To Be Equal

New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good/Good. 254, [2] pages. Occasional footnotes. DJ has some wear, tears, chips and soiling. Some endpaper and minor page soiling noted. Whitney Moore Young Jr. (July 31, 1921 - March 11, 1971) was an American civil rights leader. 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. During World War II, Young was trained in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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. 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.[17] 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. In his eulogy, Nixon stated that Young's legacy was that "he knew how to accomplish what other people were merely for". This work offered the author's recommendation for a program of special effort in employment, education, housing, health, welfare, and leadership proposing practical alternatives to continuous racial conflict. At the height of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, Whitney Young took the fight for equal opportunity from the pulpits and street corners to the board rooms and corner offices of corporate America. Forging allies from Wall Street to the Oval Office, Whitney Young's battle for economic justice and inclusion laid the foundation for an upwardly mobile Black middle class that is still rising today. Though recognized as a major civil rights leader and one of the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington, Whitney Young's strategy of engaging political and corporate leaders as partners in the struggle for economic justice was met with opposition by many Whites and skepticism by more militant Blacks. Despite these challenges, Whitney Young turned the rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement into jobs and economic opportunity for African Americans. In addition to sitting down with corporate titans, he was a trusted advisor to three presidents - John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. Johnson used Young's "Domestic Marshall Plan" as the basis for his "War on Poverty.".