and defining rights of black people, rights long enjoyed by the

white majority. Our protests and demonstrations led to court de-

cisions, congressional legislation, and executive orders, affirming

new rights of black people.

But the effective use of those rights was relatively limited to

those who, through their educational and economic backgrounds,

could take advantage of the new opportunities. The man mired in

poverty and hunger could not care less that the doors of the plush

downtown hotel were now open to him or that he, too, could

now buy a , house in a white neighborhood. Most of these

newly won rights did nothing to help him pay his rent or put

milk in his babies’ stomachs.

What is happening in the black community in the s is

that the achievement gap among black people is widening, not

lessening. The ranks of those who are using new opportunities to

get better jobs and homes and schooling is increasing. But at the

same time, the ranks of poor people alienated from the main-

stream is swelling at an alarming rate.

So we are now charged to consolidate and implement the

rights torn so bitterly from a reluctant nation in the s, and to

bring about the economic empowerment of black people in the

decade ahead. It is the achievement of such economic empower-

ment that must be a major goal of the Urban League in the seven-

ties. The task of the seventies, then, is to effect that social

revolution long promised and long withheld—to restructure our

economy and income distribution so that there are jobs and de-

cent living standards for all.

Urban League Beginnings

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