Not Alms but Opportunity: The Urban League and the Politics of Racial Uplift, 1910-1950 [Paperback]

Tour¨¦ F. Reed (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0807859028 | ISBN-13: 978-0807859025 | Publication Date: July 31, 2008

Illuminating the class issues that shaped the racial uplift movement, Touré Reed explores the ideology and policies of the National, New York, and Chicago Urban Leagues during the first half of the twentieth century. Reed argues that racial uplift in the Urban League reflected many of the class biases pervading contemporaneous social reform movements, resulting in an emphasis on behavioral, rather than structural, remedies to the disadvantages faced by Afro-Americans.

Reed traces the Urban League's ideology to the famed Chicago School of Sociology. The Chicago School offered Leaguers powerful scientific tools with which to foil the thrust of eugenics. However, Reed argues, concepts such as ethnic cycle and social disorganization and reorganization led the League to embrace behavioral models of uplift that reflected a deep circumspection about poor Afro-Americans and fostered a preoccupation with the needs of middle-class blacks. According to Reed, the League's reform endeavors from the migration era through World War II oscillated between projects to "adjust" or even "contain" unacculturated Afro-Americans and projects intended to enhance the status of the African American middle class. Reed's analysis complicates the mainstream account of how particular class concerns and ideological influences shaped the League's vision of group advancement as well as the consequences of its endeavors.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[An] excellent study of the National Urban League. . . . What distinguishes Reed's study from previous scholarship is not his critique of the economic and cultural biases of racial uplift but, rather, his detailed analysis of their effects."
— U.S. Intellectual-History.blogspot.com

About the Author

Touré F. Reed is associate professor of Afro-American history at Illinois State University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (July 31, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807859028
• ISBN-13: 978-0807859025
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #979,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book!, September 26, 2009

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Dean Schwartz - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Not Alms but Opportunity: The Urban League and the Politics of Racial Uplift, 1910-1950 (Paperback)

I work in politics and am interested in urban and social justice issues, so my interests led me to discover this excellent book. The author's analysis of the Urban League's programs through the lense of progressive Sociological paradigms of the time was particularly insightful and I found it very interesting. My favorite chapters were four through six, where he addresses the Urban League's relationship with organized labor. I've read on the subject of the relationship of the civil rights and labor movements, but I'd never come across any work from the perspective of black uplift organizations. I learned a lot and it was an excellent read. The author's style is easy and artistically crafted. I highly recommend it.