Races: The Other 97%

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South, a hitherto almost forbidden ground to a Negro organization that counted heavily on the help of local community-chest drives. To the surprise of many, the chests proved generous; and Southern newspapers, contrasting the nondemonstrating league with the other civil rights groups, have recently been almost embarrassingly fervent in their approval of the league.

With a membership that puts Negroes alongside a city's top business leaders (the National League's board of directors reads like a Who's Who of American Business), some local leagues are just about the only link between the Negro and white communities. "Anybody," notes Young, "can get a bi-racial commission together after a riot. The league provides an opportunity for dialogue and candid discussion before the riot."

Getting the Message. Before he took over, Young had won from the league's directors an assurance that they recognized the new climate in the civil rights movement and the need for change. Fearful that the league might lose its business support and its valuable status as a charitable organization —thus making any contributions tax deductible—some of the directors nonetheless bitterly opposed Young's decision to put the league behind the 1963 March on Washington. Young persisted, and contributions rose dramatically. More important, the league once again joined the mainstream of the Negro movement, a position it has retained ever since.

Today the league is striving desperately to reach and communicate with the young and the alienated. Thirteen storefront "academies" are attempting to educate New York's "five-percenters"—the 5% who have been given up as hopeless by the public schools. Some of the teachers, and many of the students, are Black Muslims who have about as much in common with the Urban League as the Ku Klux Klan.

Proud Precedent. For his work with the league, Young is paid $32,000, though he has turned down a $75,000-a-year vice-presidency with at least one major corporation. Young had a proud precedent for that decision. Back in 1920, his father quit a $300-a-month job as an electrical engineer with the Ford Motor Co. to teach at Lincoln Institute, a white-run school for Negroes at Lincoln Ridge, Ky., at $68 a month.

Whitney Jr. was born at Lincoln Ridge in 1921. Although Kentucky was rigidly segregated at the time, growing up on campus was not too unpleasant. His father became the institute's first Negro president; his mother was commissioned postmistress of Lincoln Ridge, the first Negro postmistress in the U.S. In grade school, Whitney studied under a white tutor. Yet an excur sion to Louisville meant taunts from white toughs, the black balcony in the movie house, the back door of a beanery for a hamburger. He prepped at Lincoln, got straight A's, and was graduated at 14. At segregated Kentucky State College, he took a premedical course and earned high grades.

Member of the Wedding. That he emerged from boyhood free of bitterness is another legacy from his father. Young still recalls the paternal lecture on white bigots: "These people are to be pitied rather than hated. They need Negroes to look down on for the sake of their own security." Whitney Sr. repeatedly reminded his son that he was like a ballplayer batting .400 in the minor leagues. The