Not Alms but Opportunity: The Urban League and the Politics of Racial Uplift, 1910-1950Univ of North Carolina Press, 2009 M06 1 - 272 pages Illuminating the class issues that shaped the racial uplift movement, Toure Reed explores the ideology and policies of the national, New York, and Chicago Urban Leagues during the first half of the twentieth century. Reed argues that racial uplift in the Urban League reflected many of the class biases pervading contemporaneous social reform movements, resulting in an emphasis on behavioral, rather than structural, remedies to the disadvantages faced by Afro-Americans. Reed traces the Urban League's ideology to the famed Chicago School of Sociology. The Chicago School offered Leaguers powerful scientific tools with which to foil the thrust of eugenics. However, Reed argues, concepts such as ethnic cycle and social disorganization and reorganization led the League to embrace behavioral models of uplift that reflected a deep circumspection about poor Afro-Americans and fostered a preoccupation with the needs of middle-class blacks. According to Reed, the League's reform endeavors from the migration era through World War II oscillated between projects to "adjust" or even "contain" unacculturated Afro-Americans and projects intended to enhance the status of the Afro-American middle class. Reed's analysis complicates the mainstream account of how particular class concerns and ideological influences shaped the League's vision of group advancement as well as the consequences of its endeavors. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 The Ideological Origins of the Urban League | 11 |
2 Community Development and Housing 19101932 | 27 |
3 Vocational Training Employment and Job Placements 19101932 | 59 |
4 Labor Unions Social Reorganization and the Acculturation of Black Workers 19101932 | 81 |
5 Vocational Guidance and Organized Labor during the New Deal 19331940 | 107 |
6 Employment from the March on Washington to the Pilot Placement Project 19401950 | 139 |
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Not Alms But Opportunity: The Urban League & the Politics of Racial Uplift ... Touré F. Reed No preview available - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
activities Afro Afro-Ameri Afro-American workers Afro-Americans American Annual Report argued Arnold Hill asserted assistance black and white black belt black labor black women black workers Bureau CCRR Chicago League Chicago School Chicago Urban League city’s claimed Committee committee’s Council cul’s delinquency Department of Industrial discrimination domestic Dunbar Apartments economic employed employers ethnic cycle Eugene K Executive Order 8802 executive secretary federal fepc Harlem Haynes Ibid improve blacks increase Industrial Relations integration interracial job placement Johnson League of Greater League officials League’s Lester Granger ment migrants National Urban League neighborhoods NLUCAN Bulletin NUL Papers nul’s nyul opportunities organized labor percent Philip Randolph political potential Press programs projects public housing race relations Randolph’s Reid rents residents semiskilled Series 13 skilled social disorganization social-work tenants tion ultimately undermined union movement University vocational wages white workers white-collar workplace York League York Urban League York’s