By Deron Snyder
The accomplishments of individuals of colour are sometimes missed in American historical past. That can be true of social staff of colour.
Lester Blackwell Granger is one such historic determine, a social employee few individuals find out about who ought to get pleasure from wider acclaim. As Black Historical past Month closes, it’s applicable we take a better have a look at this NASW Social Work Pioneer.
Born in 1896, Granger lived throughout and time of large upheaval and alter in our nation.
He served as govt director of the Nationwide City League (NUL) from 1941 to 1961, presiding by World Conflict II and the Korean Conflict, and the beginning pains of the trendy civil rights motion.
Granger served within the army throughout World Conflict I and skilled first-hand the racism inflicted on Black troopers who fought for freedom overseas, solely to return to residence to second-class citizenship and even violence within the type of lynching.
Whereas on the helm of NUL, Granger joined the chief of the NAACP, the Black press and others to push for desegregation of the U.S. army. The marketing campaign lasted a decade however culminated in President Harry Truman signing Govt Order 9981 in 1948 to desegregate the army. Granger additionally drew up the Navy’s post-World Conflict II integration plan and helped remedy issues associated to desegregation within the Navy.
For his efforts, Granger was awarded the President’s Medal of Benefit by President Truman was later lauded by President Dwight Eisenhower.
Granger was main determine in rising social work career
Granger attended Dartmouth School and one in all his first jobs as a social employee was in New Jersey, aiding youth at a vocational college. “The truth is, Granger grew to become a number one determine within the new social work career,” Herbert G. Ruffin II writes for blackpast.org.
The Nationwide Affiliation of Social Staff Basis lists Granger as one of many NASW Social Work Pioneers® as a result of he “launched civil rights to the social work agenda as a nationwide and worldwide concern.
From his Pioneers bio: “He centered consideration and advocacy vitality on the aim of equal alternative and justice for all individuals of colour, even whereas specializing in the situation of Black individuals in america. He’s credited with main the event of unions amongst black staff, in addition to integrating white unions.”
Granger joined NUL in 1934 and led the group’s Staff’ Bureau, which sought to coach and mobilize Blacks as they migrated from the agricultural South and sought industrial work in city facilities.
The NUL’s give attention to jobs and self-help was typically contrasted in opposition to the objectives of the Nationwide Affiliation for the Development of Coloured Individuals, which concentrated extra on ending discriminatory legal guidelines and stopping lynching of Black individuals.
Hugh B. Worth, NUL president from 1994 to 2003, stated Granger realized every intention was very important. “For those who’re to perform every day, you want meals, clothes and shelter,” Worth stated. “And also you need the best to vote and the best to not be lynched. All of that.”
“The City League’s trigger was rooted in social work and serving to Blacks through the Nice Migration,” Worth continued. “Serving to them get located once they got here to city and take care of what was of their faces every day. And (scholar W.E.B.) DuBois and the NAACP have been completely applicable in combating for individuals’s rights, and so on. and and so on. What you started to see with Granger – and subsequently the entire successors – was the league take care of each realities.”
Granger used function in “Black Cupboard” to push for army desegregation
Worth stated Granger was lively with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s so-called “Black Cupboard,” an off-the-cuff advisory group of Black leaders who lobbied for integration and equal entry to New Deal alternatives. Not lengthy after Granger was appointed head of the NUL in 1941, his focus shifted from unions to uniformed companies.
The South didn’t have something on the army by way of upholding Jim Crow.
Greater than 1,000,000 Black women and men served within the armed forces throughout World Conflict II, and almost all have been assigned to segregated models commanded by white officers. Tensions have been simmering when James V. Forrestal grew to become Secretary of the Navy and shortly thereafter, in March 1945, appointed Granger as a particular consultant to review race relations inside the department. “In his first six months, Granger travelled 50,000 miles and visited 67 naval installations residence and overseas,” Charles Wollenberg writes within the California Historic Society journal (Spring 1979).
Granger continued to battle for army desegregation, lobbying a committee within the President Harry S. Truman administration. The chief order to desegregate the army got here in 1948.
Granger was additionally lively within the trendy civil rights motion that gained momentum after the homicide of Emmitt Until and the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott. By the late Nineteen Fifties, Granger was discussing civil rights laws with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Martin Luther King Jr., who led the Southern Christian Management Council (SCLC), Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, and Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Automotive Porters.
Granger helped educate new technology of social staff
Because the NUL started fading and giving technique to direct-action teams just like the SCLC, Granger transitioned into a school professor who solid his imaginative and prescient of social work as a weapon.
He started at Dillard College, a traditionally Black establishment, instantly upon retiring from the NUL in 1961. “We tried onerous to grasp his place on the civil rights motion, for he was not as militant as we thought he ought to be,” former pupil Annie Woodley Brown, DSW, writes in “Filling the Ranks,” a 2004 journal article.
Garner noticed social work as a device to enrich the raging civil rights wrestle, and he inspired his college students to broaden their considering and think about the sphere.
“He didn’t suppose all people needed to do the identical factor or use the identical ways within the wrestle for racial equality,” Brown writes. “He needed us to consider different methods we may contribute to the civil rights motion – collaborating in management councils, educating in universities, managing social service organizations.”
Brown writes that Granger “actually believed the career had the potential to make a major contribution within the space of racial, social, and financial justice.” She features a passage of his writing in 1940 that “appeared seize the imaginative and prescient of social work he tried to impart on us:
“What’s required … is that the social employee shall be a part of the battle in opposition to social injustice, shall assist to remake or eradicate these forces which have twisted and blighted the lives of hundreds of thousands of People in our personal technology. Nobody is best certified than the social employee to carry to such planning a shrewd evaluation of the person and household wants of the group: nobody is extra chargeable for devising methods of serving these wants.”
Worth stated Granger introduced the social work background to give attention to discrimination and entry to job alternatives.
“However he additionally moved the sphere and the City League extra into advocacy and different rights points. He’s an enormous however type of underappreciated traditionally, Worth stated. Most people may be largely unaware of Granger, however his mark on the career continues.
Kerri Criswell, a supervisor with the NASW Basis, stated Granger’s twin mission of advocacy and social justice is a part of the NASW Code of Ethics.
“Our Pioneers are chargeable for so many issues that plenty of us get pleasure from, like social safety and employment rights,” Criswell stated. “They laid the groundwork and he was one in all many to make a long-lasting impression.”
Granger’s legacy largely forgotten
Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., who led the NUL from 1971 to 1981 and later grew to become a detailed advisor to President Invoice Clinton, bemoaned that “little consideration” was paid to Granger’s dying in January 1976.
Some older individuals vaguely recalled the identify and others registered a clean, he stated.
Jordan referred to as the lack of expertise “shameful” and careworn the significance of recalling figures who not solely survived blatant racist oppression however led the battle.
“Lester Granger as soon as outlined black objectives as ‘the best to work, the best to vote, the best to bodily security and the best to dignity and self-respect,’” Jordan wrote within the Oakland Submit shortly after Granger died.
“The wrestle for these objectives remains to be with us and by protecting the reminiscence of Lester Granger and the multitude of different unsung Black heroes earlier than us, we’ve got a greater probability of fulfilling these objectives.”
Deron Snyder, a local of Brooklyn, N.Y., is an award-winning journalist and Howard College graduate who lives in metro Washington, D.C.
