Pittsburgh and The Urban League Movement: A Century of Social Service and Activism

Abstract

Joe William Trotter Jr.’s book Pittsburgh and The Urban League Movement takes a comprehensive look, spanning one hundred years, at this national organization’s work and development in Pittsburgh and surrounding communities. Trotter divides the book into three manageable sections: Part I: Founding and Early History; Part II: The Depression and World War II; and Part III: The Modern Black Freedom Movement and Beyond. In his treatment of the Pittsburgh Urban League, Trotter attempts to put to rest the longstanding debate concerning the loyalties of the organization. Has the organization acted as an advocate for Black middle-class professionals, or has it looked out for the interest of the Black lower-class masses in the fight against racial injustices? To put it more succinctly, has the organization been more Booker T. (as in Washington) or W. E. B. (as in Du Bois)? Although Trotter provides examples of both with Washington’s focus on work and training and Du Bois’s focus on civil rights, the author seems to fall on the side of Du Bois, making the argument that the social organization, specifically the Pittsburgh branch, has always been in the equality fight for African Americans.In stature, one can argue the National Urban League, founded in 1910, has taken a backseat to the NAACP, the premier civil rights organization, founded the previous year. Much of that could be the result of how the Urban League historically has been perceived by some—an organization more focused on the economic uplift of professional African Americans as opposed to one engaged in social activities to meet the moment. Trotter raises these concerns and ultimately spends much of the book disabusing those notions, using the Pittsburgh branch. He writes, “the Urban League of Pittsburgh consistently merged social science research and professional social services with grassroots social justice, workers’ rights, civil rights, and black power struggles” (5).The book’s first section examines the founding of the Pittsburgh branch and how it tackled such issues as housing, labor, health, race relations, and politics. For historians, this early section is a gold mine. Trotter, in a painstaking way, provides extensive details of the organization’s start in Pittsburgh to include the background of early leaders, a discussion of the national organization’s expansion, a look at its help with migrants from the South, the recruitment of black workers for jobs, and meetings with a list of industry heads such as W. G. Marshall, personnel director at the Philadelphia Company, and L. H. Burnett, vice president of Carnegie Steel Company. Underscoring this onslaught of details is Trotter’s thesis that the organization was as actively engaged in civil rights as it was in securing economic opportunities for African Americans. Trotter reinforces his position near the end of the section with an anecdote about the Pittsburgh branch requesting a meeting with black nationalist Marcus Garvey, whose base and appeal was to the black masses and their concerns for equal justice.In Part II, Trotter examines the impact of the Great Depression and World War II on the Pittsburgh branch’s mission to train and provide employment opportunities for African Americans. The adage when America catches a cold, the African American community gets pneumonia is evident in the impact of the Great Depression on Pittsburgh as noted by Trotter: “By February 1934, African Americans made up just 6 percent of Allegheny County’s total population but accounted for 40 percent of its unemployed workers; 43 percent of blacks were on relief rolls, compared with 16 percent of whites” (71). To mitigate the effects of the Great Depression, Trotter explains how the Pittsburgh Urban League shifted its energy of cultivating relationships with the business community advantageous to the African American community, to focusing on government agencies on all levels. The Pittsburgh Urban League navigated through New Deal programs that provided opportunities for African American employment such as public works projects. But along with the efforts in finding employment for these men and women of color, the local Urban League also spent time investigating discrimination on how New Deal programs were being implemented, according to the author. In addition, the local Urban League continued to investigate wrong doings in the private sector. The ire of the local Urban League went to downtown companies that refused to or were slow to hire black workers. As a result, the Pittsburgh Urban League became involved in the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign. This was a national initiative of civil rights organizations attempting to integrate companies by capitalizing on African American spending power as evident in Pittsburgh’s numbers, according to Trotter. The national movement reached Pittsburgh in 1933 to protest grocery stores Atlantic and Pacific (A&P) and Butler. Urban League official Roy Garvin, one of the leaders to spearhead this movement and to encourage housewives not to buy where they weren’t welcome to work, said in a speech that “Allegheny County’s 83,000 black residents spent $63 million a year—close to 28 percent of that on food” (94).Trotter’s theme that the Urban League was more militant on social justice issues than some have given it credit for is strongest in the last section of his book. And it would make sense because the postwar period Trotter covers here touches dead smack into the nascent US civil rights movement and later the Black Power struggle. As more and more young people were no longer content to wait for equality on so many fronts, including employment, they boycotted companies with a greater militancy and sense of urgency than in previous years. Trotter deftly shows the Urban League, although not out front, waging a stealth campaign against these same companies that looked to the organization as a stabling force. He explained how these companies viewed the Pittsburgh Urban League as a safe harbor because of the organization’s reputation of not wanting to be confrontational and risking losing support, money, and resources. Arthur Edmonds, executive director of Pittsburgh Urban League from 1960 to 1985, said, “We were considered the good guys because we were not participants in the demonstrations. Companies would run to us for help, so that they wouldn’t have to deal with the troublemakers. What these companies did not realize was that we were very much involved in the strategy. We knew who was going go be targeted, so we just sat back and waited for the militants to scare the companies in our direction” (141). Trotter explains that while the Urban League put on a good front, it was always working in the background to facilitate and negotiate deals beneficial to the employment of African Americans.In these uncertain times, with the effects of the COVID pandemic still ravishing the world and its devastating impact on the communities of color in terms of health and economics, this book comes at the right moment. Even more so as racial strife and oppression in policing and voting rights again to appear to be ushering in a new Jim Crow, this book provides historians a lesson on the value of the Urban League, specifically the Pittsburgh branch, in combating these systemic problems of racism and discrimination. Trotter’s book argues the fight for civil rights is in the organization’s DNA: “As such, it illustrates in no uncertain terms that the Urban League movement stood inside and not outside the larger fight to liberate people of African descent from the tyranny of white supremacy on a national and even transnational scale” (182).