National Urban League:
‘Close Equality Gap’ 

DENISE WINEBRENNER EDWARDS / People's Weekly World Newspaper 31jul03

PITTSBURGH – Celebrating political achievements, business success, and cultural excellence, 3,000 National Urban League (NUL) convention delegates gathered here July 26-30. Thousands of local residents submitted resumes at a job fair, attended conference sessions, received a free check-up at the health fair or enjoyed one of the musical events at the conference focused on “The Black Family: Building on Its Resilience.”

The conference was also the site of a presidential candidates’ forum and at least two demonstrations.

Marc H. Morial, President and CEO
National Urban League

Newly-inaugurated League President Marc Morial, the former mayor of New Orleans, reached out to the Greater Western Pennsylvania community for unity to confront “America’s paradox of progress … the equality gap in this nation.” Morial called on delegates to build “a movement of action … to close the equality gap … to defeat a new villain, James Crow Esquire.”

“Why are our jailhouses in better physical condition than our schoolhouses?” asked Morial pointedly, citing the fact that one out of seven Black males age 25-29 is in jail. He went on, “We must ask this nation to stop building fancy prisons and redirect these resources to building fancy schools with computers, playgrounds, libraries and with everything our children need to compete and win in the challenging global marketplace of the 21st century.”

African American unemployment has skyrocketed to 11.8 percent, double that of whites. Morial said, “We die faster, live sicker and are less likely to afford the high cost of health care.”

Morial announced several NUL initiatives, including a national summit on education, the establishment of a commission on rebuilding the nation’s cities and re-investing in urban areas, and a national legislative conference in the spring of 2004. He also called on delegates to register voters. Without endorsing a specific program, NUL pledged to be at the table of health care reform in the U.S. to promote access for African Americans.

Politics took center stage on the conference’s third day, when President Bush addressed the NUL delegates. Just three weeks earlier, Bush boycotted the NAACP convention.

“This is a photo-op,” Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told the World. “Bush wants to get his picture taken with Black folks, but in three years, he has refused to meet with the Black Caucus.”

Morial asked delegates to stand for the U.S. president and the cameras rolled. Delegates were coolly polite. John Bugg, vice president of the Baltimore Urban League, gave Bush a grade of ‘C.’ “He addressed a lot of issues that we had really come to listen to, but it wasn’t anything we hadn’t heard before,” Bugg said.

Fifteen hundred people were present for Bush’s speech, including convention vendors and job fair corporate representatives, less than half the crowd that attended Morial’s keynote.

Outside the conference, Pittsburghers marched and rallied against the continuing occupation of Iraq and against police brutality.

Robin Ponton, 13, nearly hidden by a hand-made sign demanding: “President Bush bring my daddy back home alive!” was one of 200 Steel City protesters greeting Bush’s arrival. Robin, who is African American, is the daughter of Staff Sgt. Charles Pollard who is in Iraq. Robin’s mother, Deshauna, said, “It’s sad whenever we are reading letters from (Charles) and they sound like they are the last letter he’ll ever write. We want him to come home.”

Cathy Troiani of rural Zelienopole joined the Ponton family on the picket line. Her husband is Staff Sgt. Phillip Troiani, also in Iraq. “My husband wants to come home. I support my husband. I don’t support the war. I don’t support the president. It’s gotten more dangerous since the president declared victory,” she told the local press.

Earlier in the week, Citizens Against Police Brutality marched to the convention center, asking delegates to support their call to Allegheny County District Attorney Steven Zapalla to issue an indictment against 13 Mount Oliver Borough police for the death of Charles Angus Dixon, who died in custody last December.

In the presidential candidates’ forum on July 28, seven of nine Democratic Party candidates for president addressed the conference. Democrats focused their heat on Bush and not each other, hammering on the issues of affirmative action; unemployment; the war with Iraq; racial profiling; unfunded mandates in education and health care; poverty; and deepening income inequality.

Only Democratic Senators Kerry and Graham did not attend the NUL forum.

Founded in 1910 to provide social services to Black workers leaving the South, the NUL is one of the nation’s oldest civil rights groups. Its leadership has included corporate executives from its inception. Michael Critelli, CEO of Pitney Bowes Inc., is the NUL’s chairman. The corporate relationship has produced tensions. In the 1920s, for example, Pittsburgh Urban League president John Clark was fired from his position and forced to leave town by the owners of the steel mills after urging Black steelworkers to join the union.

The author can be reached at dwinebr696@aol.com

source: http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/3843/1/174/ 3aug03

Marc H. Morial
President and Chief Executive Officer

The National Urban League selected Marc H. Morial as its new President and CEO effective May 15, 2003. Mr. Morial succeeds Hugh B. Price as the League's eighth Chief Executive. Mr. Morial served two distinguished 4-year terms as Mayor of New Orleans from 1994-2002. During that time, he also served as President of the United States Conference of Mayors in 2001 and 2002.

As New Orleans chief executive, he was one of the most popular and effective mayors in the city's history, leaving office with a 70% approval rating. After being elected as one of the youngest mayors in the city's history, crime plummeted by 60%, a corrupt Police Department was reformed, new programs for youth were started, and a stagnant economy was re-energized.

Under his watch, 7,000 new hotel rooms were added, and 15,000 new homeowners resulted from his progressive and innovative programs. In his final months in office, he orchestrated the return of the NBA to New Orleans, with the relocation of the Hornets from Charlotte to New Orleans.

In addition, the Morial Convention Center was expanded to one of the largest in America, a downtown Sports Arena was built, and over 200 miles of streets were reconstructed, or resurfaced through Morial's far reaching "Rebuild New Orleans Now!" bond issues which provided funding for nearly $400 million in City, School Board and Criminal Justice System infrastructure improvements.

Many of these infrastructure improvements will be completed long after the end of his term, a testament to his long-range planning and management abilities.

Marc H. Morial also served two-years in the Louisiana State Senate where he was recognized as Conservationist Senator of the Year, Education Senator of the Year and Legislative Rookie of the Year for his accomplishments.

Prior to his elected service, he was a lawyer in private practice, involved in many high profile and noteworthy cases, for which the Louisiana Bar Association honored him in 1988 with its Pro Bono Publico Award. Among those cases was the U.S. Supreme Court case of Chisom vs. Roemer, that established that the Voting Rights Act applied to the election of judges. This case led to the election of the first African-American judge in Louisiana history.

He earned a law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1983 and also earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics and African American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980. He graduated from Jesuit High School in 1976.

In 2002, Xavier University awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree. He is the son of the late Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial, New Orleans' First Black Mayor, and Sybil Morial, a teacher and university administrator.

Marc Morial is the father of a 20-year old daughter, Kemah, who is a junior at Tufts University. He is married to news anchor Michelle Miller and together they have a son, Mason who was born in April 2002.

In 2002, he joined the law firm of Adams and Reese, one of the Gulf South's leading law firms.

source: http://www.nul.org/about/office_pres.htm 3aug03

TO BE EQUAL
Reviving America's Spirit of Optimism

MARC H MORIAL / Copley News Service

Last week, I became the beneficiary of a great privilege and responsibility: I was appointed president and chief executive of the National Urban League.

Actually, I can say without hesitation that long before last week I was a beneficiary of the Urban League, too. Its commitment since its founding 90 years ago was to expand opportunity for African-Americans. This is part of the bedrock of progress that made it possible for me to aspire to, to compete for, and to serve for two years as a senator in the Louisiana Legislature, and then serve two four-year terms as the mayor of that great southern metropolis, New Orleans.

Of course, I wasn't the first African-American to hold that position. My late father, Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial, was mayor of New Orleans for two terms from 1977 to 1986. Yes, thankfully, there were many factors during the decades of the 20th century that helped make it possible for my father and me to hold such positions; and for my mother, Sybil Morial, an educator, to have been so involved in the broad civic life of our home city and state.

But there's no question that I owe a great deal to the long, diligent work of the National Urban League in readying African-Americans for full citizenship - and in readying white majority America for the full participation of African-Americans in our nation's stewardship. And there's no question, either, that now the full participation of all Americans in our country's civic life is more critical than ever.

The United States faces a crisis on several fronts that was unimaginable just a few short years ago. We've had fresh, tragic evidence that the murderous intent of some to plunge the world into a whirlwind of violence has not abated and, thus, the global war against terrorism, and the anxiety and uncertainties that attend it, will continue.

We've also had fresh evidence that the economic downturn in this country is threatening to grow sharper and widen the gaps that exist in access to capital for business development, and in access to quality education, decent housing and affordable health care, to name just a few pressing needs.

The alarming statistics on the number of jobs the economy has lost, the number of Americans who are out of work and the number of Americans who are so frustrated that they've stopped looking for work have been submerged by war news. But those realities remain, sapping the economic and spiritual strength of the nation.

And we've also had fresh evidence recently that the struggle for equal opportunity for all Americans continues. The University of Michigan affirmative action case, now before the U.S. Supreme Court, is a fundamental barometer of whether the nation will continue, without interruption, its just expansion of the boundaries of opportunity.

As Americans from all walks of life - from university students to Fortune 500 chief executives to retired top military brass - have said in unprecedented fashion recently, the nation cannot afford to try to halt the racial progress that's been made. To pretend that affirmative action has not been a vital cause of that progress is just that - pretense.

I sought to become head of the National Urban League for the same reasons I entered politics in Louisiana: I believe we can make life better for all Americans. I believe we must make life better for all Americans. That belief hardly originated with me, or with my parents.

Indeed, the original slogan the founders of the Urban League devised in 1910 - "Not Alms, But Opportunity" - spoke volumes. It declared that a hand up, not a handout, was what African-American migrants, then flooding the cities from the rural South, needed in order to adapt to the ways of modern urban life and contribute their fair share to America's greatness.

The founders of the National Urban League had the foresight and the faith in their fellow human beings to see that that was the route to progress. And they understood what the great scientist Albert Einstein once noted - that in every crisis there is opportunity.

They were confident then that African-Americans could overcome the profound barriers that held them from full participation in American life; they were determined that they would. Now, as then, the National Urban League will be part of the mosaic of people and organizations that will improve the quality of life in the United States.

We are as confident as our predecessors were of America's ability to overcome the multiple challenges that confront us today. We fully intend to use our energies to help corral the expertise that exists within America. We must revive the characteristic American spirit of optimism to reinvigorate for the 21st century the national commitment to expanding opportunity.

Marc H. Morial is president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League.
source: https://www.copleynews.com/1cns/Features/equal/ 3aug03