National Urban League

The National Urban League (NUL), formerly known as the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, is a nonpartisan civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of African Americans and against racial discrimination in the United States. It is the oldest and largest community-based organization of its kind in the nation. Its current President is Marc Morial.

The Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes was founded in New York City on September 29, 1910 by Ruth Standish Baldwin and Dr. George Edmund Haynes, among others. It merged with the Committee for the Improvement of Industrial Conditions Among Negroes in New York (founded in New York in 1906) and the National League for the Protection of Colored Women (founded in 1905), and was renamed the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes.

In 1918, Eugene K. Jones took the leadership of the organization. Under his direction, the League significantly expanded its multifaceted campaign to crack the barriers to black employment, spurred first by the boom years of the 1920s, and then by the desperate years of the Great Depression.

In 1920, the organization took the present name, the National Urban League. The mission of the Urban League movement, as stated by the National Urban League, is "to enable African Americans to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and civil rights."

In 1941, Lester Granger was appointed Executive Secretary and led the NUL's effort to support the March on Washington proposed by A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and A. J. Muste to protest racial discrimination in defense work and the military. During the Civil Rights Movement, Granger prevailed in his insistence that the NUL continue its strategy of "education and persuasion".

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