Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr

Home > People > Social Sciences and the Law > Social Reformers

Urban League, National. A growing awareness of problems facing African American migrants to urban centers in the North at the turn of the twentieth century led to the founding of three organizations in New York City: the National League for the Protection of Colored Women (1905), the Committee for Improving the Industrial Conditions of Negroes in New York (1906), and the Committee on Urban Conditions among Negroes in New York (1910). In 1911, these three organizations merged to form the National League on Urban Conditions among Negroes. The name was soon changed to the National Urban League (NUL). Addressing the problems facing urban migrants, the NUL's national leaders and local Urban Leagues relied upon persuasion and winning the cooperation of white elites who were most likely to support improved economic opportunities for African Americans. Throughout its history, the NUL pursued the goals established by the founders: merging the black elite's objective of racial uplift with northern business leaders' hopes of integrating African Americans into the corporate culture. A nonpolitical, interracial community‐planning agency, the NUL was committed to the expansion of equality of opportunity for African Americans in all phases of the national economy.

Successive NUP leaders adopted differing strategies for achieving the goal of closing the socioeconomic gap between African Americans and whites. The first chief executive officer, George E. Haynes, challenged the interracial status quo, establishing a social‐work program at Fisk University to train African American social workers. His successor, Eugene K. Jones, promoted the idea of vocational education and secured financial support for local Urban Leagues from the Community Chest. Lester B. Granger promoted the integration of the urban newcomers into an orderly multiracial society by involving the NUL in civil rights causes. Whitney M. Young Jr., executive director from 1961 to 1971, more than any other NUL chief executive, informed white business leaders, foundation executives, and public officials—the traditional power base of the NUL—of African Americans' aspirations and of their frustration at being denied equal rights. Vernon E. Jordan Jr. (1971–1981) promoted cultural pluralism as a goal for American society, backing voting and desegregation initiatives and improved health care for the poor. John E. Jacob explored ways of resolving racial tension in urban America. Hugh B. Price, NUL's president in the 1990s, called for a rethinking of community development and more public attention to education, welfare issues, and equal justice before the law.
See also Civil Rights Movement; Labor Markets; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Racism; Segregation, Racial; Urbanization; Welfare, Federal.

Bibliography

Nancy J. Weiss , The National Urban League, 1910–1940, 1974.
Jesse T. Moore Jr. , A Search for Equality: The National Urban League, 1910–60, 1918.

Jesse T. Moore Jr.

Vernon Eulion Jordan, Jr. 1935–, African-American civil-rights leader and lawyer, b. Atlanta, Ga. A graduate of the Howard Univ. Law School, he was executive director (1970–71) of the United Negro College Fund and president (1972–81) of the National Urban League. After being wounded (1980) by a sniper in Fort Wayne, Ind., he retired to law practice in Washington, D.C. In 1992–93 he was head of the transition team for incoming president Bill Clinton , for whom he became an influential adviser. In 2006 he served as a member of the Iraq Study Group.

Bibliography: See his memoir, Vernon Can Read! (2001).