To Be Equal#30
July 28, 2010
100 Years Young -- The State of the National Urban League

Marc H. Morial
President and CEO
National Urban League

“History with all its unending pain cannot be outlived, but faced with courage need not be lived again"  Maya Angelou

On Wednesday, July 28th, I will officially kick-off the National Urban League’s Centennial conference in Washington, DC with the annual State of the Urban League Address.  As is our custom, and in acknowledgment of the ultimate power that has guided us during our first century of service, this speech is being given, not in the conference convention hall, but in a house of worship -- the First Baptist Church of Glenarden, Maryland.  

Next week, the entire speech will be available on line at www.nul.org.  What follows is a brief excerpt:

Let me begin tonight by telling you a story of an odd couple.  It’s the story of George Edmund Haynes and Ruth Standish Baldwin -- the unlikely duo that teamed together in the challenging times of the early 20th century to birth this mighty Urban League Movement which we celebrate this week.

Ruth Standish Baldwin, whose ancestors arrived in America on the Mayflower, and George Edmund Haynes, whose ancestors arrived here on a slave ship, brought together three fledgling organizations:  the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, the National League for the Protection of Colored Women, and the Committee for Improving the Industrial Conditions of Negroes in New York.   They combined them with their own vision, passion, and sense of duty to form, on September 29, 1910, in New York City, the National Urban League.

That odd couple began a remarkable journey at a time when hundreds of thousands of African Americans began to flee Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida and Louisiana, looking for the doors of opportunity that the great and growing urban metropolises of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit , Chicago and so many others held.  They were fleeing the Ku Klux Klan, the betrayal of the post-reconstruction period…the mechanization of farming for the promise of a better life.  

But that hope met the barriers of the north. Inadequate housing.  Nonexistent schools.  Poor health conditions.  That odd couple decided they were going to do something about it.  

In our first century, we beat back the Klan.
We stopped the lynchings.
We turned a climate of fear into a climate of hope.
We helped a rural people transition to the industrial jobs of the north.
In our first century, we began to tear down many of the ugly walls of segregation, injustice and inequality.

As our second century begins, some ask whether the National Urban League is still relevant.  I say to them, as long as there are people out of work, as long as there are people in need of better schools, as long as there’s a need for safe, decent and wholesome afterschool programs, as long as there are people who long to become homeowners and are looking for somewhere to turn, this National Urban League and Urban League Movement is not only relevant, but we are here to stay.

We are one Urban League, and we are empowered.  
We are empowered to embrace our second century.
By the power vested in me, let the second century of the Urban League begin.

Thank you.  God bless you.  God bless America.  And God bless the National Urban League.
 

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30TBE 7/28/10 ▪ 120 Wall Street ▪ New York, NY 10005 ▪ (212) 558-5300 WWW.NUL.ORG