National Urban League Papers

The National Urban League came into being in New York City in 1910 when three existing welfare organizations merged: the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, the National League for the Protection of Colored Women, and the Committee for Improving the Industrial Conditions of Negroes in New York. The purpose of the new organization was "to promote, encourage, assist and engage in any and all kinds of work for improving the industrial, economic, social and spiritual conditions among Negroes." In the words of the Library of Congress' Manuscript Division finding aid to the papers, the National Urban League initially proposed, more specifically, "to provide 'survival service,' facilitate the migration of blacks from rural to urban areas, implement the training of black social workers to assist in such transitions, and promote interracial cooperation and goodwill."

In its first decade the League sustained programs in six cities, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, Nashville, and Atlanta, concentrating on social work and job placement to ameliorate the conditions produced by the migration of southern rural African Americans to northern cities. In 1921, in part to help shape its programming initiatives, the League established a Department of Research, which sponsored several surveys of black populations in northern cities. Included in the Coolidge-Consumerism collection are The Negro Population in Minneapolis: A Study of Race Relations for 1926 and A Survey of the Negro Population of Fort Wayne (Indiana) for 1928, with information about industrial employment, wages, trade unions, and recreation.

In 1925, the League established a Department of Industrial Relations, expanding its program of providing job opportunities through the cooperation of business firms.

Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, which began publication in 1922, served as the League's official voice to a mainly African-American readership, and offered a major outlet for African-American literary creativity. Charles S. Johnson headed the League's Department of Research and Investigations, which published the magazine, and was its founding editor.

As the Negro Industrial Commission file from the National Urban League Papers shows, the League was involved in the unsuccessful struggle to obtain Congressional passage of a Negro Industrial Commission (DETAIL NOTE National Negro Industrial Commission).