Urban League

The National Urban League (NUL) is a nonprofit, civil rights, and community-based organization that promotes economic opportunity and advancement for Black Americans. With more than 100 local affiliates, the NUL provides direct services and programs to an estimated 2 million people nationwide.

Founded in 1910 as the Committee on Urban Conditions among Negroes, it began as an experiment in interracial cooperation between Ruth Standish Baldwin, social philanthropist and cofounder of the National League for the Protection of Colored Women, and Dr. George Edmund Haynes, social work visionary and the first African American to earn a social science doctorate from Columbia University. Its original mission was to train social workers, conduct research, and create job opportunities for Black Americans through vocational guidance and policy advocacy. In October 1911, Haynes brought together the National League for the Protection of Colored Women, the Committee on Urban Conditions among Negroes, and a third organization that also focused on Negro migrants called the Committee on Improving the Industrial Conditions of Negroes in New York, unifying all three organizations under a new name, the National League on Urban Conditions among Negroes.

In its early years, empirical research and the training of Black social workers were key organizational goals. Influenced by both the Tuskegee Institute and Du Bois's notion of trained leadership, the league worked to prepare workers for industrial employment and train a generation of professional social workers. The league continued to be driven by research and has conducted hundreds of surveys on the conditions of various Black communities. Robert E. Park was the first president of the interracial board of the Chicago Urban League, founded in 1916 as an affiliate of the National Urban League. In 1920 the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes shortened its name to the National Urban League and began publishing the magazine Opportunity, Journal of Negro Life. In the 1960s the NUL expanded its scope to include the social, cultural, and economic advancement of Black Americans and their communities and began publishing a yearly report on the demographic conditions of the Black community, titled The State of Black America. In addition to expanding the social service component, it became a conduit for funneling government antipoverty funds to initiatives on housing, health, education, and minority business. In the early 1980s NUL expanded its focus to teen pregnancy and urban crime.

In 2003 Marc H. Morial became the newest president and chief executive officer of NUL, initiating the first legislative policy conference and securing $10 million in new funding, Morial has developed a “five-point empowerment agenda” that focuses on the equality gap in education, economics, health and quality of life, civic engagement, and civil rights and racial justice. Today, the NUL continues to chronicle the status of African American and urban communities nationwide through their publications the State of Black America and Opportunity Journal.