Early Life and Career
Young was born in Shelby County, Kentucky, on July 31, 1921 to educated parents. His father was the president of the Lincoln Institute, which was where Whitney was raised and educated. Whitney's mother, Laura Young, was the first female postmistress in Kentucky, the first African-American postmistress in Kentucky, and the second in the United States.
Young earned a bachelor of science degree from Kentucky State University, a historically black institution. At Kentucky State, Young was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.
During World War II, Young was trained in electrical engineering at MIT. He was then assigned to a road construction crew of black soldiers supervised by Southern white officers. After just three weeks, he was promoted from private to first sergeant, creating hostility on both sides. Despite the tension, Young was able to mediate effectively between his white officers and black soldiers angry at their poor treatment. This situation propelled Young into a career in race relations.
After the war, Young joined his wife, Margaret, at the University of Minnesota, where he earned a Masters Degree in social work in 1947 and volunteered for the St. Paul branch of the National Urban League. He was then appointed to a leadership position in that branch.
In 1950, Young became president of the National Urban League's Omaha, Nebraska chapter. In that position, he helped get black workers into jobs previously reserved for whites. Under his leadership, the chapter tripled its number of paying members.
In his next position as dean of social work at Atlanta University, Young supported alumni in their boycott of the Georgia Conference of Social Welfare. The organization had a poor record of placing African Americans in good jobs. In 1960, Young was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation grant for a postgraduate year at Harvard University. In the same year, he joined the NAACP and rose to become state president.
Young was a close friend of Roy Wilkins, who was the executive director for the NAACP in the 1960s.
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