Vernon Jordan

"There is a definition of black America but no definition of white America. And we are just as mixed up in views, needs, and aspirations as any other group of people. It's never been monolithic. There's always been dissent. There's always been a difference of opinion, and a difference of approach. And that's healthy."

Vernon Eulion Jordan, Jr. was born August 15, 1935 in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana in 1957 and earned a law degree from Howard University in 1960. He joined the law firm of Donald L. Hollowell in Atlanta, where Constance Baker Motley also worked. The firm won a suit in Federal court against the University of Georgia over the enrollment of Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, and Jordan gained national coverage escorting Hunter to the admissions office past a mob of white protesters.

Jordan later served as Georgia NAACP Field Director, as Director of the Southern Regional Council's Voter Education Project and as Executive Director of the United Negro College Fund. In 1970 he was named President of the National Urban League, where he originated the annual State of Black America reports.

On May 29, 1980 Jordan was shot by Joseph Paul Franklin in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Franklin was acquitted of attempted murder in 1982 but later confessed to the shooting.

After recovering from his injuries, Jordan resigned from the Urban League and joined the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. He was part of President Bill Clinton's transition team in 1992-1993 and continued to serve as an adviser to Clinton, a close friend. In 2000 he became Senior Managing Director of Lazard Freres & Co., LLC, an investment banking firm. He serves on a number of corporate boards.

"What I know about this world is that white people will take care of themselves. And what I have learned is that if you are where they are on an equal basis, they cannot take care of themselves without taking care of you."

Jordan was awarded the 2001 NAACP Spingarn Medal. He is a member of Omega Psi Phi and Sigma Pi Phi fraternities.

Whitney M. Young, Jr.

"Every man is our brother, and every man’s burden is our own. Where poverty exists, all are poorer. Where hate flourishes, all are corrupted. Where injustice reigns, all are unequal." ~ Whitney M. Young, Jr.

Whitney Moore Young, Jr. was born July 31, 1921 in Lincoln Ridge, Kentucky, near Louisville, where his father was president of the Lincoln Institute, an all-black boarding high school which is now the Whitney Young Museum. He attended Kentucky State University where he received a BS degree and was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.


During World War II Young served in a road construction unit in Europe. As a First Sergeant he was responsible for mediating between African American troops and white, mostly Southern, officers, developing skills that he would use throughout his career.


After the war Young earned a Master's degree in Social Work at the University of Minnesota and became involved with the St. Paul National Urban League. He later served at the League's president of the Omaha chapter.

With President Johnson, 1966

Young served as Dean of Social Work at Atlanta University from 1954 through 1961. During this time he also became Georgia State President of the NAACP. 


In 1961 he was chosen to serve as Executive Director of the National Urban League. He took the organization from a paid staff of 38 to over 1600 and the annual budget from $325,000 to over $6 million, while changing its middle-class emphasis to one focusing on the urban poor by being one of the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington and starting programs such as the "Street Academy" college preparation for high-school dropouts and a domestic "Marshall Plan" for American cities. 

These programs are detailed in Young's books To Be Equal (1964) and Beyond Racism (1969). They were also an influence on President Johnson's War on Poverty. Young served as a frequent advisor to Johnson, as he did with Presidents Kennedy and Nixon, and in 1969 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was also president of the National Association of Social Workers from 1969 to 1971, urging the profession to address issues of poverty and racial reconciliation. 

While attending a conference sponsored by the Ford Foundation in Lagos, Nigeria, Young drowned while swimming on March 11, 1971. He is remembered as one of the pioneers of community organizing and as a gifted negotiator able to bridge the gap between corporate America and the needs of the urban poor.

Charles S. Johnson

"There is no domestic problem in America which has given thoughtful men more concern than the problem of the relations between the white and the Negro races." ~ The Negro in Chicago, 1922

The leading African American sociologist of his generation, Charles Spurgeon Johnson was born on July 24, 1893 in Bristol Virginia. He earned a bachelor's degree from Virginia Union University in Richmond and a doctorate from the University of Chicago where he studied under Robert E. Park. His studies were interrupted by World War I. He served in France in the 103rd Pioneer Infantry Division and achieved the rank of sergeant major.

In the aftermath of the 1919 riots he served on the Chicago Commission on Race Relations and co-authored the commission's report, published as the 700-page book The Negro in Chicago. Although critics felt the report did not place adequate responsibility for the riot on the white Jim Crow-era culture of the day, it has prevailed as the classic model of race relations reports.

From 1922 to 1928 Johnson was research director for the National Urban League in New York. During this time he founded and edited the league's Opportunity magazine, at the time a major voice of the Harlem Renaissance. He also edited the anthology Ebony and Topaz, containing the works of the premier poets, essayists and social scientists of the times.

Wanting to return to the South and to academic life, in 1928 he became chairman of the sociology department of Fisk University in Nashville and in 1946 he became Fisk's first African American president. He established the Fisk Institute of Race Relations, the first "think tank" at a historically black university, and published several books on the culture of the South with the most notable being Shadow of the Plantation (1934) and Growing Up in the Black Belt  (1940). He was able to attract faculty members such as Arna Bontemps, James Weldon Johnson, and Aaron Douglas.

In 1930 Johnson was part of a three-man League of Nations team investigating labor practices in Liberia. He later served as a consultant to President Hoover's Conference on Negro Housing and under President Roosevelt served on the TVA and consulted with the Department of Agriculture on farm tenancy. After World War II he was part of a UNESCO delegation sent to Japan to make recommendations about the country's educational system.

Johnson was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He died in Nashville on October 27, 1956 at the age of 63.