National Urban League
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The National Urban League (NUL) is a nonpartisan civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of African Americans and against racial discrimination in the United States. It is the oldest and largest community-based organization of its kind in the nation. Its current President is Marc Morial.
The Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes was founded September 29, 1910, in New York City by Ruth Standish Baldwin and Dr. George Edmund Haynes among others. It merged with the Committee for the Improvement of Industrial Conditions Among Negroes in New York (founded in New York in 1906) and the National League for the Protection of Colored Women (founded in 1905), and was renamed the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes.
NUL grew out of that spontaneous grassroots movement for freedom and opportunity that came to be called the Black Migrations.
In 1918, Eugene K. Jones took the leadership of the organization and under his direction, the League significantly expanded its multifaceted campaign to crack the barriers to black employment, spurred first by the boom years of the 1920s, and then, by the desperate years of the Great Depression.
In 1920 the organization took the present name, the National Urban League. The mission of the Urban League movement is to enable African Americans to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and civil rights.
In 1961, Whitney Young became executive director amidst the explosion of the civil rights movement which provoked a change for the League. Young substantially expanded the League's fund-raising ability- and made the League a full partner in the civil rights movement. In 1963, the NUL hosted the planning meetings of A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders for the March on Washington. During Young's ten-year tenure at the League, he initiated programs like "Street Academy," an alternative education system to prepare high school dropouts for college, and "New Thrust," an effort to help local black leaders identify and solve community problems. Young also pushed for federal aid to cities.
Today, there are over 100 local affiliates of the National Urban League located in 35 states and the District of Columbia.
The National Urban League is an organizational member of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, which advocates gun control.
