Jean Childs Young Intercutural Center
A home-away from home
The Jean Childs Young Intercultural Center at 701 E College Avenue is a home-away-from-home for Manchester’s international students and a hub for multicultural clubs and programming. It serves ALL students of Manchester University by offering a space to study, exchange knowledge, relax and share time with other students of various backgrounds and interests.
The center serves as a meeting place to several student organizations
- Asian Awareness Association
- African Students Association
- Black Student Union
- Hispanos Unidos
- Manchester University International Association
- United Sexualities and Genders
The building features:
- The Toyota Round – a large, round multipurpose room with a movable stage for events
- A more inviting “living room” gathering space, a TV and games.
- A resource library, conference room and computer lab
- Study room
- Three offices for student staff and the director
- An open-concept kitchen with dining area and pantry space
- A memorial garden for prayer, meditation or peaceful reflection
Jean Childs Young
The center is named in memory of Manchester alumna educator and civil rights activist Jean Childs Young ’54.
A child of the segregated South, Jean Childs followed two older sisters to Manchester and earned a degree in elementary education. Weeks after graduating, she married Andrew Young, who would remain at the side of his close friend Martin Luther King Jr. throughout the civil rights movement. Later, Andrew became a U.S. congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, and mayor of Atlanta.
Jean had a distinguished career as a teacher and an advocate for human rights and children’s welfare. In 1977, President Carter appointed her chair of the U.S. Commission of the International Year of the Child. She also established the Atlanta Task Force on Education, served as co-founder of the Atlanta-Fulton Commission on Children and Youth, and helped develop Atlanta Junior College.
Jean served Manchester as a trustee from 1975 to 1979 and received an honorary doctorate from MU in 1980. She died of liver cancer in 1994 at the age of 61.