Whitney Moore Young Jr. (July 31, 1921 – March 11, 1971) was an American civil rights leader. Trained as a social worker, he spent most of his career working to end employment discrimination in the United States and turning the National Urban League from a relatively passive civil rights organization into one that aggressively worked for equitable access to socioeconomic opportunity for the historically disenfranchised. Young was influential in the United States federal government's War on Poverty in the 1960s.
Young was born in Shelby County, Kentucky, on July 31, 1921. His father, Whitney M. Young Sr., was the president of the Lincoln Institute, and served twice as the president of the Kentucky Negro Educational Association. Whitney's mother, Laura (Ray) Young, was a teacher who served as the first female postmistress in Kentucky (second in the United States), being appointed to that position by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940. Young enrolled in the Lincoln Institute at the age of 13, graduating as his class valedictorian, with his sister Margaret becoming salutatorian, in 1937.
Young earned his Bachelor of Science in social work from Kentucky State University, a historically black institution. Young had aspirations of becoming a medical doctor at Kentucky State. During his time at Kentucky State, Young was also a forward on the university's basketball team, and was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, where he served as the vice president. He became the president of his senior class, and graduated in 1941.
During World War II, Young was trained in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was then assigned to a road construction crew of black soldiers supervised by Southern white officers. After just three weeks, he was promoted from private to first sergeant, creating hostility on both sides. Despite the tension, Young was able to mediate effectively between his white officers and black soldiers angry at their poor treatment. This situation propelled Young into a career in race relations.
After the war, Young joined his wife, Margaret, at the University of Minnesota, where he earned a master's degree in social work in 1947 and volunteered for the St. Paul branch of the National Urban League. He was then appointed as the industrial relations secretary in that branch in 1949.
In 1950, Young became president of the National Urban League's Omaha, Nebraska chapter. In that position, he helped get Black workers into jobs previously reserved for white people. Under his leadership, the chapter tripled its number of paying members. While he was president of the Omaha Urban League, Young taught at the University of Nebraska from 1950 to 1954, and Creighton University from 1951 to 1952.
In 1954, he took up his next position, as the first dean of social work at Atlanta University. There, Young supported alumni in their boycott of the Georgia Conference of Social Welfare in response to low rates of African-American employment within the organization. In December 1954, Young and his wife Margaret were the first Black people to join the United Liberal Church (since 1965, named the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta), and Whitney would eventually join its board of trustees. Due in part to the Youngs' influence, the church stopped having its annual picnics at segregated parks and became "integrated, not just desegregated." Many in the congregation were active in the civil rights movement, and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., then assistant to his father at nearby Ebenezer Baptist Church, was a pulpit guest.
In 1957, he co-authored Some Pioneers in Social Work: brief sketches; student work book with Florence V. Adams.
In 1960, Young was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation grant for a postgraduate year at Harvard University. In the same year, he joined the NAACP and rose to become president of the Georgia branch, where he was also a close friend of Roy Wilkins, the NAACP's executive director.
Executive Director of National Urban League
In 1961, at age 40, Young became executive director of the National Urban League. He was unanimously selected by the National Urban League's Board of Directors, succeeding Lester Granger on October 1, 1961. Within four years he expanded the organization from 38 employees to 1,600 employees; and from an annual budget of $325,000 to one of $6,100,000. Young served as President of the Urban League until his death in 1971.
The Urban League had traditionally been a cautious and moderate organization with many white members. During Young's ten-year tenure at the League, he brought the organization to the forefront of the American Civil Rights Movement. He both greatly expanded its mission and kept the support of influential white business and political leaders. In a 1964 interview with Robert Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro? and archived at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, Young expressed the mission of the Urban League not as ground-level activism in itself but as the supplement and complement of the activities of all other organizations; he states, "we are the social engineers, we are the strategists, we are the planners, we are the people who work at the level of policy-making, policy implementation, the highest echelons of the corporate community, the highest echelons of the governmental community – both at the federal, state and local level – the highest echelons of the labor movement." As part of the League's new mission, Young initiated programs like "Street Academy", an alternative education system to prepare high school dropouts for college, and "New Thrust", an effort to help local black leaders identify and solve community problems. He also pushed for initiatives like scholarships to recruit black people into the architecture profession, which has been and continues to be predominantly white.
Young also pushed for federal aid to cities, proposing a domestic "Marshall Plan". This plan, which called for $145 billion in spending over 10 years, was partially incorporated into President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty. Young described his proposals for integration, social programs, and affirmative action in his two books, To Be Equal (1964) and Beyond Racism (1969).
As executive director of the League, Young pushed major corporations to hire more Black people. In doing so, he fostered close relationships with CEOs such as Henry Ford II, leading some Black people to charge that Young had sold out to the white establishment. Young denied these charges and stressed the importance of working within the system to effect change. Still, Young was not afraid to take a bold stand in favor of civil rights. For instance, in 1963, Young was one of the organizers of the March on Washington despite the opposition of many white business leaders.
Despite his reluctance to enter politics himself, Young was an important advisor to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. In 1968, faced with the possibility of Robert C. Weaver resigning his position as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Johnson considered Young as a potential replacement. After the 1968 election, representatives of President-elect Richard Nixon tried to interest Young in a Cabinet post, but Young refused, believing that he could accomplish more through the Urban League.
Young had a particularly close relationship with President Johnson, and in 1969, Johnson honored Young with the highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Young, in turn, was impressed by Johnson's commitment to civil rights.
Despite their close personal relationship, Young was frustrated by Johnson's attempts to use him to balance Martin Luther King's opposition to the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War. Young publicly supported Johnson's war policy, but came to oppose the war after the end of Johnson's presidency.
In 1968 Herman Ferguson and Arthur Harris were convicted of conspiring to murder Young. The trial took place in the New York State Supreme Court, with Justice Paul Balsam presiding.