April 5, 2019 -- Mastercard General Counsel Tim Murphy has been elected to serve as the 22nd chairman of the National Urban League Board of Trustees.

Murphy was elected at the National Urban League’ Board of Trustees quarterly meeting in New York City. He will begin his two-year term in November, serving as chair-elect until then.

Murphy was first elected to the National Urban League's board of trustees in 2015.

"Tim Murphy’s expertise, commitment and passion for the mission of the National Urban League have made him one of our most valued trustees for the last several years,” National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial said. “We are thrilled with his election to chair and look forward to an exciting and productive new era of leadership.”

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA (February 6, 2019) -- The 2019 National Urban League Conference, returning to Indianapolis after 25 years, will attract thousands of the nation’s most forward-thinking community and business leaders for four days of speakers, workshops, exhibitions and networking events, all centered on the theme “Getting 2 Equal: United Not Divided,” leaders announced today.

As has been the National Urban League’s tradition during presidential election cycles, all major-party declared candidates will be invited to address the Conference.

February 26, 2019 -- Honorable Member of the Senate Banking Committee: As President and CEO of the National Urban League, and on behalf of its 90 affiliates in 36 states and the District of Columbia, I write to express my concerns about Dr. Mark Calabria’s recent statements about the affordable housing goals (the goals). Dr. Calabria believes that the goals played an outsized role in the financial crisis, and that the goals are inherently risky.1 His and other’s assertations scapegoating the goals are “weapons of mass deception”, as I described in my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in 2008.2  Accordingly, if confirmed as the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), I fear Dr. Calabria would unnecessarily lower the benchmarks for the goals, based on unfounded assumptions. 

On February 27, the Managers Affinity Group at the National Urban League headquarters in New York City, hosted a special Black History Month program to engage and empower high school students from the region. A group of students and their chaperones from the Richmond Hill High School in Queens visited the National Urban League office for a morning of learning and conversation. Managers kicked off the event with welcome remarks from Senior Vice Presidents Wanda Jackson and Herman Lessard, followed by an interactive and informative session on the Urban League’s history by Renita Carter, Senior Manager of Education & Youth Development. She asked the students questions, made them laugh, and imparted important knowledge about the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality.

Marc Morial challenges students to understand and embrace their history.  When a black history exhibit was defaced at his overwhelmingly white high school, Marc Morial was surprised not only by the vandalism but also by a question it prompted from his principal.  The principal was getting questions from white students about having a white history celebration, and asked Morial and two of his friends how he should respond.

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“Despite the positive changes we have made throughout history, there is a persistent trend of bad actors playing politics with the survey in order to disenfranchise racial minorities. We see a present-day example of this type of bad faith provision in the 2018 announcement that the Department of Commerce planned to add a citizenship question to the census. There was no valid reason for this proposal other than a concerted effort to suppress the response rate of minorities and new immigrants.” – Congressman William Lacy Clay

A leadership gap, inadequate funding and staffing and a deliberate campaign to intimidate immigrants and communities of color all make the 2020 Census among the most challenging in American history.