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• Mr. Morial's bio
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Tavis: Marc Morial is the former popular mayor of New Orleans, who now serves as president and CEO of the National Urban League. This year, 2005, marks the 95th anniversary of the esteemed organization. I'm pleased to welcome Marc Morial to the program. Mr. President, nice to have you on.

Marc Morial: Hey, Tavis. Good to be with you, man. Congratulations.

Tavis: Thank you. I assume you were not the president 95 years ago when the organization starts.

Morial: No. 95. There have been 7 before me.

Tavis: Yeah, and big name people like Vernon Jordan and Whitney Young.

Morial: And Eugene Kinkle Jones, Lester Granger and Hugh Price and John Jacob.

Tavis: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Morial: Great, great leaders and great presidents. In fact, only 8 presidents in the National Urban League. I think there have been 16-plus presidents of the United States in that time period, so there's longevity in this job.

Tavis: Speaking of presidents of these United States... thanks for the segue. You knew I wasn't going to miss that one. You set me up so nice. Let me pick up with that and run. The president of these United States as we speak...

Morial: Mm-hmm.

Tavis: Now in his second term, one George W. Bush, made a lot of news last summer on the campaign trail when he came to the National Urban League to speak in Detroit, as I recall, after he and the NAACP had gotten into a real nasty, ugly brawl, verbal brawl, about his not appearing at the NAACP. He came to the Urban League. Tell me, in retrospect, what position that put the Urban League in--how that came to be, number one, and, number two, what impact did that have on his picking up about 3 or 4 percentage points of the black vote?

Morial: Well, I don't know what effect it had politically. I think the important thing is we had both George Bush and 7 of the 9 Democratic candidates at our conference in 2003 in Pittsburgh, a year before the convention.

Tavis: OK.

Morial: So in the election year, we re-extended an invitation this time both to George Bush and John Kerry, and both of them said yes. And it was important. We wanted both of them there to affirm the fact that the black community and the African American vote and the vote of urban America would be significant in the election. And that we thought it was important to afford both candidates an opportunity to come and express their views and be heard. And that is what we sought to accomplish, and that is all we sought to accomplish. I think when it is all said and done, the African American community followed its historic voting pattern. Its historic voting pattern was to vote-- has been pretty much, in every election since 1960, to vote 85% plus for the candidate of the Democratic party. And I think that's been fairly consistent. I do think that in this era of a conservative shift politically, with the Republicans in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, it's going to be incumbent on the African American community to define our own agenda.

Tavis: Mm-hmm.

Morial: To define our own agenda and to define our friends by whether they support our interests, and that and that alone. And I think we're going to be in a new era. What's happened, Tavis, since the Voting Rights Act's passage is we've gained a tremendous reservoir of state and local elected officials.

Tavis: Of which you were one.

Morial: Of which I was one, and of which there have been so many-- a record forty-three black members of Congress...if you include Barack Obama, who's now in the Senate-- forty-two in the House, I believe, one in the Senate. A great number of African American elected officials, so we have a reservoir of power. I would suggest to you we haven't used as effectively as we should or as we can, and I think that's going to be the challenge going forward.

Tavis: But it's awfully tough to do that, Marc, when you are in the minority. And for African Americans, double minority--not only are you in the minority party, the Democratic Party, you are the minority within that party. So how does one effectively navigate or lay out what an African American agenda ought to be in that context?

Morial: It is tough, but let's take a page from history.

Tavis: OK.

Morial: When the big 6 civil rights leaders, when Dr. King and others pushed the civil rights agenda in the Fifties and in the Sixties, African Americans didn't even have the right to vote, didn't even have the power of the ballot, had no elected officials in the south, and a few in the north and a few in the west. And built a movement around what was good and what was right for the country. Now, I don't suggest that this is a time period where you can recreate the circumstances of the civil rights era, because those were special circumstances in our history, but I think we ought to take a lesson from that--to say while, quote, unquote, our members in the Congressional Black Caucus might be on the minority side of the aisle in the United States House and Barack Obama in the United States Senate, and those that might be our traditional allies are mostly there, we have got to remember, or we've got to, I think, chart a different course, a new course, to focus on those things we need for the development and empowerment of our community from an economic standpoint--those things that it's going to take to close the education gap. I think we're going to have to put a lot more focus on that and define ourselves in the political spectrum, if you will, in the same fashion as the founders of the Congressional Black Caucus defined themselves, and that is with no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, and only permanent interests. Now, some say, well, you know, it may be a little ambitious, it may be a little romantic, it may be a little bit unrealistic to suggest that, but I see no other course.

Tavis: OK. Let me ask you how, once you lay out what that agenda is, whatever that African American agenda ought to be, let me ask you how you help-- you being the representative of the National Urban League-- how you help the team win. If we can use a sports metaphor here--you and I both love sports--you can't win an NBA championship without a good inside game and a good outside game. You need an inside game and an outside game.

Morial: Yeah, and I believe--

Tavis: So if the CBC and other elected officials are the inside game, then these organizations represent the outside game, if you will, tell me why, 95 years later, an organization like the Urban League is still relevant.

Morial: I think we're relevant primarily because each and every year we directly serve 2 million people. And that's the strength of the National Urban League and the Urban League affiliates in cities across the nation. And few people know our total story. Each year we serve 700,000 youth directly. If we were a school district, we'd be the third largest in America. No other organization has more after school programs for African American youth than we do. No other organization has more early childhood programs for African American children than we do, except for government agencies. And we're doing this work with a combination of public, private, and foundation funding. No other organization connects more people to jobs-- we've connected 25,000 people to jobs in 2003-- trains more people-- another 24,000--than we do. We do the very difficult, sometimes unsung work in the communities. The second thing I think is important about why we are relevant, as we try to transform and reshape ourselves, is really a commentary on the fact as to why traditional legacy African American organizations are as needed now as ever...the NAACP, the National Urban League, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the National Council of Negro Women, the United Negro College Fund-- because there's self-determination inside these organizations. They're organizations where we can set the agenda. They're organizations where we can bring the partners to the table that we think are necessary to be able to accomplish our mission. But I think at the end of the day for the Urban League, the important reason why is this is us, and we're serving us, in our communities, people who would not, in fact, be served, but for the work of the Urban League.

Tavis: If I'm a young black professional--I happen to be a young black professional-- um, I'm holding on to that young thing as long as I can. But if I'm a young black professional, tell me why my mama and my grandmama's organization, be it the Urban League, the NAACP, is going to help me self-determine my own course.

Morial: I would say to young African American people, choose an organization that you feel--choose a vehicle or a mechanism to get involved, because there's power in collectivity. You're only gonna accomplish so much individually. The power of our progress was through collectivism. The Urban League is one vehicle, one opportunity, one way. There are certainly many, many other ways to get involved. There are church-based organizations. There are fraternal and service organizations. There are political initiatives. My message is one of involvement for young African American professionals, not to be the generation of "me", but to orchestrate a new generation of "we". Because it is the "we" of the Fifties, the Sixties, and the Seventies, that gave Tavis Smiley, that gave Marc Morial, an opportunity to sit here and do what we're doing. We not only owe that legacy to our parents, but we also, I think, owe it to the next generation. We owe the mission and the commitment to keep the movement going. So I say get involved in the Urban League. We have the National Urban League young professionals. But I also say if that's not the organization of your choice, find a vehicle or a way to coalesce with others, to coalesce with others who share your concerns, who share your aspirations to make a difference in your own community.

Tavis: I'll ask Jonathan X to put this on the screen in just a second so our viewers can see this, but you're reaching out to young people through a new publication, in fact, are you not?

Morial: It's a beautiful publication. Turn it around so they can see--

Tavis: They'll put it up on the screen.

Morial: A young, beautiful Patti Labelle.

Tavis: Ha ha ha!

Morial: A beautiful and talented Patti Labelle. Yeah, Tavis, we've got a real effort to reach out and transform our organization to be multi-generational, and it's important to reach out to young professionals, people from the Hip-Hop generation, people in their twenties, in their thirties, perhaps in their forties, in an effort to connect them to this power of collectivity, the power of getting involved. So I'm excited about "Urban Influence Magazine." We'd encourage people to go and find a copy. You can go to NUL.ORG, which is our web site, and identify a way to get the magazine. It's a great magazine. It's got a lot of information, as well as a lot of information about the Urban League. We want to tell people a lot more about the work we're doing.

Tavis: Let me close our conversation where I began. I shouldn't say exactly where I began, but I want to complete this thought, if I might.

Morial: Mm-hmm.

Tavis: We started our conversation by talking about the guy on the right, George W. Bush, President, now in his second term, um, but I want to ask a question about the left. I ask this question, and let me just say it before you say it: the Urban League is a non-partisan organization. Let's say that for the record. You invited Kerry and Bush to speak at the convention. But since you are a former mayor of New Orleans, a Democrat mayor of New Orleans, what does the Democratic party have to do--I'm trying to ask this question the right way to keep you out of trouble-- what's the Democratic party got to do to at least be competitive next time around?

Morial: Reenergize. It needs to reenergize itself. It needs to reach out much more broadly, and it needs to define, as any political party and leadership, it needs to talk about the future. It cannot--you cannot build a movement or build initiative by simply discussing the past, and I think, uh-- whenever--I think the Democratic Party's in a position that maybe the Republican Party was in a generation ago, and that is there's an avenue for new leadership. There's an avenue for new definition. There's an avenue for new policy, and I think people, so many people in the country, Tavis-- and one thing I think this election may have--a lot of people in this country do not have party loyalty.

Tavis: Right.

Morial: And they do not have strong ideological loyalty, but they do have a great sense of what they want for themselves, their families, and their communities. Uh, so the election was close. '04 was close. 2000 was close. I think we're gonna have a continuing course of, really, a struggle, uh, between the left, the right, and to some extent, the center, about where this country's gonna go in the 21st century.

Tavis: I look forward to being a part of it, and I'm sure you will be. Nice to see you.

Morial: Thank you.

Tavis: Take care.

Morial: My pleasure.

Tavis: For more information about the National Urban League, go to Marc's favorite web site: NUL.ORG.

Morial: You got it.

Tavis: We'll be right back. Stay with us.