| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Dennis C. Dickerson. Militant Mediator: Whitney M. Young, Jr. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 1998. Pp. x 384. $30.00.

This is the second biography of Whitney M. Young, Jr., executive director of the National Urban League from 1961 to 1971. The essential elements of Young's story are well known. As Dennis C. Dickerson again makes plain, Young staked out a unique role in the civil rights movement by "communicat[ing] to white Americans the integrationist vision of millions of middle- and working-class blacks who wanted an end to social and economic barriers based on race" (p. 7). "Interpret[ing] the goals and grievances of black Americans to government, business, and foundations" (p. 2), Young worked to mobilize the formidable resources of those institutions "to end the poverty, deprivation, and discrimination that lay at the core of racial inequality in the United States" (p. 7). 1

As Dickerson shows, Young learned the art of racial diplomacy from his father, a Kentucky educator skilled at advancing the interests of blacks through canny negotiation with influential whites. His own talent for interracial mediation, which first emerged through his informal role as a liaison between black soldiers and white officers in a black battalion in World War II, was honed during his service in the late 1940s and early 1950s as industrial relations secretary of the St. Paul, Minnesota Urban League and as executive director of the Omaha Urban League. Thereafter, the deanship of the Atlanta University School of Social Work provided firsthand exposure to the emerging struggle for civil rights. . . .

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