Overview

Alone among his civil rights colleagues -- Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, John Lewis, and James Forman -- Whitney M. Young Jr. advocated integrationism embraced by both blacks and whites. As a National Urban League Official in the Midwest and as a dean of social work at Atlanta University during the 1940s and 1950s, Young blended interracial mediation with direct protest. He demonstrated that these methods pursued together were the best tactics for the civil rights movement, then put them to work on a national scale upon becoming the executive director of the League in 1961. In this position, Young forcefully alerted elite whites to the urgency of the black struggle for equality and urged them to spend federal, corporate, and foundation funds to lift residents in the nation's inner cities. Although he actively interacted with powerful whites, Young also drew support from middle- and working-class blacks who shared his belief in racial integration. As he navigated this middle ground Young came under fire from both black nationalists and white conservatives.

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Reviews

A thoughtful study of an often overlooked figure in the American civil-rights movement, by a professor of history at Williams College and historiographer of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Whitney Young made his most important contributions to the causes of integration and equal rights as the executive director of the National Urban League - a moderate organization when compared with Stokely Carmichael's SNCC, James Farmer's CORE, or even the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as guided by Martin Luther King. Raised in Kentucky, Young was influenced greatly by his educator father, who shared Booker T. Washington's conservative view of race relations. His subsequent educational and social-work experiences in St. Paul, Minn., Omaha, Neb., and at traditionally black Atlanta University ultimately led to Young's appointment as the league's head. In this position, he walked a fine line between courting wealthy white interests, such as the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller families (the latter helped to fund his graduate studies at Harvard), and acting as a liaison between government and African-American communities in distress. For his high-level white contacts, which included presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, Young was often labeled an Uncle Tom and called Whitey Young by more radical black detractors. In return, Young was not shy about publicly expressing his distaste for the likes of Carmichael, Harlem politician Adam Clayton Powell, and Malcolm X (though he maintained a private correspondence with the Black Muslim leader). To his credit, Dickerson doesn't write hagiography; he points out Young's naivete in believing he could enter the upper echelons of political power despite his color, and Young's support of LBJ's escalation of the Vietnam War because of the president's support for civil-fights initiatives - perhaps Young's greatest political miscalculation. What Dickerson's work lacks is a fuller exploration of Young's personal life. Militant Mediator is likely to rekindle interest in this influential civil-rights advocate. (Kirkus Reviews)

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