As the Urban League of Greater New Orleans turns 70, it has a new leader and a “renewed” and “reinvigorated” board of directors. Its capital campaign is again underway as are plans for an oral history project to record the Urban League’s role in the local civil rights movement. Most importantly, the Urban League of Greater New Orleans is still committed to bringing services to the community through real programs that touch people’s lives daily. And it is committed to bringing the community to service with membership recruiting efforts that target young professionals and introduce the history and the current relevance of the organization to them while reminding those who already know the Urban League of Greater New Orleans that. . .

The Legacy Continues

There wasn’t much fanfare to introduce the new president of the Urban League of Greater New Orleans last summer. That’s the way he wanted it.

He was simply announced as the new leader of the organization last summer at the Urban League’s annual gala. He officially took his seat on August 1, and he has been working rather quietly since then, assessing the organization’s programs, objectives and future in New Orleans.

“I came in low key purposefully,” says Nolan V. Rollins. “I have been looking at the internal operations that we are working with. I wanted to look at the organization to determine who we are and where we are going.”

As the League turns 70, looking back is as critical as looking forward, says Urban League Board of Directors Chairman Flozell Daniels, Jr.

“It is really a retrospective of the tremendous shoulders upon which we stand,” Daniels says.

The League Legacy

The local organization formed in 1938 and turns 70 this year.

At its inception, its objectives handily modeled those of its parent organization—helping to improve economic and social conditions of African-Americans by addressing a variety of areas including voting rights, quality education, equal employment and fair housing.

In 1966, New Orleans native Clarence Barney, who had already worked closely with then-national executive director Whitney Young Jr., was named president and CEO of the local affiliate and began a 30-year tenure as the organization’s top leader. Under his leadership, the Urban League of Greater New Orleans started a number of programs to address community needs. It was under Barney that the local League’s influence in the New Orleans political and social landscape grew.

Even after he resigned as top leader in 1996, Barney was so tantamount to all the New Orleans Urban League stood for that he still possessed a stronghold of influence and power and had no reservations about using it when it came to matters of social and economic equality.

In the mid 1990s, Barney lobbied the primary contractor on the Phase II expansion of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center to ensure that Black-owned construction companies were brought in as subcontractors. When asking didn’t work, he organized a boycott. In the end, more than $37 million was awarded to minority subcontractors as a part of the project.

When New Orleans Arena plans were launched in 1997, Barney was instrumental in negotiating a deal that allowed the lead contractor to get a discount on the retainer fee for every $5 million in business awarded to Black subcontractors. It was a move that ensured that minority subcontractors also got a share of that project.

Whatever the tactic, Barney understood that economic opportunity for minorities—a primary goal of the Urban League—must be achieved.

Edith Gee Jones took the helm after Barney’s retirement. In 1997, she became the first woman to lead the local organization, continuing long-standing programs and establishing new ones; and she, along with a progressive board of directors are credited with having the foresight to see to it that the Urban League purchased a building at 2322 Canal Street, paving the way for the League to own its headquarters.

She was also at the helm when the Urban League undertook the task of chronicling the history of the civil rights movement in New Orleans and the role of the Urban League, as well as other organizations, in it. Though retired, Barney was set to play a major role in that project, as well. And had spent much time pouring over old papers and pictures in the weeks before his death in August 2005.

After Hurricane Katrina, Jones and her staff, along with the Urban League Board of Directors and other Urban League volunteers, made certain that the local League got running and served the needs of the community immediately after the storm. She continued to serve as its president until she retired in September 2006.

A Legacy Continues

The successes of his predecessors are not lost on Rollins.

“I have the luxury of more than 70 years of hard work that has gone on before me,” Rollins says. “I can draw on the knowledge of those who have gone before. The things the previous CEOs have been able to accomplish in this city have been incredible.”

With that history and legacy greeting him, a “low-key” Rollins came into New Orleans from Baltimore, where his last job was senior vice president of economic and community development at that city’s Urban League affiliate. An attorney by training, he worked for the state of Maryland, writing policy for the department of public safety. He also worked in Baltimore’s prosecutor’s office before joining the Urban League’s staff.

“The president of the Urban League in Baltimore, J. Howard Henderson, told me 'when you’re ready to accept a real job come see me,' ” says Rollins, who earned his bachelor’s degree in public administration from Virginia State University, his master’s degree in legal ethics and historical studies from the University of Baltimore, and his JD from Florida Costal School of Law. “I accepted employment at the affiliate, and the movement caught me. I’m proud that I helped him turn that affiliate around. I learned so much from him.”

He says his time with the prosecutor’s office made him realize that he wanted to “impact the lives of the young people that I saw coming through the system on the front end.”

“I took a big pay cut to go to the Urban League, but my wife and I realized it wasn’t about the money. Every night and day I’ve loved being part of the movement. My son is coming up exposed to the movement . . . just being around what we are doing.”

Since his arrival at the New Orleans Urban League, he has, of course, continued many of the programs started by his predecessors. The capital campaign started under Jones has resumed under Rollin’s leadership, as has the oral history project. Both projects were disrupted by Hurricane Katrina, but have now been put back in focus.

The Urban League’s annual Golden Gala is a major event. Set for July 12, the 2008 gala will honor Don Hubbard, a businessman and civil rights activist.

Funds generated from sponsorships and ticket sales of the celebrated event, now in its 27th year, are used to help support the Urban League programs people depend on—education programs like Early Head Start, which is open to children from newborns to three year olds.

Daniels is proud that the Urban League was able to get that program going again quickly after the storm through a new partnership, he says, adding that it’s the kind of front door program that allows the Urban League to introduce more people to the breadth of its services.

“We can reach the parents and family members of the children and pull them into other programs at the Urban League,” he says.

There are also after-school and summer programs for youth and the Clarence Barney Student of the Week Scholarship Program. At least one $5,000 scholarship is awarded annually to one of the students named as a Student of the Week during the year through this program.

The Urban League has also focused on initiating discourse and helping to shape the public policies that affect people’s lives. It is an area Daniels says is vital, citing a need for Black America to not just respond to policy decisions, but to play a major role in making them.

Meanwhile, new and old programs have also come together to help the Urban League reach its goals in community and workforce development.

The Urban League started its Urban Empowerment program in March 2007. Through a partnership with the U.S. Department of Labor and Delgado Community College, this program provides on-going support services and job training to young adults, some of who have had run-ins with the criminal justice system. In addition to job training, it helps youth ages 18-24 earn a GED, if necessary, and promises a job placement after the program’s completion.

Daniels is particularly energized about this program.

“It doesn’t just train them and put them out the door,” he says. “It offers case management, support services. We keep our hands on them and move them throughout the process toward better lives.”

All of these programs have been collected into a model the Urban League is calling its Centers of Excellence—a Center of Education and Youth Development, a Center for Community and Work Force Development and a Center of Policy and Social Justice—three umbrellas, so to speak, that help define and convey just what the Urban League has done and will continue to do in New Orleans.

“We’ve always been a direct service organization,” Rollins says. “We have been good stewards of government funded and corporate funded programs.”

And so where does the organization need a little shoring up in Rollins estimation?

Rollins believes its vital for the community to know that the organization that has built its mission around helping people, delivering services and making it possible for several generations of young professionals to enjoy a level of success and achievement that has been 70 years in the making now needs a commitment from them, the latest group of benificiaries.

“We’ve never thought of it that way, of connecting that way and stewarding the relationship that way,” he says. “At the end of the day, this organization exists at the pleasure of the community. We’ve yet to figure out how to connect to those who have risen through its ranks.”

Under Rollins, the Urban League of Greater New Orleans has started a program in New Orleans modeled after one he created in Baltimore—a program credited with helping to bring new life to the organization there. The local Urban League earlier this year unveiled I AM THE MOVEMENT, an arm of the agency designed to attract young professionals ages 21 to 44.

Reaching this segment becomes increasingly vital, Rollins says, as more young professionals inch a little higher, seemingly oblivious to the glass ceiling.

“We must remove the veil of inevitability that some of us possess, thinking we have arrived,” Rollins says. “If you look around the country right now and look at the people at the top in every situation, very few of them look like us.”

“The Urban League is carving out that after college age group and that’s where our young professionals group comes in,” says Rollins. “We feel the growth potential for our organization rests there. We ask the young professionals—'What’s in it for you?' And we have answers. 'You have access to opportunities. And we want you to join us in the other part—doing good and giving back.'”
And so that will be one of the Urban League’s chief initiatives—introducing and reintroducing the Urban League to the people of this city, young and old—and ensuring that the Urban League of Greater New Orleans continues to serve the community and inviting the community to be a part of that.

“This work isn’t done in a vacuum,” he says. “It’s done in the community where it is accessible to people, where people feel comfortable. We need to get back to what worked, and it was community engagement and community involvement that made the Urban League tick. It was always about the community. It was never about the brand. It was about how the community reacted to the brand and did the brand do for the community what it was supposed to do.”

Focusing on Centers of Excellence, using them to define what the Urban League does and reaching out to the community isn’t a far cry from what the agency has always done, Daniels says. These strategies are tools to help spread the word so that everyone else will know what the Urban League of Greater New Orleans means to the city and the people it serves.

“We’ve always been connected at the community level,” Daniels says. “I’m not sure that we’ve always done a good job at communicating the work that has been done. We have been doing some great work, and we haven’t been talking about it.”

Keeping Promises

To be sure, New Orleans had its share of needs to address before August 28, 2005. But needs in the areas of housing, employment, education and economic opportunity are multiplied and magnified in a post-Katrina paradigm.

And when the Urban League’s board of directors really got to work post-Katrina, Daniels says it became essential to make sure that the Urban League was “meeting the needs of those most in need.”

“We want to make sure we get to those folks that are not really getting served in other places,” he says.

Those were the ideals members of the Board had in mind when they set out on a national search for a new leader, he says.

“When Edith retired, we asked ourselves, who are we? What does a social justice and a community organization look like in the 21st Century?' We really have a renewed and reinvigorated board of directors which really has led the recovery for the Urban League since Katrina. It’s been an incredible story; and in many ways, it’s just started.”

As for the man tapped to lead the organization, Daniels, speaking for the entire Board, says they are happy with Rollins’ leadership and with the move toward really touting the Urban League efforts as a community organization.

The challenge for New Orleans, as Rollins sees it, is for the city to get “from under the rug of promises not kept.”

Luckily, that’s exactly where the Urban League’s strengths lie.

“Right now, folks are promised out. They’ve heard they are going to get a lot of help and a lot of things that have not materialized,” Rollins says. “To attack any of these problems meaningfully we have to focus on service delivery. As an organization, we have to make sure that the promises we make are the promises kept.”

And so, he has no reservations about coming to lead the organization in this city that has been turned upside by a storm. In fact, he sees it as the perfect opportunity for the Urban League to do what it does best—deliver.

“That’s what’s great about the Urban League. Long before I walked through the door, people recognized it as being a trusted organization that they can go to for the things and services they need. The groundwork was laid for me long before I came here, long before I was born. This makes the challenge much easier.”