Marc H. Morial - State of the Urban League Keynote Address
Marc H. Morial
State of the Urban League Keynote Address
“America’s Crisis of Priorities” – Delivered July 29, 2026
Nashville, Tennessee
Good evening, Urban League Movement, friends, partners, all who love liberty, justice, equal opportunity, and rights for all.
Tonight, we are gathered. For a homegoing – and a homecoming.
We are gathered to eulogize racism. To bury hatred. To lay violence and destruction in the ground where they belong.
We are gathered to sound the requiem – for division, for hunger, for homelessness.
We are gathered to put an end to the movement that has gripped this nation and strangled its ability to thrive – its camaraderie, its compassion, its collaboration.
And we have come to Nashville because we are sick and tired of being sick and tired … and tired …of being sick and tired.
We gather here as We, The People. We gather as Urban Leaguers from across this nation – from every state and every city, every village and every hamlet, from every neighborhood and from…the hood.
We come from the boulevard, and we come from the alley. We come from the mountains, and we come from the valleys. We come wearing white collars, pink collars, blue collars – and no collars.
And to every one of you – our trustees led by Tim Murphy, our Affiliate leaders led by William Barnes, our Host Affiliate led by Clifton Harris, our Guilders led by Angela Simmons Smith, our Young Professionals led by Tyler Litt, our Affiliate Board Leaders led by Su Chen, our BEEPers, our college students, our front line national staff and our affiliate staffers – you are the heart, you are the soul, and you are the muscle of the Urban League Movement.
And might I add – the Urban League Movement now includes Dallas/Fort Worth as our newest affiliate, and stay tuned as we are working on Utah and Hawaii. The Urban League Movement has been powered by the volunteerism of the Young Professionals and the Guild, and our board will take action tomorrow to add a new volunteer auxiliary – the National Urban League Influencers.
And I am grateful. For your long-standing support, love, commitment, and conviction – because our work hasn’t been easy. But now more than ever, it’s necessary.
We also acknowledge special guests – Dr. Boise Kimber, President of the National Baptist Convention USA and his leadership team…and Congresswoman Joyce Beatty from the state of Ohio – as well as all other elected leaders in Tennessee and beyond.
We come as We, The People in this moment – to deliver a clear, unambiguous, unvarnished and unapologetic analysis of this nation at its 250th anniversary.
And to ask a question – difficult, painful, profound: is the American dream dead?
We do not ask it lightly. And we do not ask it rhetorically.
Because across the nation, what you see is what I see. I see families clawing to pay their rent and their mortgage – because someone in that family lost a job due to the disastrous DOGE cuts and racially-motivated attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion.
I see families losing their ability to afford a doctor, medicine, nursing care – because of conscious decisions by insensitive, tone-deaf leaders who have turned their backs on the American people.
I see brilliant young people who aspire to attend college but can’t get there – because of pernicious attacks on student loans and every program built to help them get ahead.
And when I travel, I hear seniors crying out – asking whether their right to a safe and secure retirement is at risk. Small business owners – asking whether their contracts will be ripped away because of some anti-DEI rubbish.
I see a nation at 250 that – instead of embracing its greatness as a pluralistic, diverse, forward-leaning people – has retrenched into a cesspool of finger-pointing, hatred, and division. A gutter of racism. Antisemitism. Misogyny. Islamophobia. Homophobia. And every other phobia.
My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing, land where my fathers died, land of our mothers’ pride – what has become of you at 250?
The inescapable conclusion is this: America has a crisis of priorities.
It has prioritized waging war, dropping bombs, and destroying people, places, and things.
It has prioritized stripping away healthcare support for children, the disadvantaged, and the dispossessed – to benefit nearly a thousand billionaires – while betraying tens of millions of Americans every single day.
At the junction of its 250th anniversary, this nation has prioritized destruction over construction and division over collaboration.
And its leadership – who swore an oath to uphold the United States Constitution – have turned their backs on the laws, and the people, of this country.
That is a call for this generation: to stand up with force, with fearlessness, with courage, and with conviction – and demand a fresh start for this nation.
A nation whose crisis of priorities is costing us up to two billion dollars a day – by the ranking senator’s own estimate – on an unauthorized war in Iran. A war for which too many American families have already paid the ultimate price. A war most Americans never chose.
Once again, our leaders tell us: “Ta-daa, it’ll be a quick, it’ll be swift. And it’ll be over.” A fabrication bigger than Milli Vanilli –and I dare say, fake news on steroids.
But in just seven months, that war has cost American families an estimated $132 billion – according to Moody's. And where did that cost show up? Right where it always does: at the gas pump and the grocery store.
By Brown University's own count, that's already almost $500 in added expenses per household – while the people who promised to make life more affordable made it more expensive.
Remember the “shock and awe” of Iraq, more than twenty years ago? Yet, here we are again – entangled in a two-billion-dollar-a-day quagmire, with no easy end.
Show me that money – and I’ll show you a housing initiative that builds millions of units and helps families and individuals struggling to pay rent and mortgage.
Show me the four and a half trillion dollars in tax cuts primarily benefiting billionaires, and I’ll show you health insurance for everyone, and community college at no cost, and a four-year degree within reach. And much more.
The point, my friends, is that over the past 25 years, this country has been driving in the wrong direction – because our GPS coordinates are off.
We have…a crisis…of priorities.
“We, the People” has become short-hand for “we, who have a lot and will spend a lot to buy whatever we want – including your rights.”
Somewhere along the way, We, the People became They, the Billionaires.
And let me be clear – I have nothing against a billionaire who earned it. I simply believe they should not carry a lighter tax burden than a nurse, a teacher, a firefighter, or a service worker -- nor have a heavier hand on our government, our elections, our democracy.
This crisis of priorities has driven a retreat from everything Dr. King, Whitney Young, John Lewis, Dorothy Height, Thurgood Marshall ever fought for – everything FDR, LBJ, JFK and Barack Obama governed for, everything our ancestors bled and died for – so that you and I could live in the America of the last 50 years.
A retreat built on a sinister and cynical attack on the very concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So let me say it without hesitation: the National Urban League will never retreat one inch – not one millimeter, not one milli-step – from our commitment to see this nation’s boardrooms and factory floors, its movie studios and its construction sites, its government and private sector jobs of all types, and its business opportunities, open to people of every race, color, creed, religion, and gender on an equal and equitable basis.
We have watched some corporations retreat from pledges, commitments, the values they espoused – but stopped executing. We applaud those who have not.
And for those who have retreated, it’s more than unfortunate – it’s unwarranted.
Let me tell you why – not the noise, but the data. Every single public opinion poll that we have reviewed indicates that over sixty percent of Americans support diversity, equity and inclusion. Moreover, our 50th Anniversary State of Black America Report indicates that fifty percent of Black consumers tell us if companies walk away from diversity, equity, inclusion, they’ll reconsider their spending. Thirty percent of non-Black consumers say the same. This is not just about mission. It’s about money.
And American citizens are paying attention to civil rights and equal rights policies in corporations, at universities, in law firms. This isn’t Marc Morial’s opinion. This isn’t a National Urban League talking point. This is the voice of the majority of American people.
See, the country didn’t turn against the value proposition of equal opportunity. Too many have just been tricked, manipulated, hoodwinked, and bamboozled into flinching at acronyms and labels.
You can strike a word from a document. You cannot strike the truth from the world.
That is why we will never retreat. We will never surrender. We will never scrub our website or engage in ideological and nonsensical, linguistic gymnastics to curry favor with those who do not have our best interests at heart.
Let the word go forth as of this moment: as long as I serve as your leader, we will be in the fight. We will be in constructive resistance. We will push ahead for the great and grand vision of a multicultural, multiracial, multifaith democracy.
We have watched a Supreme Court retreat from its solemn duty to protect the Constitution and protect the people. It’s time for a new, binding code of ethics. It’s time for term limits. And it’s time to expand the Court, to interrupt its overtly political trend.
We live in a time when technology and the power of human innovation have given us longer life expectancies, great conveniences, a quality of life unimaginable 100 years ago.
So we embrace technological change. We are not afraid of artificial intelligence. But AI must be harnessed for the many, not the few – purged of its bias, and turned toward a future where it doesn’t take our jobs, but helps us do them better.
As you’ve often heard me say, I was born in a segregated hospital and grew up in a segregated city – one that was more than forty percent Black – where there were no Black elected officials until my father broke the color line in 1967 – not even 60 years ago.
I watched my hometown go from the poster child for a political apartheid system to a model of civic cooperation – only to see a complicit Supreme Court twist and torture the Constitution, gut the precious Voting Rights Act, attack Black voting power, and disrespect those freedom fighters who were beaten on that bridge in Selma.
The 2026 State of Black America tells us that almost 200 Black-held legislative seats are at risk, and that if the SAVE Act becomes law, it could disenfranchise 21 million people.
We say no. And the alarm must sound.
We say: death to the SAVE Act. The SAVE Act is nothing but the Southern Manifesto wrapped in 21st Century clothing.
We are here to conduct the last rites for the SAVE Act. Let it never see the light of day.
So when I’m asked: what’s the Urban League’s agenda to fix the crisis before us? The first thing we must do as We, the People – is vote. This fall. With intensity and conviction.
That’s why our Reclaim Your Vote campaign will work to reach one million people and why we have confected an historic MOU with the National Baptist Convention USA, as well as with the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship. And we will soon be in discussions with other denominations with the goal that we will confect an agreement with them. We will bring the full force and fury of the Urban League Movement together with the spiritual power and reach of the Black church to achieve record voter participation.
Let the requiem sound for voter suppression, for gerrymandering, for disenfranchisement.
And send a clear, unambiguous message that we are not happy, not proud, not content with the direction this nation – our nation – is headed.
Most urgently, we can send that message by voting in Obama-like numbers in this midterm.
America, wake up. Black America, wake up. Let every community in America, wake up.
I realized recently that I’m the first sitting National Urban League president to have visited every affiliate – 93 of them in communities all across this nation. I reached this milestone in June, when I visited Alton, IL, where the Urban League of Madison County has served for more than 50 years. Through those visits, I learned that people in the Urban League Movement, like those of you in this room, are passionate about their work…committed to delivering at the highest levels… relentless in their dedication to opportunity and civil rights.
I am here tonight to say we must turn up the volume of our voices – your voices.
In 2025, the Urban League Movement served more than 2.1 million Americans. 93,000 through housing services. 55,000 through education services. 47,000 through workforce services. 360,000 through other programs and emergency relief activities. 1.7 million through civic mobilization and voter education initiatives. And that’s just a small snapshot.
If this is the work we do in times like these, battling attacks like these, challenging rollbacks like these – imagine what we could do with just a fraction of two billion dollars a day.
So, what do we now? This is where we plant our flag – the Urban League’s Affordability Agenda for America.
One. A national living wage, indexed to inflation. No one who works full-time should live in poverty. Say AMEN.
Two. Repeal and replace the Big Ugly Bill. Reverse the tax cuts primarily for billionaires that the rest of us are paying for. Restore investments in healthcare, education, nutrition assistance, and those programs that benefit American families where they need it most, when they need it most.
Simply put – put We, the People’s priorities back into the People’s budget.
Three. Universal housing vouchers, often referred to as the Section Eight rental assistance program. If you qualify, you receive it – the way nutrition assistance and Medicaid already work.
Four. A National Affordable Housing Trust. We cannot solve this crisis without dramatically increasing the supply of homes.
Five. Reestablish the Affordable Connectivity Program. In this economy, the internet is as essential as electricity – for work, for school, for health, for economic mobility.
Six. End the inflationary tariffs. American families should not pay the price of flimsy, failed policy that makes everyday goods more expensive. There is no excuse.
We were promised great trade deals. None materialized. We were promised a growing economy. It has not grown for the vast majority of working people.
We will not wait for any political party to advance an affordability agenda. We’re doing it today. And we say to the politicians: adopt this one.
That is not a wish list. It is a blueprint. This is what we are for. Because it’s not enough to just name what we are against.
We must be for something – and even more importantly, brave enough to say it out loud.
Some will look at a room full of people dressed in black and think: a funeral. And they might be partly right. Because tonight, we are laying something to rest.
We are burying racism and hatred. We’re burying policies that takes from the many to enrich the few. We are burying the misplaced priorities that have simply not worked for the majority of American people. We’re burying the wars some leaders chose over the children that have been forgotten.
But we did not wear black tonight to grieve what America was. We wore black to forge what America is about to become.
You see, black is not only the color of mourning. Black is also the color of the forge – where iron is put into the fire not to be destroyed, but to be made stronger.
We are 250 years into the most ambitious experiment in human history – a nation trying to do what none before it ever has: to build a true, multiracial democracy. And we stand at a crossroads.
We have defended the dream long enough. It’s time to finish building it.
We’ve been told to imagine a better America for 250 years. While some want to kill the American dream, we want to revive it – bigger, stronger, more just, more equitable, and more inclusive than ever. Let us imagine a new American dream.
We know what it looks like. We know what it costs. We know who it’s for. The only thing standing between us and the America we deserve is the will…the courage…the morality… to build it. And those, Urban Leaguers, are resources this room has never lacked.
When future generations look back at this moment, they will not ask which party we supported, or which candidates we voted for. They will ask what priorities we demanded.
Did we choose fear, or did we choose freedom? Did we accept inequality as inevitable, or did we insist that dignity is non‑negotiable? Did we treat democracy as a museum piece – or as a living promise we are obligated to renew?
My vision – and collective hope – is this: we will not simply defend America as it is. We will build the America we deserve:
An America where our priorities are aligned with all of us, not a few.
An America where democracy is not for sale.
An America where diversity is an asset, not an accusation.
An America where poverty is a policy choice we finally choose to end.
We are not here just to comment on the crisis – we are here to confront it. Not here just to analyze the problem – here to organize the solution. Not here just to bear witness – here to bear responsibility.
In any place where the budget values bullets over books – you are called. In any place where voting lines stretch for hours while polling places close – you are called. In any place where DEI is quietly dismantled while PR statements stay loud – you are called.
You are called to stand in the gap between what America is and what America promised to be – and to close it. Not with rhetoric alone, but with policy, with organizing, with power, with action.
The fire you hear in my words tonight is not a partisan critique. We are well beyond party, friends. This is about People. Power. And most of all – our nation’s Crisis of Priorities.
So, let us leave Nashville with a holy impatience and a sacred determination to fulfill our calling. To:
Defend Democracy. Demand Diversity. Defeat Poverty.
And together – with clear eyes and courageous hearts – we will build the America we, and our children, deserve.
Because we stand on the shoulders of Haynes and Baldwin – the two who lit the Urban League flame – we gon’ be alright.
Because we carry the words of Whitney Young, and John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson – we gon’ be alright.
Because the spirit of Rosa and Harriet still marches in us and we trust our ancestors – our mothers, our fathers, the ones who bled on that bridge so we could stand in this room – we gon’ be alright.
Because we’ve got our institutions, our churches, our HBCUs, the Divine Nine – and more – we gon’ be alright.
Because we have our new Urban Civil Rights Museum opening in Harlem in the fall to ensure our stories are told without censorship, government interference, and erasure – we gon’ be alright.
Because we will never retreat, never back up, never give in – we gon’ be alright.
Because our children are watching, and we will not leave them with less than we have – we gon' be alright.
And because we are the Urban League Movement – 94 affiliates, 36 states, millions of hands doing this work in times like these – we gon’ be alright.
Now, Urban Leaguers…you know what to do. Say it with me: We. Gon’. Be. ALRIGHT.
By the powers vested in me I am proud to call the 2026 Conference of the National Urban League – open for business.