![]() ![]() Due in part to the Youngs' influence, the church stopped having its annual picnics at segregated parks and became "integrated not just desegregated." Many in the congregation were active in the civil rights movement, and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., then assistant to his father at nearby Ebenezer Baptist Church, was a pulpit guest. In December, 1954, Young and his wife Margaret were the first blacks to join the United Liberal Church (since 1965, named the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta), and Whitney would eventually join its board of trustees. There, Young supported alumni in their boycott of the Georgia Conference of Social Welfare in response to low rates of African-American employment within the organization. ![]() In 1954, he took up his next position, as the first dean of social work at Atlanta University. While he was president of the Omaha Urban League, Young taught at the University of Nebraska from 1950 to 1954, and Creighton University from 1951 to 1952. Under his leadership, the chapter tripled its number of paying members. In that position, he helped get black workers into jobs previously reserved for whites. In 1950, Young became president of the National Urban League's Omaha, Nebraska chapter. He was then appointed as the industrial relations secretary in that branch in 1949. Paul branch of the National Urban League. This situation propelled Young into a career in race relations.Īfter the war, Young joined his wife, Margaret, at the University of Minnesota, where he earned a master's degree in social work in 1947 and volunteered for the St. Despite the tension, Young was able to mediate effectively between his white officers and black soldiers angry at their poor treatment. After just three weeks, he was promoted from private to first sergeant, creating hostility on both sides. He was then assigned to a road construction crew of black soldiers supervised by Southern white officers. ĭuring World War II, Young was trained in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He became the president of his senior class, and graduated in 1941. During his time at Kentucky State, Young was also a forward on the university's basketball team, and was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, where he served as the vice president. Young had aspirations of becoming a medical doctor at Kentucky State. ![]() Young earned his Bachelor of Science in social work from Kentucky State University, a historically black institution. Young enrolled in the Lincoln Institute at the age of 13, graduating as his class valedictorian, with his sister Margaret becoming salutatorian, in 1937. Whitney's mother, Laura (Ray) Young, was a teacher who served as the first female postmistress in Kentucky (second in the United States), being appointed to that position by President Franklin D. Young Sr., was the president of the Lincoln Institute, and served twice as the president of the Kentucky Negro Educational Association. Young was born in Shelby County, Kentucky, on July 31, 1921. Young was influential in the United States federal government's War on Poverty in the 1960s. Trained as a social worker, 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. (J– March 11, 1971) was an American civil rights leader. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People University of Minnesota, Twin Cities ( MSW)
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