Price, Hugh B. 1941–
Hugh B. Price 1941–
National Urban League President and Chief Executive Officer
Hugh Price understands the media, having worked in public television and having written editorials for the nation’s most influential newspaper, the New York Times. He understands philanthropy, having served as vice president of the institution that is synonymous with big-money gift giving, the Rockefeller Foundation. And he understands race and social issues, having devoted all of his professional career, his writing and philanthropic work, to helping solve the problems of poverty and despair among mainly urban populations.
It was those diverse qualities, all aimed at a common goal, that persuaded the National Urban League to name Price president and chief executive officer in the summer of 1994. The league has a grand history of activism, but by the time Price took control, it was beset with financial problems and a lack of visibility. After just a few short months at the helm, Price drew high marks from African American leaders for his ability to restore the beleaguered nonprofit organization.
Born in Washington, DC in 1941, Price first attended segregated schools, then integrated educational facilities in the 1950s. In a New York Times article defending multiculturalism, Price stated: “In the newly integrated schools of the 1950s, we were taught one version of the Civil War—the Southern version. Of course, there was another version of the war that we weren’t taught. And those contrasting versions clearly were the product of conscious decisions by historians, textbook publishers, and school teachers. I was an adult before I learned that [authors] Aleksandr Pushkin and Alexandre Dumas were partly black. No literary anthologies in my high school or college courses mentioned those facts. This pattern of denial and duplicity helps explain the deep-rooted suspicions among minorities and women about the accuracy of history taught in schools.”
Price graduated from Amherst in 1963, then went on to Yale, where he received his law degree in 1966. He immediately went to work in the inner city, serving as an attorney for the New Haven Legal Assistance Association. He then worked as executive director of the Black Coalition of New Haven. While these were notable posts in the New Haven community, Price did not emerge during the 1960s as a national civil rights leader. That fact was not lost on many who were surprised when, a quarter of a century later, he was named to head the National Urban League. “It’s certainly not one of the well-known names,” a league leader in Chicago was quoted as saying of Price in the Wall Street Journal. The Journal itself
At a Glance…
Born November 22, 1941, in Washington, DC; son of Kline and Charlotte (Schuster) Price; married Marilyn Lloyd, December 29, 1963; children: Traer, Janeen, Lauren. Education: Amherst College, B.A., 1963; Yale University, LL.B., 1966.
Admitted to Connecticut Bar, 1966; New Haven Legal Assistance Association, attorney, 1966–68; Black Coalition of New Haven, executive director, 1968–70; Cogen, Holt & Associates, partner, 1970–76; City of New Haven, Human Resources Administration director, 1977–78; New York Times, editorial writer, 1978–82; WNET-TV, New York City, senior vice president, 1982–88; the Rockefeller Foundation, vice president, 1988–94; National Urban League, president and chief executive officer, 1994—. Board of Directors, NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, 1986–88.
Addresses: Home —21 Trenor Drive, New Rochelle, NY 10804. Office —National Urban League, 500 E. 62nd Street, New York, NY 10021.
opined that “Mr. Price didn’t grow up in high-profile civil rights work, like most of his predecessors.”
Focused on Urban Issues
While he may not have been “high-profile,” Price was “high energy” when it came to the problems of inner-city poverty. After his stint with the Black Coalition he joined the urban affairs consulting firm of Cogen, Holt & Associates in New Haven, specializing in the analysis of municipal government and foundation programs. He then went to work for the city of New Haven, administering its human resources department.
Price certainly knew the ins and outs of municipal government, as well as the problems involved in bringing services to poor citizens and creating opportunities for them. In 1978 he was given the opportunity to help craft national thinking on these matters in an indirect way. Named to the editorial board of the New York Times, Price was able to shape the editorial page policies of that influential publication, and, indirectly, the policies of the many influential Americans who read the publication daily. At the New York Times Price wrote mainly about domestic policy issues.
After four years at the newspaper, Price moved to the broadcast media, accepting a job at New York’s public television station, WNET-TV. He was senior vice president there and director of the station’s production center. Price spent six years at WNET, from 1982 to 1988, before accepting a position as vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation. In that post, Price managed the foundation’s Special Initiatives and Explorations grant fund and was responsible for helping minorities get more opportunities in groups served by the organization. Clearly, his history of managing large programs, and, more importantly, being able to get funding for them, caught the attention of the search committee set up to find a replacement in 1994 for retiring Urban League president John E. Jacob.
Established in 1911, the National Urban League was created to end discrimination and to help all minorities— especially those in the cities—find economic opportunities. Based in New York City, regional offices and local chapters are scattered throughout the nation. During World War II, the league was instrumental in helping end segregation in the armed forces. Under the leadership of its executive director Whitney Young in 1963, it organized the March on Washington, which culminated in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s stirring speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to an audience of more than 250,000. Another past executive director, Vernon Jordan, presided over an active and well-staffed Urban League in the 1970s. Since then, however, the organization had lost some of its prestige.
Upon the May of 1994 announcement that Price was manning the helm, the Wall Street Journal reported these facts about the National Urban League: 30 percent of its staff had been cut since the mid-1980s; the league’s board had decided to sell its share of an Upper East Side Manhattan high rise in which the league was headquartered; the national office operated at a $3.6 million deficit in 1989, and in 1992, grants and government contracts dropped off 5.8 percent from the previous year. The Journal noted that under the 12 years of John Jacobs’s tenure as president—coinciding with the U.S. government administrations of former presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush—“the league suffered through government cuts in programs for the poor. Moreover, the organization, which relies heavily on corporate donations, has also weathered cuts in general support and gifts during recent years of corporate belt-tightening.”
Aside from financial problems, the National Urban League was facing a spiritual crisis of sorts: no one was paying much attention to it anymore. The organization had always gained media attention for its annual Black State of the Union report, and for its annual convention, but the days of massive civil rights marches and stirring rhetoric seemed to have passed. The league needed a proverbial shot in the arm.
Reached a New Height
When he was named president of the National Urban League, Price was thrilled. “This is like being asked to come to the mountaintop for me,” Price was quoted as saying in Jet magazine. “When you’ve spent a career relating to social justice and equal opportunity, this is the pinnacle.” He also recognized that he faced a series of challenges, especially in the area of fundraising. In that arena he felt his experience with the Rockefeller Foundation would help him. “There are new sources to pursue as the league tries to continue to get support,” Price was quoted as saying in the Wall Street Journal. “I think there are enormous challenges. But I’m not pessimistic. I’m not on a fool’s errand.”
Black Enterprise reported that Price was interested in focusing on three key issues: “The academic and social status of children, unemployment in the inner cities, and rising racial isolation.” The magazine went on to quote him as saying, “I [want] a team of colleagues who are experts and players in these areas [who can] talk about this agenda and devise programs that respond to it.” So Price set about publicizing his goals. His first major speech as Urban League president, delivered in Indianapolis in July of 1994, received national attention, for it addressed a number of controversial subjects and sent the league down an entirely different path from that which it followed earlier.
Desired an End to Separatism
In his speech, Price moved away from a position held by some civil rights leaders, namely that the poverty of inner-city blacks is due to white racism. The New York Times noted that Price’s message de-emphasizing racism as the key issue faced by blacks “reflects a sharp difference” from other civil rights leaders. “We must not let ourselves, and especially our children, fall into the paranoid trap of thinking that racism accounts for all that plagues us,” Price said in his speech, as quoted in the New York Times. “The global realignment of work and wealth is, if anything, the bigger culprit.”
Price went on to criticize any form of racism, and to say that there is no future in so-called “black separatism.” He declared: “I fully understand the instinct to separate when we are incessantly under economic siege, when we’re still discriminated against some 40 years after the Brown [v. Board of Education] decision, and when, thanks to those recurring images on evening newscasts of black youngsters being hauled off to jail, even our honor students are trailed like common thieves when they enter stores. Even so, it’s suicidal economically to become so bitter that we isolate ourselves from others.”
Price said that he would have the National Urban League continue to focus on its traditional concerns of poor schools, idle youngsters, and high unemployment. But he noted that the league would address the issues with the understanding that these problems cut across racial lines, that the changing economy as a whole is disenfranchising whole populations. The New York Times called the speech “noteworthy” because it did not stress goals that other civil rights groups championed, namely set-asides of government contracts and affirmative action programs.
Price also rejected racial set-asides in jobs and training; that is, he believes that a more politically practical approach is to help entire neighborhoods and census tracts— regardless of race—get jobs. Price called on blacks who can afford to, to donate $500 to $1,000 each to pay for inner-city programs for young people. The money would be spent by local churches, YMCAs, and neighborhood groups, and monitored by the Urban League. “There is an old saying that it takes a village to raise a child,” Price was quoted as saying in the New York Times. “Well the black middle class has moved out of the village. That’s the natural order of things. I don’t ask the middle class to move back. But they have to move back spiritually, or at least financially.”
Pled for Unity
One part of Price’s groundbreaking speech drew the most attention. Throughout 1994, black-Jewish relations had been strained by harsh comments directed at Jews by, among others, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. According to the Detroit Free Press, Price called Jews the “long-distance runners in the civil rights movement,” and went on to say, “Just as we denounce misleading media stereotypes of African Americans, it is morally repugnant to impugn an entire people, especially long-standing allies like Jews, because of the unconscionable behavior of some of them.”
However, Price also answered those critics who say that more “mainstream” black leaders should reject Farrakhan. In the Indianapolis speech, Price defended the right of African Americans to confer with whomever they wish “even if that means conferring with those with whom we vehemently disagree on other issues.” Price’s comments gained the National Urban League the attention it was lacking, and he generated anew the debate on how best to address issues of poverty. Price has said he wants government to set up a jobs program that will put people to work on infrastructure projects, and he has begun to court major sponsors to support the league, as well as cutting some league programs to get the agency’s budget in order.
“It’s a moral imperative,” Price was quoted by the New York Times as saying of his work to help the urban underclass. “And as a pragmatic matter, their pain affects us. The cynicism of kids growing up in the inner cities contributes to behaviors that are reported on the evening news, which ensnares all of our kids in negative stereotypes.” Price sees it as his life’s work to end those stereotypes and reverse the trend.
Sources
Black Enterprise, August, 1994, p. 19.
Detroit Free Press, July 25, 1994, p. A1.
Jet, June 13, 1994, p. 26.
Newsweek, August 15, 1994, p. 57.
New York Times, December 14,1977, p. 11; November 13, 1988, p. A32; September 22, 1991, Sec. 12 WC, p. 3; September 23, 1991, p. A17; July 24, 1994, p.18; July 27, 1994, p. A21.
Wall Street Journal, May 26, 1994, p. B10; July 27,1994, p. A2.
Additional information provided by a National Urban League press kit, including a biographical sketch and Price’s Keynote Address, July 24, 1994.
—John LoDico
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Price, Hugh B. 1941–