All professional development for National Urban League affiliate staff, CEO certification and re-certification, Board training is provided through the Whitney M. Young Center for Urban Leadership. Succession planning, strategic planning, leadership development, fiscal management and resource development are the primary areas of training provided during the year.

The Whitney M. Young Center for Urban Leadership (WMYCUL) is a nonprofit educational institute that exists to foster positive social and economic change through effective leadership development. Our mission is to cultivate and enhance the leadership capabilities of individuals and organizations that serve urban communities. Our role is to convene and link those entities to practical leadership development tools and resources to help them address capacity issues and various leadership challenges. Our philosophy is that through the enrichment and/or development of urban leaders, urban communities can be improved and empowered, thereby helping to create a society whereby all people have equal opportunity to be positive contributors.

WMYCUL Training Venues

• Whitney M. young School of Social Work, Clark Atlanta University

• The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University
• Chevron Texaco Management Institute

• NUL Institute for Opportunity & Equality

• Economic Opportunity Institute
• Affiliate CEO Professional Development Forum
• Association of Executives Mid-Winter Meeting
• Urban Leadership Development Conference
• National Urban League Annual Conference
• National Urban League Influencers Summit

WMYCUL Programmatic Venues

• Black Executive Exchange Program (BEEP)
• Education & Youth Development Policy, Research & Advocacy
• Housing & Community Economic Development
• Technology Programs & Policy (TPP)
• Workforce Development
• Health & Quality of Life

ABOUT THE MAN

Whitney Moore Young, Jr., the fourth Executive Director of the National Urban League, brought the League into the Civil Rights arena, thereby meshing the tenets of Civil Rights activism with the practices of social work.

The thirty-nine year old dean of the Atlanta University School of Social Work officially assumed his National Urban League post in October 1961. Young's initial career ties to the Urban League began with the St. Paul affiliate where he served as industrial relations secretary (1948-50); and, in 1950, he was appointed executive secretary of the Omaha Urban League.

Whitney Young was constantly in search of solutions to the racism that plagued Americans and caused black Americans to dwell as second-class citizens (and relegated black Americans to second-class citizenship). A tireless advocate for the poor, Young visited the ghettos of rural and urban communities and took their plight to the White House. On numerous occasions, he conferred with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon; testified before Congress and appealed to the giants of industry in boardrooms and through professional associations on behalf of League constituents.

As a result of a meeting Young had with President Kennedy, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare; the Department of Labor and the Housing and Home Finance Administration hosted a precedent breaking three-day conference of 89 Urban League professionals and volunteers in D.C. This opened the door on a new relationship with the federal government in which the League would contract out program services through its affiliate network to help the disadvantaged.

Under Whitney Young's leadership, the Domestic Marshall Plan (to use federal dollars to rebuild inner cities in the same manner that were used to rebuild war-torn Europe) was designed to improved the education, employment, social and cultural status of poor blacks. Other key initiatives included the National Skills Bank to upgrade under-employed blacks and match them with jobs equal to their skills in cities across the country; Secretarial Training Program; and the Street Academy, to provide a "second chance' to school dropouts. This became a national model for the alternative education systems.

In 1963, Young began a syndicated weekly column, "To Be Equal,' intended for publication in the black press; however, it appeared in over 100 major newspapers and was heard on over forty radio stations across America. (That column has been continued by each of his successors.) He was the author of two books, To Be Equal and Beyond Racism published in 1964 and 1969, respectively.

During Young's tenure, the League nearly doubled its affiliate network; and youth under thirty were invited to serve on Urban League boards at the national and affiliate levels. The Washington Bureau was established as a liaison between the League and government agencies.

Whitney Young's agenda for Black America and many of the programs he initiated remain to be completed by his successors. On March 11, 1971, in Lagos, Nigeria while attending the Third African/American Dialogue on relations between the two continents, he drowned.