National Urban League

Origins

Philanthropic organizations funded initiatives to educate and train the unskilled labor pool in the North. Organizations established with interracial boards— such as the Committee for the Improvement of Industrial Condition Among Negroes in New York (founded in 1906), the National League for the Protection of Colored Women (founded in 1906), and the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes (founded in 1910)—provided housing and vocational and educational training. These groups, led by Ruth Standish Baldwin and George Edmund Hays, later consolidated to form the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes in 1911.

Baldwin, the wife of philanthropist and railroad magnate William H. Baldwin, was active in the National League for the Protection of Colored Women and spent much of her time as an advocate for social justice, especially for the protection of women from mistreatment and manipulation. George Hayes, a sociologist who worked in New York for the Committee for the Improvement of Industrial Condition Among Negroes, believed in training blacks as social workers. Hayes approached Baldwin with his theory regarding the importance of both research and training to prepare blacks for urban life and of educating blacks in the social sciences. Together they worked to establish the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, which Baldwin insisted that Hayes lead to ensure the incorporation of his ideas into the framework of the organization.

The league provided programs that included counseling, education, employment, and housing for the migrants. Under Hays, the league also created a social service department at Fisk University, which created a model for developing a vested interest in black colleges serving urban communities. Due to the success of its programs, by the end of World War I the league had grown to include 27 affiliates staffed by paid professionals.

The league had a pivotal year in 1918. The first of the year's many changes involved the league's name. Many thought the name National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes was cumbersome, so the organization agreed to shorten its name to the National Urban League, with the change becoming [Page 366]official in 1920. Also during this time, the New York office became an affiliate and plans were under way to establish a national program that would reorganize and change the direction of the league. George Hayes left the league to join the Department of Labor, and Eugene Kinckle Jones became the next to direct the National Urban League.

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