Columbia Library columns (v.26(1976Nov-1977May))

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  v.26,no.3(1977:May): Page 4  



4                                    Ann Tanneyhill

coin Ridge, Kentucky, yhcre his father was principal of Lincoln
Institute, a boarding school for black children. His mother taught
school. Raised in the seclusion of the campus, and attending school
there, his childhood was spent in a warm, loving and sheltered
family atmosphere with his parents and two sisters. Graduating
from the Institute at fourteen, he «ent to Kentucky State College,
a black institution of higher education. It was his ambition to study
medicine, and so he took pre-mcdical courses. Then came World
A\'ar II. He entered the Army and was sent to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology to study engineering, and after that was
shipped to the European Theatre in an all-black construction unit.
He became a sergeant, and, by his own admission, soon found him¬
self exercising a latent talent as negotiator between sullen, resent¬
ful black enlisted men and the jumpy, inexperienced southern
white officers in charge. The experience caused him to decide on
race relations and not medicine as a career.

He enrolled in the School of Social Work at the University of
Minnesota in A4inneapolis after the war—and was married during
the period of his graduate study. His field work assignment for the
school was with the St. Paul Urban League, just across the river
from the campus. It was during this assignment that he decided it
was the Urban League he wanted to work for. Shortly before he
was to be graduated he applied to the National headquarters office.
It was a significant coincidence that by the time the summer of
1947 arrived, there was a vacancy in the St. Paul Urban League,
and the National office recommended him to become the Indus¬
trial Relations and Vocational Guidance Secretary. Three years
later he moved from that post to the executive leadership of the
Omaha Urban League. In 1954 he was selected to be Dean of the
School of Social \\'ork, Atlanta University, in Georgia. And then,
in 1961, at the age of thirty-nine, he was appointed Executive Di¬
rector of the National Urban League.*

* For a history of the Urban League and an understanding of the mission of
this civil rights organization, rhe reader is urged to consult Blacks in the City:
  v.26,no.3(1977:May): Page 4