THOMASVILLE — Michael Carney, director of the Netflix film “Same Kind of Different as Me,” and his Noble Road producing partner Ashley Allen brought Civil Rights leader, former Atlanta mayor, former ambassador to the UN and former Congressman the Rev. Andrew Young for a private tour on Sunday Feb. 28, 2021, of the Jack Hadley Black History Museum. Rev. Young brought with him his son, Andrew “Bo” Young III, and his grandchildren Abigail Young and Andrew Young IV. Carney and Allen are doing a documentary on Rev. Young’s life called “Soul Force.”

At a young age, Rev. Young pastored two churches, Bethany Congregational Church in Thomasville and Evergreen Congregational Church in Beachton. When Jack Hadley was 17 years old, he attended Rev. Young’s vacation Bible school in 1953. Hadley remembered that all the teens thought Rev. Young was so cool. They all loved attending and listening to this very humbled young man of God.

Rev. Young, now 88, strolled through the museum with his grandson. At one time Rev. Young points out his first wife, Jean Young and tells his grandson to look at his beautiful grandmother, “Wasn’t she so pretty?” Rev. Young proudly said he was married to his first wife for 40 years and his current wife, Carolyn Young for 25 years. Rev. Young now is 88 years old.

Bo Young said that he had never seen the picture of his parents holding his big sister, Paula, as an infant. Bo’s 10-year-old daughter, Abigail, was on a mission of her own. With her iPad, she went around making a video documentary of the Jack Hadley Black History Museum. Bo Young promised Hadley that Abigail will send it to him when she was done.

Hadley had collected many articles and pictures of Rev. Young throughout the years, thanks to the later Mrs. Mildred Newton, a cousin of Hadley’s and a retired educator from the Thomasville City School System, who donated her personal collection of Rev. Young to the museum before she passed. Hadley showed Rev. Young correspondence from 1980 between Hadley and then Ambassador Young’s office when Hadley was trying to get him to come over to Germany for Black History week. Hadley teased Rev. Young saying that he is paying him back for not coming to Germany back then with this visit to the museum today. 

Hadley was overjoyed as he presented to Rev. Young a copy of all the collected articles he had on Rev. Young since the 1950s.