" winner of the National Conference of Black Political
Scientists Outstanding Book Award During the turbulent 1960s, civil
rights leader Whitney M. Young Jr. devised a new and effective
strategy to achieve equality for African Americans. Young blended
interracial mediation with direct protest, demonstrating that these
methods pursued together were the best tactics for achieving
social, economic, and political change. Militant Mediator is a
powerful reassessment of this key and controversial figure in the
civil rights movement. It is the first biography to explore in
depth the influence Young's father, a civil rights leader in
Kentucky, had on his son. Dickerson traces Young's swift rise to
national prominence as a leader who could bridge the concerns of
deprived blacks and powerful whites and mobilize the resources of
the white America to battle the poverty and discrimination at the
core of racial inequality. Alone among his civil rights colleagues
-- Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, John Lewis,
and James Forman -- Young built support from black and white
constituencies. As a National Urban League official in the Midwest
and as a dean of the School of Social Work at Atlanta University
during the 1940s and 1950s, Young developed a strategy of mediation
and put it to work on a national level upon becoming the executive
director of the League in 1961. Though he worked with powerful
whites, Young also drew support from middle-and working-class
blacks from religious, fraternal, civil rights, and educational
organizations. As he navigated this middle ground, though, Young
came under fire from both black nationalists and white
conservatives.
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