Background
Young was born on July 31, 1921 in Shelby County, Kentucky, the son of Whitney Moore Young, an educator, and Laura Ray, a teacher.
Young was born on July 31, 1921 in Shelby County, Kentucky, the son of Whitney Moore Young, an educator, and Laura Ray, a teacher.
In 1926, Young entered the second grade at the Lincoln Model School in Simpsonville, an educational facility for African-American children from nearby communities. Seven years later, at the age of twelve, he enrolled as a high school freshman at Lincoln Institute near Simpsonville, a boarding high school established by the trustees of Berea College to educate African-American students, where his father was a faculty member and later president. Young graduated in 1937, at the age of fifteen. That fall, he enrolled at Kentucky State Industrial College in Frankfort, the state's principal higher-education institution for African Americans. Four years later, he graduated with a B. S. degree, thirty-first in a class of eighty-seven.
Following graduation, Young taught mathematics and coached basketball at Rosenwald High School in Madisonville, Kentucky. In July 1942, Young enlisted in the United States Army and in May 1943 was ordered to active duty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study electrical engineering and participate in the Army Specialized Training Program. In 1944, Young was assigned to an African-American unit, the 1695th Engineer Combat Battalion. In October 1944, the unit was sent to Europe, where it would serve throughout the war. Young left the armed forces with the rank of first sergeant and the American Theater Ribbon, the Europe-African-Middle Eastern Theater Ribbon, and three Bronze Service Stars. After the war, Young rejoined his wife at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where she was completing a master's degree in educational psychology. In the spring of 1946 he was admitted to the School of Social Work there and began work on his own master's degree. His second field placement was with the Minneapolis Urban League, an early affiliate of the National Urban League. The Urban League emphasized the problems of African Americans in cities. Young interviewed employment applicants, made field visits to clients, and reported to the league board on legislative issues relating to public welfare. As an outgrowth of that placement, Young made the St. Paul Urban League the subject of his master's thesis. Following completion of his degree work in 1947, he was offered the post of industrial relations secretary for the St. Paul Urban League. In October 1947, Young began work focusing on improving employment opportunities for African Americans. His work led to African Americans in St. Paul finding employment as taxicab drivers and bus and streetcar drivers and conductors for the first time. His work with the St. Paul Urban League expanded the number of firms employing African Americans and brought him to the attention of the National Urban League officials. When the executive directorship of the Omaha Urban League became vacant, Young assumed the post in February 1950. Young's work led to almost one hundred employment firsts for African Americans in Omaha and doubled the number of African-American teachers in the public schools. Other efforts were directed to desegregating public housing. In 1954, Young became dean of the Atlanta University School of Social Work, the nation's leading source of African-American social workers. During his tenure, Young instituted important curriculum changes, integrated the student body, and expanded the full-time faculty. Simultaneously, he helped organize the Atlanta Committee for Cooperative Action, a group of African-American professionals and business leaders who sought to call attention to local racial problems, provide research and technical assistance on civil rights, and to supplant the extant African-American leadership. One of the major projects of the group was the publication of A Second Look: The Negro Citizen in Atlanta (1960). In 1960, Young received a fellowship to support study in the social sciences at Harvard University. While Young was in Cambridge, the National Urban League began its search for an executive director to replace the retiring Lester B. Granger, and in October 1962, Young became executive director of the National Urban League, headquartered in New York City. During the decade that Young headed the organization, the number of local affiliates increased by 50 percent, professional staff by 400 percent, and its budget by 1000 percent. Moreover, the league broke new ground by participating in the formation of public policy and direct involvement on behalf of civil rights. One of the earliest examples was the league and Young's involvement in the August 1963 march on Washington, D. C. The league was a cosponsor, and march leaders. Perhaps more than any other African-American leader of his time, Young gained the support of the white corporate establishment for the civil rights movement. During the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, Young's counsel was sought and frequently followed in matters of civil rights. In 1964, Young published his book To Be Equal, which emphasized that merely eliminating inequality and injustice was not enough. Instead, Americans black and white must make a "special effort" to undertake a domestic Marshall Plan directed at closing the economic, social, and educational gaps separating the races. In March 1971, Young participated in a dialogue sponsored by the African-American Institute, held in Lagos, Nigeria. During a recreational break from the conference Young went to a local beach. While swimming off the shore of Lagos, he died apparently of a cerebral hemorrhage. He is buried in Hartsdale, New York.
Young spent most of his career working to end employment discrimination in the United States and turning the National Urban League from a relatively passive civil rights organization into one that aggressively worked for equitable access to socioeconomic opportunity for the historically disenfranchised.
Young was a member of a number of clubs and fraternal organizations involved in civic affairs, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the YMCA Men's Club, and the Junior Chamber of Commerce. Toward the end of the 1960's, Young was president of the National Conference on Social Welfare and the National Association of Social Workers.
On January 2, 1944, Young married Margaret Buckner, a fellow classmate from Kentucky State Industrial College; they had two children.
