From the Executive Director
Whitney Young—The Best Known Social Worker of the Past 50 Years

Even before I became a social worker 25 years ago I knew the name Whitney M. Young, Jr. I could not have told you much about him, but he was associated in my mind with the civil rights movement. It was several years later, once I was working at NASW, that I learned that Whitney Young had been president of the national NASW some years ago. While I still did not really know who he was, except that he had been president of the National Urban League, I knew that someone important was associated with the social work profession on a different level than most of the social work leaders we are familiar with.
It was one year ago, on New Year’s Day, that I came across a biography written by Dennis C. Dickerson in 1998 titled, Militant Mediator: Whitney M. Young, Jr. I thought that it would be fascinating to know more about him; but I did not get the book until June. I am finishing it now. Here’s what I find so interesting from reading this biography.

Civil Rights Leader and Advisor to Presidents
Whitney Young was a major figure during the civil rights movement in the 1960’s along with such leaders as Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (whose wife, Aminda Wilkins, was very active in NYC-NASW), James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, John Lewis and James Foreman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women, and Martin Luther King, Jr., of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

In the organizing of the 1963 March on Washington, A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin approached Whitney Young early on and received his agreement to participate. According to Dickerson, this was helpful in getting the support of other leaders, first of Roy Wilkins, and later of Reverend King.

There were concerns about having a mass rally, including the fear that there would be violence. Young played a key role in designing the March to protect against such an eventuality and was an essential fundraiser for the event.

Following the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Young played a unique role in working with the White House to assure that specific statutes were implemented and that the intended beneficiaries of the Act were actually helped.

In addition, in his 1964 book, To Be Equal, Young called for a domestic Marshall Plan to address social and economic inequities that perpetuated black inequality. Many of these ideas emerged in Lyndon Johnson’s State of the Union Address when he announced the War on Poverty.

Young had cultivated a working relationship with John F. Kennedy while he was President, and with Lyndon Johnson well before his succeeding Kennedy. It is not surprising that his ideas found their way into Johnson’s anti-poverty program.

From MSW Student to Dean and Head of the Urban League
At an earlier time in his life, following service in World War II, Whitney Young decided to become a social worker and enrolled in the University of Minnesota School of Social Work, concentrating in group work. He had discovered that he had a particular ability to mediate conflicts between white and black soldiers while in the Army, and he saw social work as an opportunity to further develop his skills and interests.

The school was closely affiliated with the St. Paul and Minneapolis Urban Leagues, and he had his second year field placement at the Minneapolis office.

For his masters’ thesis Young wrote a history of the League, focusing on the relationship between social work and race relations. He came to understand the League as an interracial social work agency that believed that blacks needed allies with whites, especially influential whites that headed major institutions, to overcome oppressive societal conditions. He also discussed the use of group work and its focus on racial discrimination encountered in employment and housing following the massive migration of black families from the south.

Following his being hired by the League, Young soon became the executive director of the Omaha branch, where he took up the challenge of recruiting leaders of the white establishment to work along with members of the black community, to press for change. Several years later he was appointed executive director of the National Urban League, where he strengthened the League’s affiliates and developed new ones, especially in the South where the environment was less than friendly to an organization determined to advance the cause for black equality.

Prior to heading up the National Urban League, Whitney Young served as Dean to the School of Social Work at Atlanta University, in the mid 1950’s. He worked to advance the school’s academic standing, including working closely with the Council on Social Work Education. He also succeeded at increasing enrollment, the school’s scholarship base, as well as involving the school in the community.

It was during this experience that he became familiar first hand with the level of discrimination in the South, and involved both himself and the school in the emerging Civil Rights movement.

It was in 1969 that Whitney Young became President of NASW where he focused the organization on the inner city and race relations. His leadership sparked initiatives in Chapters to take stands on police harassment of the Black Panthers, and on oppressive law and order proposals.

Tragically, Whitney Young died on March 11, 1971 while traveling in Africa.

The Profession’s Recognition of its Own
NASW holds an annual Whitney Young lecture which has either taken place at national NASW conferences or connected to other events in Washington; the keynote speakers that I have heard have been inspiring. Nevertheless, when I have been able to attend, I did not learn about Whitney Young.

Similarly, as a community organizing student in the late 1970’s, I never did come across the organizing experiences of this leading social worker.

When I mentioned this to a colleague recently, she said that she was not surprised. She said that the failure to recognize the contributions of black people in the U.S. has been going on for 400 years. Social work is not all that different from the rest of society.

That is hard to hear. Social workers should be inspired by the story and example of Whitney Young and examine how our knowledge of him can provide a direction to the profession with which he strongly identified.

This is especially relevant in light of NYC-NASW’s Undoing Racism Project and the fact that racial disparities continue to be an enormous reality in today’s society.r

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