Whitney Young Memorial Bridge

From The Washington Post:

In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson bestowed the Medal of Freedom on civil rights activist Whitney M. Young Jr. Three years later, President Richard M. Nixon sent a U.S. Air Force plane to Nigeria to bring Young's body home.

Born in Kentucky, Young was an Army vet and social worker who went on to lead the National Urban League. A quiet pragmatist, he was instrumental in getting America's corporations to participate in the civil rights movement. That didn't always earn him friends. Philip Geyelin, a former editor of The Post's editorial page, wrote that many people believed "a black man had to be suspect who dealt with the Rockefellers and the Fords."

But Young thought it was critical to make those connections, and he took his message to boardrooms across America, as well as to the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon White Houses. It was said of Young that he could bring together all the people -- black and white, rich and poor -- because he could talk to all of them.

In March 1971, Young was part of an American delegation attending a conference in Lagos. He was swimming in the Atlantic Ocean when he apparently had a heart attack and drowned. He was 49. In 1973, the East Capitol Street Bridge was renamed in his honor.