historic site. "Even though we're the National Park Service, we are also part of the community, and our job is to serve the community."
Attendees include activists, artists and policymakers.
Panels today and Sunday include discussions on international civil rights, the crisis in education and immigration.
"I'd invite people to come out to join in this dialogue because this is not the National Park Service; this is the community," White said.
Young was a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the civil-rights movement, working alongside his friend Martin Luther King Jr. He later served as a U.S. representative from Georgia, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and as a two-term mayor of Atlanta.
Young started his speech with a story from his childhood in New Orleans, where he said he first learned to think rather than fight -- although he said he also was prepared to do the latter.
His neighborhood in the 1930s had "an Irish grocery store on one corner, an Italian bar on the other corner and the headquarters for the Nazi party on the third corner," Young said.
When Young was 4, he questioned his father about the Nazis in the neighborhood and their actions, he said. His father told him that white supremacy and other forms of hatred were a sickness, and he cautioned his son against getting angry with sick people, Young said.
"'If you get angry, you catch their sickness,'" Young said his father told him. "'You don't get mad; get smart.'"
Poet, educator and doctoral student Marquese McFerguson, who was scheduled to speak on a Friday panel titled "Creating and Supporting a Bright Future for Future Generations," said the gathering was important because of the sense of community it created.
McFerguson said he also planned on attending panels throughout the weekend.
"It's very exciting seeing some of the other speakers, some of the Little Rock Nine," he said. "You're just walking right by greatness."
State Desk on 11/21/2015