Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs

The Alfred McKenzie Award was established in 1994 to recognize Committee clients whose dedication and courage have produced civil rights victories of particular significance. It takes its name from a man whose efforts as a Committee plaintiff helped to change an institution.

During World War II, Alfred McKenzie left his entry-level position in the Government Printing Office (GPO) to join the Army Air Corps where he served with distinction as one of the famed Tuskegee Airmen. When he returned to the GPO in 1946, he was assigned to the same low-level position he had held before his military service. He then began a career-long struggle to win equal treatment for himself and his fellow African-American GPO employees.

In 1972, represented by Committee staff and the firm of Hogan & Hartson, Mr. McKenzie initiated a class action lawsuit to challenge racial discrimination against African-American pressmen at the GPO. Fifteen years later, his determination led to a landmark victory that secured a record $2.4 million payment to hundreds of African-American workers and, even more important, a fundamental restructuring of personnel policies that opened the door of equal opportunity to countless minority workers.

The National Urban League

For nearly a century, the National Urban League has played a preeminent role in the civil rights movement in the United States. Founded in 1910 in New York City with the goal of assisting African Americans migrating to the North in adjusting to new conditions and challenges, the League has maintained a central focus on issues of employment, housing and education. This commitment took on special meaning in the early 1960’s, when under the leadership of Whitney M. Young, Jr., the League provided indispensable leadership and support for the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.

In the early 1970’s, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee teamed with the League and a number of its affiliates in a joint effort to combat racial discrimination in the building trades. This effort led both to successful litigation challenging the discriminatory practices of a number of construction unions and effective pressure leading to increased civil rights enforcement by the Department of Labor.

Following the death of Whitney Young, the Urban League’s leading role as a civil rights advocate has continued under the guidance of its subsequent Executive Directors, Vernon Jordan, John E. Jacobs, Hugh Price and Marc Morial. This work has involved an array of innovative programs and public advocacy designed to keep the issues of community economic empowerment, education and youth development, and affirmative action in the forefront of our national agenda.

The Washington Lawyers’ Committee is proud to salute the Urban League’s splendid work and its lasting contribution to the advancement of civil rights in our country.

The Greater Washington Urban League

For over 60 years, the Greater Washington Urban League has been on the forefront of the fight for racial and economic justice in the nation’s capital. During much of that time, it has worked closely with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee on its advocacy efforts. The Committee’s collaboration with the League began in 1970, when we worked closely in establishing a special project to rally community support to confront entrenched racial discrimination in the city’s building trades and the construction industry. This effort led to over a dozen significant legal challenges to the practices of local unions and contractors. It also produced a successful campaign which persuaded the District of Columbia and the Department of Labor to adopt broad ranging affirmative action plans covering the D.C. metropolitan construction industry.

Throughout the 1970’s, the League worked in collaboration with the Committee on efforts to encourage minority federal workers to assert their rights under the Civil Rights Act of 1972, which granted federal workers their first meaningful protections against employment discrimination. The League’s work contributed significantly to the initiation of scores of successful legal challenges to federal job bias brought by the Committee over the past 20 years.

In keeping with a strong mutual commitment to public education, the League has worked closely with the Committee on numerous occasions to advocate on behalf of school reform and the city’s children. This work has included support for increased school funding, and mentoring programs, as well as the endorsement of a special ballot initiative in 1986 mandating regular public hearings on the school budget and declaring school funding to be a matter “of highest priority.” More recently, the active support of the League’s President, Maudine Cooper, has contributed substantially to a series of policy papers on school reform and budget issues prepared by the Committee on behalf of Parents United for the D.C. Public Schools.

The Committee could not imagine a more deserving recipient of the Alfred McKenzie Award.