35TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION Super Hero WHITNEY M. YOUNG, JR.

Whitney M. Young, Jr.

Whitney M. Young, Jr. was a calming voice in the midst of the militant Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. As executive director of the National Urban League, Young worked to keep the lines of communication open with white America's centers of financial and political power. He did so in order to give concrete help to African Americans. Critics feared Young had too many close ties to whites. Yet he brought millions of dollars to the Urban League, increased the number of branches, and gathered government support that might have been lacking. 

Young was born in Lincoln Ridge, Kentucky, on July 21, 1921. After receiving his bachelor's degree at Kentucky State College in 1941, he taught briefly before joining the U.S. Army during World War II. Young then studied electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His experiences with racism in the military turned Young toward the civil rights struggle. 

Young received his master's degree from the University of Minnesota and started working with the Urban League. He worked at branch offices in two states at a time when the organization was focused more on housing and health issues than on civil rights. In 1954, Young became dean of the Atlanta University School of Social Work. The articulate and personable Young spent a year at Harvard University through a Rockefeller Foundation grant in 1960, then began a brilliant career as executive director of the National Urban League. 

Before Young's involvement, the group was training Black social workers to fight for improvements in housing and sanitation, along with working on other self-improvement issues. The group left the civil rights fight to more militant African-American organizations, such as the NAACP. Young expanded the agenda of the Urban League. He dealt with social problems by influencing white decision-makers and becoming part of the process for change. 

Critics called Young an "Uncle Tom," but he increased the Urban League's budget from $250,000 and 34 staff in 1961 to $3,500,000 and 200 staff by 1968. He created jobs and opened 90 new regional branches. Young, fighting to keep his credibility among Blacks, proposed a national Marshall Plan in 1963 to help African Americans catch up. His book, To Be Equal, documents his vision. One quote from his book is an example of that vision, "Good race relations—race harmony—is more than the absence of conflict, tension, or even war. It is the presence of justice. Nothing is more immoral than the suggestion that people adjust to injustice or that we make a god of 'timing.' The time is always ripe to do right."

During the sixties, American leaders turned to Young and other leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to calm the voices of more militant Black leaders. Young stayed at the front of the struggle, helping to organize the 1963 March on Washington, D.C. Young published Beyond Racism: Building an Open Society in 1969, which explained that the Black power era could help the nation move toward a more democratic society. 

Young's brilliant career was cut short when he drowned in 1971 in Africa while attending a conference.

From Great African Americans.  Copyright, Publications International, Ltd.