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(1944) [MARC] Author: Gunnar Myrdal
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Note: Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.

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Chapter 39. Improvement and Protest Organizations 837
10. The Urban League
Much of what has been said of the N.A.A.C.P. applies also to the Urban
League. Like the N.A.A.C.P., the Urban League is an interracial move-
ment. Both organizations were started on white initiative. In 1906 a group
of whites and Negroes formed The Committee for Improving the Indus-
trial Conditions of Negroes in New York City. About the same time,
another interracial group in New York formed The League for Protection
of Colored Women. In 1910 a third interracial group held a conference
which constituted itself into The Committee on Urban Conditions Among
Negroes. The following year these three organizations decided to merge
into one: The National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes. The
philanthropists, social workers, and professionals who made up the nucleus
of the new organization “held that the Negro needed not alms but oppor-
tunity—opportunity to work at the job for which the Negro was best fitted,
with equal pay for equal work, and equal opportunity for advancement.”^®
The late professor, Edwin R. A. Seligman, became the first president of the
organization.
The National Urban League is the parent organization. It has its central
office in New York. In order to expand the work of the League in Southern
communities, it has a Southern Field Branch Office in Atlanta, Georgia.
The National Urban League is governed by an Executive Board of fifteen
persons of whom seven are Negroes and eight whites. The president of the
organization was for many years L. Hollingsworth Wood, and the execu-
tive secretary was Eugene Kinckle Jones, both of whom had been with the
League since its beginning. They are now both retiring and are being
replaced by William H. Baldwin and Lester B. Granger, respectively.®
Besides the executive secretary there is a staff of eight executive officers and
ten office workers. One of the officers is white but all the other employees
of the National League are Negroes. The League publishes Opportunity
and The Secretariat^ the one directed to the general public, the other serving
as house organ for the organization. The National League operates at
present upon a budget of approximately $60,000 (including Opportunity)
It is raised by contributions from foundations and from individuals.’^®
Local branches of the League are established in 46 cities. Of these, 12 are
in the South, including the Border states, 2 are on the Pacific Coast,* 12 are
in the Northeast, and the remainder are in the Middle West. These figures
reflect the history of the organization. It came into being to assist the
unadjusted groups of Negroes migrating to Northern urban and industrial
areas, but it has spread out to the Southern and West Coast cities which
have similar needs.
The local Urban Leagues are governed by interracial boards. Sometimes
* Mr. Jones retains the office ot General Secretary but is on leave itom bis duties.

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