The Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh is part of a century-long movement dedicated to equity, opportunity, and self-reliance. Here’s how our story began—and how it continues today.
Throughout its history, the Urban League Movement has been a magnet for people with a vision of a better urban America and the financial and intellectual capacity to make a difference.
In 1910, Mrs. Ruth Standish Baldwin, a member of one of America’s oldest families, and widow of railroad magnate, William Baldwin, and Dr. George Edmund Hayes, the first African American to receive a doctorate degree from Columbia University, founded what later became the National Urban League.
For more than one hundred years this combination of dynamic leadership, vision and financial wherewithal has been and remains the formula for success of the Urban League on the national and local levels.
The work of the Urban League is not simple to undertake nor is it easy to explain. Since 1918, the Pittsburgh Urban League has been connecting those in need with the resources to meet that need and in almost all cases the primary resource being offered and fostered is the foundation of self-reliance.
Through vital programs in employment, youth, family and child development, housing and self-sufficiency, Urban Leaguers work to level the playing field for all Americans and to equip disadvantaged families to care for themselves.
That’s the Movement. That’s the Urban League way.