Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 5 December 2002 — Page 36

Page 36 • The Muncie Times • December 5, 2002

TO BE EQUAL

Price prepares to pass on Urban League baton

As many of this column's readers know by now, I've just announced I'm stepping down as president of the National Urban League next April - and I've been amused to see that some apparently have wondered whether my decision is a sign of a "crisis" in the civil rights movement. Their questioning recalls an anecdote I once heard about Charles De Gaulle, the great French hero of World War II who became its president in the late 1950s and rescued it from its long postwar malaise and political confusion. It was at some ceremony during his presidency that an aide, overwhelmed with De Gaulle's achievements and his imposing physical presence (he stood well above 6 feet tall), gushed his admiration to him. "Monsieur le President," he said at the end of a long paragraph of praise, "you are indispensable to France." De Gaulle, whose icy reserve and resistance to flattery was legendary, looked down at his shorter aide standing by his side and coolly replied, "The cemeteries are full with indispensable men." I've always believed I have a healthy ego and I've been inspired and proud to follow the long line of stalwart leaders and staffers of the National Urban League

and to guide it into the 21st century. But I've never believed that I as one individual was - or should be "indispensable" to the league. It's the organization, not any single individual, that is indispensable. My belief was bolstered by the accomplishments of my predecessors at the Urban League: Whitney M. Young, Jr., Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. and John E. Jacob. I came of age professionally wanting to be like Whitney, like Vernon, like Jake. I got to do it and it just doesn't get any better than that. We've all done our part to build the Urban League - founded in 1910 to aid black Southern migrants then streaming to urban centers in the North and West - into the oldest and largest community-based movement empowering African Americans to enter America's mainstream. And we were aided and pushed by many individual staffers and supporters whose names are far less well known but whose contributions have also been indispensable. In other words, the point is not that individuals are indispensable. The point is that the mission and the work to achieve it are indispensable. That mission'- the full integration of African

Americans into the American mainstream - remains; and the Urban League's pursuit of it is powered by the ideals behind the words which formed the league's first slogan nine decades ago: "Not alms, but

opportunity."

The need for the Urban League (along with others, of course) to

Hugh B. Price President National Urban League

demands the commitment and the stamina to do the hard, unglamorous work

continue its advocacy of day in and day out - and expanding opportunity to also a relay race: You run ever-widening circles of your hardest, you do your Americans is as great as best to build upon the ever. strengths of the A multitude of issues - organization, and then among them, continuing you pass the baton on, as problems of police abuse it was passed to you. and racial profiling That's where I am now. against people of color; I've been running hard for continuing evidence that the nearly 9 years I've led African Americans endure the Urban League, criss-

sever racial discrimination on the job and in pursuit of buying a home; a sheaf of reports showing widespread racial bias in the nation's criminal justice system; and providing equal educational opportunity for all African American children - say that's so. So, then, if the struggle continues, why, then, do I intend to step down from the helm of the Urban League? Because, as I implied

crossing the country most weeks and weekends, out of the year to give speeches and meet with our wonderful workers and friends in the field. It's the right time for me to pass the baton - before, not after, I get winded or start to stumble. Also, and this is even more personal, after 9 years of traveling incessantly, I'm determined to find a more sensible balance between my professional and

would have been unfair to both the Urban League and to me. But I'm not afraid to look for it. Whatever my future holds, I have no doubt of the Urban League's future -thanks to the work of our staff all over the country and our supporters - nor of the need for the National Urban League to, as they say in the community, keep on keeping on.

above. I’ve always firmly personal lives, believed that leaders of Finally, I believe that at national organizations like my age, 61, there's one the Urban League more major professional shouldn't cling to their challenge out there in the posts for years on end. world of work waiting for The civil rights movement me. I have no idea what it is not a sprint. It's both a is yet. I haven't been out marathon - which secretly shopping; that

Hugh B. Price is the national president of the National Urban League. You can reach him at To Be Equal, 120 Wall St., New York City, NY 10005