The Urban League and Its Strategy

The National Urban League is a national professional community services agency with local affiliates in seventy strategically located cities which seeks to break down discriminatory patterns impeding the progress of the Negro population toward first-class citizenship. Founded fifty-four years ago to assist Negroes from the rural South migrating to large cities, it has grown steadily over the years. Today, its program concentrates not only on wiping out the last vestiges of racial discrimination, but on stressing the need for self-help among Negro and other disadvantaged citizens to better qualify themselves for the trek out of poverty and into first-class citizenship. The Urban League concentrates on changing discriminatory patterns by an interracial effort. Its officials seek to bridge the gaps between white and Negro communities, to promote racial understanding, and to enlist the support of men and women in positions of power for those whose heritage has been one of deprivation and denial. Each local branch maintains a voluntary interracial board of directors and a paid, usually integrated, staff. Implicit in the League's philosophy is the frank recognition that interracial co-operation is an indispensable prerequisite to the achievement of significant and lasting gains for Negro citizens. The League also stresses that the nation cannot perfect its democratic institutions until Negro citizens obtain their inalienable rights as Americans and human beings.