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The National Urban League and the Fight for US Adoption Reform

Kori A. Graves

in A War Born Family: African American Adoption in the Wake of the Korean War

The National Urban League initiated its Foster Care and Adoption Project in 1953 to increase African Americans’ participation in formal adoptions. League officials encouraged reforms in US policies ... More

The National Urban League initiated its Foster Care and Adoption Project in 1953 to increase African Americans’ participation in formal adoptions. League officials encouraged reforms in US policies and practices to eliminate the economic and social obatacles that limited African Americans’ adoptions. League officials also promoted greater integration of adoption agencies’ administrative and social work staff to advance the organization’s goals of encouraging interracial cooperation in social service agencies. The outcomes of the national project were inconsistent, in part because of resistance from some white child welfare professionals and the organized efforts of white citizens’ councils to defraud and defund many League branches. The project did highlight the social and institutional barriers that affected African Americans’ domestic and transnational adoptions. This chapter foregrounds the challenges adoption agencies faced when they endeavoured to placed Korean black children with African American families. It reveals why many successful agencies had to implement, on a case-by-case basis, many of the reforms that the League had hoped would produce national, comprehensive adoption reform.Less

Capitalism without Capital: Postwar Employment Activism

Jeffrey Helgeson

in Crucibles of Black Empowerment: Chicago’s Neighborhood Politics from the New Deal to Harold Washington

Like Chapter 4, this chapter details the uneven opportunities black workers faced during the postwar economic boom. Even as the economy grew, stable, low-skilled jobs were disappearing. In the face ... More

Like Chapter 4, this chapter details the uneven opportunities black workers faced during the postwar economic boom. Even as the economy grew, stable, low-skilled jobs were disappearing. In the face of this growing crisis, this chapter shows that most black reformers in Chicago continued to focus on trying to train and place black men in the remaining jobs. This was true of activists in the Chicago Urban League struggling over how to best serve local workers, as well as of newer protest organizations like those connected to the Negro American Labor Council and Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Operation Breadbasket. They all found it was easier to break down barriers to specific jobs for limited numbers of workers than it was to distribute the jobs they won, much less to fight for the improvement of service-sector jobs or the creation of jobs in black neighborhoods.Less

. Employment from the March on Washington to the Pilot Placement Project, 1940–1950

Touré F. Reed

in Not Alms but Opportunity: The Urban League and the Politics of Racial Uplift, 1910-1950

This chapter discusses the Urban League's continued perception of government assistance as essential to achieving its traditional goals of helping blacks obtain employment while adjusting them to the ... More

This chapter discusses the Urban League's continued perception of government assistance as essential to achieving its traditional goals of helping blacks obtain employment while adjusting them to the economic realities of the day. The combination of expanding employment opportunities and the swelling tide of left-wing politics ultimately strengthened the League's commitment to a kind of militancy that generally muted the class implications of the group's program through the first half of the decade. Even so, Urban Leaguers shed neither their concerns about social disorganization nor their special interest in the plight of the black middle class. The Urban League's calls for state intervention on behalf of Afro-Americans in this period were, as was the case during the New Deal, consistent with the group's general emphasis on the proficient performance of black labor and the integrity of the Afro-American community.Less

Protect

Amanda I. Seligman

in Chicago's Block Clubs: How Neighbors Shape the City

This chapter discusses block clubs’ origins, fundamental purposes, and development over time. Block club members were centrally concerned with improving their local environments. Members hoped that ... More

This chapter discusses block clubs’ origins, fundamental purposes, and development over time. Block club members were centrally concerned with improving their local environments. Members hoped that block clubs’ programs would variously demonstrate the high quality of residents; encourage good neighbors; fend off decay; protect property values; improve children; lower crime; and deter undesirable residents. Block clubs originated with the National Urban League, which spread them to Chicago through its local chapter in the 1910s. The federal Office of Civilian Defense organized block clubs throughout Chicago during World War II. After the war, the Chicago Urban League resumed its block club program. The Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference created block clubs to support its urban renewal and conservation efforts and spread the block club model to Chicago’s white population. To support diverse local aims, many different organizations cultivated block clubs in the later years of the twentieth century. The Chicago Police Department and city politicians organized block clubs in the twenty-first century, drawing them into direct engagement with politics and governance.Less

. The Ideological Origins of the Urban League

Touré F. Reed

in Not Alms but Opportunity: The Urban League and the Politics of Racial Uplift, 1910-1950

This chapter examines the issues surrounding the Urban League's creation as well as the background of key personnel in order to draw out the ideological forces shaping the League's approach. While ... More

This chapter examines the issues surrounding the Urban League's creation as well as the background of key personnel in order to draw out the ideological forces shaping the League's approach. While some have traced the Urban League's philosophical lineage to Booker T. Washington, this chapter contends that the League's uplift project owed more to models of assimilation advanced by sociologists such as W. I. Thomas and Robert Park than the Wizard of Tuskegee. Applying concepts such as social disorganization and reorganization, ethnic cycle, and urban ecology to the Negro problem, Leaguers devoted particular attention to the relationship between blacks' behavior and racial and economic inequality. As a result, the Urban League's work would come to reflect many of the biases associated with Progressive Era social science theory.Less

“Their Side of the Case”: Domestic Workers and New Deal Labor Reform

Keona K. Ervin

in Gateway to Equality: Black Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in St. Louis

Chapter 2 maps the labor activism of St. Louis’s largest segment of black working-class women as they mounted a labor reform program that anticipated and challenged New Deal labor legislation. With ... More

Chapter 2 maps the labor activism of St. Louis’s largest segment of black working-class women as they mounted a labor reform program that anticipated and challenged New Deal labor legislation. With progressive black women staffers who led the St. Louis Urban League’s Women’s Division and progressive Jewish clubwomen who developed important ties to black communities, domestic workers designed and enforced standardization and rationalization policies to make dignity tangible in their contractual agreements. A predominant female constituency marked the Urban League as a women’s organization during a “radical” phase that extended into the late 1940s. As domestic workers made moves to “industrialize” household labor, they laid the groundwork for black women’s economic battles during the World War II period.Less

Atlanta and New York City; Founding the National Urban League

Susan D. Carle

in Defining the Struggle: National Racial Justice Organizing, 1880-1915

This chapter examines the relationship between local conditions and national organization building at the turn of the twentieth century in two major cities: Atlanta and New York City. It examines how ... More

This chapter examines the relationship between local conditions and national organization building at the turn of the twentieth century in two major cities: Atlanta and New York City. It examines how different local conditions produced various organizing strategies and emphases and traces how these dissimilar local features of racial justice organizing fostered contrasts in the organizing models of national organizations. Continuing with this theme, the chapter analyzes the early organizational model of the National Urban League and assesses the contours of its agreement with the NAACP to "divide jurisdiction" by each specializing in distinct sets of issues and strategies.Less

The Rise and Fall of the Desegregation Paradigm

Elizabeth Todd-Breland

in Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s

This chapter analyzes the history of desegregation strategies pursued in Chicago and the processes by which those strategies fell out of favor. The chapter situates these developments within the ... More

This chapter analyzes the history of desegregation strategies pursued in Chicago and the processes by which those strategies fell out of favor. The chapter situates these developments within the broader national context of the Brown v. Board of Education decision and national Civil Rights organizing, while also detailing the work of local organizers like Rosie Simpson. The chapter examines desegregation demonstrations, mass protests, opposition to busing, and citywide committees launched during the 1950s and 1960s by the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, the Chicago Urban League, and local neighborhood groups. Even during this period of intensive organizing for school desegregation, the slow pace of desegregation and lack of commitment by city officials sowed seeds of ambivalence toward desegregation strategies. Disillusioned with the progress of integration, many Black students, parents, educators, and community groups began advocating for alternatives to desegregation, including community control of schools.Less

Enduring Legacy of Whitney M. Young Jr.

Alma J. Carten

in Find a Way or Make One: A Documentary History of Clark Atlanta University Whitney M. Young Jr. School of Social Work (1920-2020)

This chapter overviews the life of Whitney M. Young Jr. from his early years in Kentucky to the time of his accidental downing death in Lagos, Nigeria. The content covers his early experience with ... More

This chapter overviews the life of Whitney M. Young Jr. from his early years in Kentucky to the time of his accidental downing death in Lagos, Nigeria. The content covers his early experience with the Urban League as a social work student and administrator, his contributions to social work education as dean of the Atlanta University School of Social Work, and his work as Director of the National Urban League and member of “Big Six” of the Civil Rights movement who planned the March on Washington. The chapter details his rise to international acclaim as a civil rights leader and presidential advisor.Less

Conclusion

Touré F. Reed

in Not Alms but Opportunity: The Urban League and the Politics of Racial Uplift, 1910-1950

This book concludes with a discussion of the criticism by political activists—ranging from Marcus Garvey to former Urban League staffer Abram L. Harris—of the National Urban League. They pointed to ... More

This book concludes with a discussion of the criticism by political activists—ranging from Marcus Garvey to former Urban League staffer Abram L. Harris—of the National Urban League. They pointed to the group's failure to adequately address the real-world concerns of the Afro-American masses. Garvey, a black nationalist, and Harris, a left-leaning economist, occupied different niches in Afro-American politics; nevertheless, both claimed that the League's ties to white business and philanthropic organizations led the group to pursue a conciliatory agenda that benefited only a select few. By the conclusion of the modern civil rights movement, the charge that the National Urban League's vision was far removed from the concerns and dispositions of most blacks resonated well beyond the bounds of political activists.Less

The Rise and Fall of Local 284: Black Women Laundry Workers’ Activism in the Era of the Great Migration

Matter Carson

in A Matter of Moral Justice: Black Women Laundry Workers and the Fight for Justice

The Great Migration brought large numbers of Black wage-earning women into the urban North from both the South and abroad, including Trinidadian Garveyite and activist Charlotte Adelmond. Chapter 4 ... More

The Great Migration brought large numbers of Black wage-earning women into the urban North from both the South and abroad, including Trinidadian Garveyite and activist Charlotte Adelmond. Chapter 4 demonstrates that in the 1920s Black migration and employer and worker preferences transformed the laundry workforce from predominantly white to interracial. It also reveals that Black women would find employment in both power and hand laundries, the small storefront shops discussed in this chapter. Black workers’ entry into the laundries injected new energy into the union campaign, spurring the formation of a new AFL-affiliated laundry local, this time in the hand laundries and this time led by a Black woman. It also attracted new allies to the campaign, including the short-lived Trade Union Committee for Organizing Negro Workers, led by Black socialists and trade unionists A. Philip Randolph and Frank Crosswaith. The WTUL, which by 1920 was under the leadership of industrial feminist and former cap maker Rose Schneiderman, also continued to support the workers, committed to nurturing Black women’s unionism. Chapter 4 demonstrates that with the support of allies with different interests and agendas and inspired by different ideologies and philosophies, Black and white women laundry workers would gain important organizational experience in the 1920s that they would harness to organize their coworkers in the 1930s.Less

Epilogue: Examining the Past and Looking to the Future

Jim Host and Eric A. Moyen

in Changing the Game: My Career in Collegiate Sports Marketing

The epilogue turns its attention to Host’s perception of current events and issues about which he is passionate. He addresses problems that are keeping Kentucky from making greater progress, as well ... More

The epilogue turns its attention to Host’s perception of current events and issues about which he is passionate. He addresses problems that are keeping Kentucky from making greater progress, as well as his role in Shaping Our Appalachian Region (SOAR), Kentucky Wired, and the Lexington Urban League. Host expresses his desire for the commonwealth to provide greater support to the University of Kentucky, with a view to making it an elite research university. He also shares his opinions on the current state of NCAA athletics and its governance structure and voices his support for student athletes’ right to control their own likenesses and promote commercial products. Host argues that this would encourage student athletes to stay in school rather than leaving college to become professional athletes. Host concludes the epilogue by thanking the many individuals who have played an important role in his life and professional career.Less

Introduction

Felix L. Armfield

in Eugene Kinckle Jones: The National Urban League and Black Social Work, 1910-1940

This introductory chapter lays out a brief biography of Eugene Kinckle Jones and his work in black social reform, including his affiliation with the National Urban League (NUL). It laments the lack ... More

This introductory chapter lays out a brief biography of Eugene Kinckle Jones and his work in black social reform, including his affiliation with the National Urban League (NUL). It laments the lack of scholarship on Jones's role in both the NUL and the American social-work movement. Moreover, the chapter narrows the focus of this book—not to the NUL in particular—but to Jones and his role in the professionalization of black social work, in order to increase our understanding of the “urban black experience”—the processes of migration and of migrants becoming black urbanites. The chapter furthermore attempts to illustrate how social work as a profession engaged black Americans and how it was administered during its infancy. It then closes with a brief overview of the following chapters.Less

Organizing the Oppressed Teacher: Teachers' Rights in the Cold War

in Uncivil Rights: Teachers, Unions, and Race in the Battle for School Equity

This chapter focuses on the transformation of the teacher unions between 1950 and 1960 that came about due to teacher assignment campaigns. Organizations such as the Urban League and various parent ... More

This chapter focuses on the transformation of the teacher unions between 1950 and 1960 that came about due to teacher assignment campaigns. Organizations such as the Urban League and various parent study groups largely focused on teacher quality as the major obstacle to the fair and equal education of black students with the increase in postwar civil rights campaigns. All these investigations were supported by the Teacher Union and it also supported plans of the Board of Education to transfer experienced teachers to minority schools. During this time, the Teachers Guild became more determined to organize teachers and consolidate the city's multitudinous existing teacher organizations into one movement by the use of campaigns focusing on the idea of the “oppressed teacher.” The oppressed-teacher argument helped to depoliticize conversations and it became more difficult to ignore race politics in city schools. The Guild consolidated with other teacher organizations to form the UFT that symbolized the growing division between teachers' rights and civil rights in 1959.Less

Moderates and the Vietnam War: All the Way with LBJ

Daniel S. Lucks

in Selma to Saigon: The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War

The NAACP and the moderate wing of the civil rights movement embraced Cold War liberalism and distanced themselves from anticolonialism in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Their silence on U.S. ... More

The NAACP and the moderate wing of the civil rights movement embraced Cold War liberalism and distanced themselves from anticolonialism in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Their silence on U.S. foreign policy and economic injustice was rewarded with piecemeal progress on civil rights. By the mid-1960s, however, the passage of landmark civil rights legislation seemingly validated this tack. Their reluctance to criticize the Vietnam War was reinforced by their closeness to President Johnson. This chapter focuses on Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP; Whitney Young Jr. of the National Urban League; and Bayard Rustin, who shed his pacifist views during the height of the Vietnam controversy. Each of them believed that attacking LBJ on Vietnam would doom his commitment to civil rights. Rustin's case is emblematic of the dilemmas the civil rights movement faced after passage of the Voting Rights Act. The acrimonious debates tore the civil rights coalition asunder, but the departure of President Johnson and the ascension of Richard Nixon (whom most blacks despised) helped reassemble the fragments of the coalition.Less

Building Alliances

Felix L. Armfield

in Eugene Kinckle Jones: The National Urban League and Black Social Work, 1910-1940

This chapter traces the history of the National Urban League with a specific focus on Eugene Kinckle Jones's leadership. It covers the decade of the 1920s and the many issues that Jones and his ... More

This chapter traces the history of the National Urban League with a specific focus on Eugene Kinckle Jones's leadership. It covers the decade of the 1920s and the many issues that Jones and his contemporaries confronted, as social workers faced the dual challenge of adjusting their tactics to meet the growing needs of a black migrant population and establishing themselves as professionals. Ultimately, the duties of black social workers and the aims of the NUL included evaluating and reviewing settlement houses, in addition to other specific concerns of migrating blacks. Here, Jones made headway for the social-work movement by establishing professional training for black social workers, tackling the problem of housing to cope with the influx of black migrants from the South—among many other efforts on behalf of black social workers, which eventually made him one of the prominent social workers in America..Less

Conclusion

Felix L. Armfield

in Eugene Kinckle Jones: The National Urban League and Black Social Work, 1910-1940

This concluding chapter summarizes the notable events and accomplishments of Eugene Kinckle Jones's life and work, contextualizing them furthermore within a racially charged climate. Jones grew up in ... More

This concluding chapter summarizes the notable events and accomplishments of Eugene Kinckle Jones's life and work, contextualizing them furthermore within a racially charged climate. Jones grew up in a comfortably middle-class family, and was, along with many of his peers, charged with a peculiar responsibility for racial uplift as part of the Talented Tenth. The chapter also considers how Jones and his peers belonged to the group of African Americans whose contributions, had it not been for their race, would have been properly acknowledged long before now. Finally, the chapter reiterates the aims of this volume's overall study in situating Jones as a significant part of black American history long before the civil rights era.Less

Conclusion

Jennifer Jensen Wallach

in Every Nation Has Its Dish: Black Bodies and Black Food in Twentieth-Century America

An April 22, 1971 soul food dinner hosted by the Bay Area Urban League is emblematic of the emergence of soul food as the preeminent symbol of black culinary identity after the 1960s. However, over ... More

An April 22, 1971 soul food dinner hosted by the Bay Area Urban League is emblematic of the emergence of soul food as the preeminent symbol of black culinary identity after the 1960s. However, over the previous century, ideas about proper black food habits varied. Generations of reformers used food habits as a way to explore their relationship to the US nation state as well as to a stateless, black cultural nation. Their culinary debates reveal diversity, complexity, and disagreement over what to eat but agreement that food decisions are also political ones.Less