Pittsburgh and the Urban League Movement by Joe William Trotter Dick Gilbreath

Author:Joe William Trotter, Dick Gilbreath [Joe William Trotter, Dick Gilbreath]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Cultural Studies, African-American Studies, History, Americas, United States
ISBN: 9780813179940
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2020-11-02T05:00:00+00:00

Although the National Urban League is often portrayed as a conservative force that seldom questioned the status quo, the history of the Pittsburgh branch challenges this notion. This headline from the Pittsburgh Courier captures efforts to desegregate the city’s public swimming pools, years ahead of the landmark Montgomery bus boycott of 1955. (Pittsburgh Courier, 30 June 1951)

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Navigating Civil Rights and Black Power Struggles

By the mid-1960s, the Urban League of Pittsburgh appeared to be a largely conservative force in the evolving African American freedom movement. The political and social terrain on which the Urban League worked had changed dramatically. The Pittsburgh-born children of southern black migrants had come of age and were pushing hard against the color line in the city’s economy, politics, and institutions. National headquarters and local branches across the country worried about the black nationalist turn in African American politics. But the ULP had helped establish the postwar groundwork and even models for the militance of Pittsburgh’s civil rights and black power struggles of the 1960s and early 1970s. The league’s contributions to the rise of the city’s grassroots social movements included, most notably, the early fight for jobs in downtown department stores and equal access to the city’s public swimming pools.

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