Carnegie Mellon University
April 21, 2021

The Urban League Movement: Q&A with Joe W. Trotter, Jr.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Joe W. Trotter, Jr. is the Giant Eagle University Professor of History and Social Justice and director and founder of CMU’s Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE). Trotter’s latest book, “Pittsburgh and The Urban League Movement: A Century of Social Service and Activism,” explores the Urban League of Pittsburgh, a branch of the National Urban League, to provide new insights into the organization and its impact. Trotter explains, in his words, what you can expect from his latest read. 

How was the Urban League of Pittsburgh involved on the national level?

As a local branch of the National Urban League, the programs and activities of the Urban League of Pittsburgh (ULP) were closely intertwined with those of the national office in New York City. From the outset of its founding in 1918 through recent times, the ULP regularly hosted representatives from the national office. It maintained close contacts and working relationships when launching new job, housing, health, education and other initiatives. In addition to ongoing correspondence and meetings between local and national officers, the ULP hosted the organization’s national convention in 1932 when Franklin D. Roosevelt became president and precipitated the increasing movement of African Americans from the Republican to the Democratic Party, in 1954 when the U.S. Supreme Court passed down the Brown versus Board of Education decision desegregating the nation’s public schools, and again in 2003, when President George W. Bush and seven of nine 2004 presidential hopefuls delivered speeches outlining their vision for the future of the country, with an accent on how their policies would help the African American community.

In what ways did the nonviolent direct-action campaigns of the Urban League of Pittsburgh impact the Black Freedom Movement?

This is one of the key issues that the book aims to address. I argue that perhaps more so than most Urban League branches, the ULP took early steps to merge its social service, civil rights and social justice concerns. It appears that many branches routinely turned over what they defined as civil rights cases to the local NAACP. But the Urban League of Pittsburgh launched broad and sometimes quite militant campaigns for social justice and equal rights during the 1920s. For example, it challenged the exclusion of African Americans from the swimming pool at the city’s famous Kennywood Amusement Park.  It also initiated a movement to end discrimination against African Americans in local theaters, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad passenger service, and white newspapers.  In 1922, the League protested the use of “Negress” to refer to Black women in the local press.  Urban Leaguers not only signed a letter of protest but also encouraged the mobilization of Black club women behind the effort. Such activism intensified during and after World War II and helped to plant the seed for the rise of the nonviolent direct action and Black Power movements of the 1960s and early 1970s. By then, however, the ULP moved away from the frontlines of the movement, while continuing service as a supportive mediator between the militants and Pittsburgh’s corporate and political elites.

What effect has the Urban League had on racial inequality in the United States?

The impact of the Urban League on racial inequality in America is a hotly debated topic in studies of the Urban League Movement.  Some scholars argue that the Urban League was a conservative force in the lives of Black people and did little to lift people out of poverty, while others argue that the Urban League played a major role in alleviating suffering and hardships among poor and working-class Black people as they moved from oppressive southern sharecropping conditions into the major metropolitan areas of the nation.  “Pittsburgh and the Urban League Movement” reinforces the liberating perspective on the League’s history, while also acknowledging some of its most profound gender and class limitations.