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Introduction This book examines the life and work of Eugene Kinckle Jones (1885–1954), along with the rise of professional black social workers within the larger context of social work and its professionalization. In 1971, Guichard Parris and Lester Brooks published the first major history of the National Urban League (NUL), Blacks in the City: A History of the National Urban League. Parris and Brooks put forth this much-needed history during the black-power movement in America. Several factors prompted a need for this history. There was, at the time, no history of the Urban League, and Parris and Brooks wanted to “help to counter the tendency in some quarters to misconstrue the Urban League’s efforts and denigrate or ignore its accomplishments .”1 Jones’s work and the experiences of black social workers were not their primary focus. Nancy Weiss published The National Urban League, 1910–1940, in 1974; while she chronicles the history of the NUL from its beginnings , her work pays little attention to the details of Jones’s life and the opportunities the league offered black social workers, in part, perhaps, because Jones’s papers were not yet accessible to scholars. Jesse Thomas Moore Jr. published A Search for Equality: The National Urban League, 1910–1961, in 1981, in which he argues that the NUL had grown from a social-reform movement into a national institution of strictly racial and social concerns by 1961. Here again, Jones and black social workers receive little attention. Edyth I. Ross published a quick reference source in 1978, Black Heritage in Social Welfare, 1860–1930, but her work lacks historical perspective and content. None of these histories identifies Jones as the central figure in the NUL or underscores his role in the American social-work movement. This study will examine the early-twentieth-century black social-work movement, placing 2 EUGENE KINCKLE JONES particular emphasis on Jones’s life and work with the National Urban League. This is not a history of the NUL as an organization; it is a study of one of its most significant leaders: Eugene Kinckle Jones. Through the National Urban League, along with the work of professionally trained black social workers, Jones fought against racial discrimination against African American migrants to northern cities. This study will increase our knowledge of the “urban black experience” and how African Americans helped to shape that experience in ways that allowed them to survive. The main focus of this study, however, is on Jones and his role in the professionalization of black social work. It will be revealed that his leadership of the National Urban League and his involvement with black and white social reformers early in the twentieth century was instrumental in the development of black social work. Though the focus of this study is on Eugene Kinckle Jones, it would be difficult to tell his story without revealing some of the history of the NUL. Jones was the leader of this major black protest organization in the first half of the twentieth century, and he helped to define and characterize this noted American institution. In addition to his work as the leader of the NUL, Jones played a major role in the development of professional social work. Jones’s tenure coincided with the Great Migration of southern African Americans to northern cities. As a result of this urbanization process, the urgency for black social workers was great. In essence, the fate of these professionals was inextricably connected to the survival of black urban migrant communities. This study will reveal the numerous fronts on which Jones and his contemporaries fought to make professional black social work a reality. Jones solicited funds, delivered speeches, wrote articles, served in the federal government , established NUL branches all over the country, and became the first noted statesman of the league. By 1940, upon his retirement, social work for African Americans had spread throughout the nation in both rural and urban areas. This study will establish Jones as a major contributor to that process and a leading African American intellect of the early twentieth century. Eugene Kinckle Jones was born in 1885. Oddly enough, he grew up in an integrated environment in Richmond, Virginia. Jim Crow segregation by the late nineteenth century was entrenched throughout the South and was quickly becoming customary throughout the entire United States. Jones and his family resided in an all-black neighborhood in Richmond, referred to as the “black ward” of Jackson. Both of Jones’s parents...

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