Races: The Other 97%

(5 of 10)
1913, it had begun meeting with business and labor leaders to seek job openings for Negroes, still its biggest concern. When the U.S. entered World War II, 46 local branches were scattered around the country, and the league, through Industrial Relations Laboratories in 300 defense plants, was able to place more than 150,000 Negroes in jobs never before open to them. "What the Urban League means to the Negro community," said Gunnar Myrdal in An American Dilemma, his classic 1944 study of U.S. race relations, "can best be understood by observing the dire need of its activity in cities where there is no local branch."

"Green Power." Today the league has affiliates in 84 cities, from San Diego to Springfield, Mass., Tampa, Fla., to Seattle. The budget has mushroomed to $3.5 million, while some 8,800 paid and volunteer league staffers administer foundation-and Government-funded projects that cost another $20 million.

The league has a score of concerns and dozens of separate programs, but "the most important thing that we do," says Young, is still "to get jobs for people. 'Green Power' is important for the Negro now. Pride and dignity come when you reach in your pocket and find money, not a hole."

Under Young, who joined the league as executive director in 1961, the organization has made a particular effort to find jobs that have never before been open to Negroes or have what the league calls a symbolic "role model" significance. Secretarial positions, for example, are particularly coveted, because a Negro secretary or receptionist, sitting outside the boss's office, tells everyone in a company—more effectively than a dozen interoffice memos—that its policy is to hire Negroes. "If you've got them up on the executive floor," notes Young succinctly, "there is no question." More than 300 Negro girls in six cities are going through league-sponsored courses in typing, shorthand, English and office procedures.

Whitney Young is the nation's only Negro—and one of the few Americans —who has instant access to almost any corporate boardroom in the U.S. Without retreating one iota from his own ideals or minimizing his demands, Young manages to communicate with America's top executives on their own level—and more important—bring them over to his side.

All Those Panels. He and the N.A.A.C.P.'s Roy Wilkins are the two civil rights leaders closest to President Johnson, and Young presently holds seats on five presidentially appointed panels, has served on four others now disbanded. Nor is his influence purely temporal. After a 15-minute audience with Pope Paul last June, he met with the Vatican Cabinet for four hours to promote a papal encyclical on racial justice. The Vatican is now considering the question.

Not the least of Young's accomplishments has been the revitalization of the Urban League itself, which, for all its good works, was showing signs of arteriosclerosis as the civil rights era of the '60s began. Changing its watchword from "improvement" to "equality," he set up a Washington bureau, separate from the local league office to bird dog federal funds, established five regional centers around the country to ride herd on local offices, and extended branches aggressively throughout the