Not alms but opportunity : the Urban League & the politics of racial uplift, 1910-1950 / Touré F. Reed.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reed, Touré F.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

National Urban League--History--20th century.

National Urban League.

National Book Committee.

African Americans--New York (State)--New York--Social conditions--20th century.

African Americans.

African Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Social conditions--20th century.

Social classes--New York (State)--New York--History--20th century.

Social classes.

Social classes--Illinois--Chicago--History--20th century.

African Americans--Economic conditions.

Social conditions.

History.

New York (N.Y.)--Social conditions--20th century.

New York (N.Y.).

Chicago (Ill.)--Social conditions--20th century.

Chicago (Ill.).

African Americans--Social conditions--To 1964.

African Americans--Social conditions.

African Americans--Economic conditions--20th century.

Illinois--Chicago.

New York (State)--New York.

Physical Description:

xviii, 254 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2008]

Summary:

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:

The ideological origins of the Urban League

Community development and housing, 1910-1932

Vocational training, employment, and job placements, 1910-1932

Labor unions, social reorganization, and the acculturation of Black workers, 1910-1932

Vocational guidance and organized labor during the New Deal, 1933-1940

Employment from the March on Washington movement to the Pilot Placement Project, 1940-1950

Housing and neighborhood work in the age of the welfare state, 1933-1950.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [235]-244) and index.

ISBN:

9780807832233

0807832235

9780807859025

0807859028

OCLC:

212908709