Not alms but opportunity
Subtitle: the Urban League and the politics of racial uplift, 1910-1950
By: Touré F. Reed.
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Chapel Hill
Language: eng
Number of pages: 254
ISBN-13: 9780807832233; 9780807859025
Subjects: National Urban League -- History -- 20th century; African Americans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Social conditions -- 20th century; African Americans -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Social conditions -- 20th century; Social classes -- New York (State) -- New York -- History -- 20th century; Social classes -- Illinois -- Chicago -- History -- 20th century; African Americans -- Social conditions -- To 1964; African Americans -- Economic conditions -- 20th century; New York (N.Y.) -- Social conditions -- 20th century; Chicago (Ill.) -- Social conditions -- 20th century
Description: Illuminating the class issues that shaped the racial uplift movement, Touř 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. 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 African 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.--from publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The ideological origins of the Urban League; title: Community development and housing, 1910-1932; title: Vocational training, employment, and job placements, 1910-1932; title: Labor unions, social reorganization, and the acculturation of Black workers, 1910-1932; title: Vocational guidance and organized labor, 1933-1940; title: Employment from the March on Washington movement to the Pilot Placement Project, 1940-1950; title: Housing and neighborhood work in the age of the welfare state, 1933-1950.