National Urban League Negotiates Northern Industrial Employment for Black Migrants

The National Urban League worked throughout the 1920s to negotiate access for Black workers to industrial jobs in Northern cities, operating as an employment agency and social service organization. The League placed Black workers in steel mills, meatpacking plants, and other industries, sometimes using the threat of strike-breaking as leverage when white unions excluded Black workers. League worker Eugene Kinckle Jones documented conditions in Black communities and lobbied New Deal agencies to include Black workers. The League's research arm produced some of the most detailed data on racial economic disparities of the era.