How Lexington’s Urban League Chapter Grew from a Speech to Providing Housing

When Lexington activist Harry Sykes first heard a speech from the National Urban League executive director at the University of Kentucky in the late 1960s, he knew he wanted to bring the organization to Lexington.

In his speech, Whitney Young said the Urban League was an organization focused on economic improvements. “It was clear in the beginning that it wasn’t just another protest organization,” Harry Sykes said, according to the Urban League of Lexington-Fayette County (Lexington, KY). “It had very sound ideas of what was appropriate for the people: education, housing and employment.”

By 1968, the Urban League of Lexington-Fayette County was founded and needed to raise $25,000 to join the national League. Adjusted for inflation, that’s equivalent to nearly $230,000 today. The group raised the money, and all that was needed was an endorsement from a local newspaper. Back then, the Lexington Leader and the Lexington Herald were headed by Fred Wachs. Wachs was afraid an endorsement would cause race riots in town, P.G. Peeples, Sr. and former Herald-Leader journalist Jacalyn Carfagno wrote in “The First 50 Years: 1968-2018,” about the history of the Lexington chapter.

Peeples joined the Urban League as its assistant director of education in 1969 and helped set up the group’s original office in the YMCA on Second Street. The next year, the office moved to Westside Plaza on Georgetown Street. Peeples would eventually become the group’s executive editor. The Lexington Urban League worked for fair housing and economic opportunity and worked with local businessmen to raise $18,000 in seed capital to buy four houses on Chestnut Street that could be resold to Black families, Peeples said. As of 2018, the league has used that initial investment to purchase $28 million worth of housing for Black homeowners.

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