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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 39. Negro Improvement and Protest Organizations - 10. The Urban League
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838 An American Dilemma
there are other committees, usually interracial in composition. Many local
Leagues, for example, have a committee on industrial relations. Each local
office is staffed by a trained secretary, who is the responsible head of the
work, and by specialized social workers and office workers, of a number
determined by the financial resources of the local League. Thirty-nine of
the forty-six local Urban Leagues are members of city-wide Community
Chests, and most of these receive the greater part and often all of their
financial resources from this source. Most local Leagues have incomes from
individual contributions j
some receive membership dues. For much of their
work the local Leagues are able to solicit voluntary services from ministers,
teachers, doctors, and other public spirited citizens in the Negro com-
munity. The National Office estimates that the combined budget of the
local branches at present approximates half a million dollars annually.®
The activity of the local Urban Leagues is as wide in scope as modern
social work when applied to the variegated needs of the poverty-stricken
Negro communities. The outside observer cannot help but be impressed,
not only by the urge to keep abreast of the latest developments in the
broader social work field, but also with the attempts to find new solutions
for the specialized problems of the Negro ghetto. It is apparent, however,
that, particularly in the South, the Leagues work under tremendous handi-
caps on account of indifference and even hostility from most white people
and halfheartedness on the part of even white sponsors and friends. It is
also apparent that, all over the country, the efficiency of the work is kept
•down by inadequate financial resources.
Any detailed description of the activities of the local Leagues in attempt-
ing to get even the smallest economic openings for Negro workers and,
generally, to heal the wounds of caste and mass poverty is out of the ques-
tion in this book. They touch problems of education, home and neighbor-
hood, problems of youth, recreation, vocational guidance and training,
welfare work, housing, health, morals and manners. The Leagues carry on
day nurseries, sometimes with baby clinics, child placement agencies, and,
occasionally, schools for Negro girls who have become pregnant 5
they
organize clubs for boys, girls, mothers, neighborhood and other groups j
training schools for janitors or domestics j
parent-teacher associations^ study
groups in trade unionism j
health weeks, and so on. To mitigate delinquency
among Negroes they offer to cooperate with the law-enforcement agencies
and to perform such tasks as furnishing supplementary parole supervisors,
safeguarding the interest of girls appearing in court, and, in some cases,
finding homes for them. Fights are waged against commercialized prostitu-
* The statements in this and the following paragraphs are founded upon Bunche, of,
cit,y Vol. 2, pp, 220 ff., upon information supplied by L. Hollingsworth Wood, Eugene
Kinckle Jones, and Lester B. Granger of the National Urban League, and upon the
writer’s own observations.
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