Winter Issue - National Founders Day

NATIONAL NEWS: SPOTLIGHT ON CAMPAIGN HONORARY CHAIRMAN

60 th Laurel Wreath Laureate John E. Jacob Provides Insights Into his Life and the Impact of Kappa Alpha Psi

Dr. Samuel Odom

60 th Laurel Wreath Lau- reate John E. Jacob (Xi 1954) recently shared his experienc- es, insights, understandings and vision regarding his path and philosophy as the sixth President & CEO of the National Urban League (NUL), civil rights leader, business executive and administrator. He served as President & CEO of the NUL during the terms of Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton. For Jacob, being in the role was unexpected. “Let me preface this by saying that I am the only national President of the Urban League who didn’t expect to become national President. I fol- lowed five people who had indeed made themselves available for the position. I just had the good fortune of already being there and therefore I had the op- portunity to be seen and heard by the National Board of Directors for the Na- tional Urban League who was going to make the final decision for the position of president, particularly Vernon Jordan, whom I had worked for for years." Jacob is the only NUL President who had served as a local executive in two affiliates. "When I accepted the position of Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, my suspicion is that most Urban League executives never expected to move from an affiliate to be-

come the Executive Vice President and ultimately to become President, because had that been the case, I think more of those young local Urban League execu- tives would have been campaigning to become the Executive Vice President. Every local Urban League President thinks they are a ‘superstar.’ One of my challenges was to demonstrate that I was the right man for the job at the time, I set about doing that, by, first of all, making a distinction between being the National President and being a local executive.” “I knew how local execs operate, I knew the games that local execs played and I refused to accept the game. One of the examples is that, local executives, many of them don’t pay their dues to the National Office, and one my first challenges as President of the National Urban League was to get local execu- tives to understand I expected local affiliates would pay their dues. I put in place, actions that required them to pay their dues, and when they did not do so, I took actions against them. There are three affiliates that I actually put out of the Urban League. One never returned. The other two made arrangements to pay their dues. Therefore, the first thing administratively was to show them that I was no longer just a local executive, but I was now President and Chief Ex-

ecutive Officer for the National Urban League.” Brother Jacob promoted self-help including encouraging grass roots efforts to address matters such as crime, single parenthood, and male responsibility for fatherhood. He also promoted efforts to improve educational and employment opportunities for all. Setting a Vision Secondly, he also defined a direction for the National Urban League. “The direction that I chose to put in place was to get us to focus upon the idea that if discrimination disappeared over night, then the question becomes, what are those challenges that we would have in our community that we would still be left to face?” Jacob then identified four areas that he would embrace as challenges I thought would be challenging even if we finally eradicated discrimination. “The first area was the high incidents of pregnancy among Black teenagers, not just Black girls becoming pregnant, but the role that Black boys played in getting them pregnant. Therefore, one of my efforts to recognize and get others to recognize that the number one reason for Black girls dropping out of school was teenage pregnancy and if we wanted to address an issue that was uniquely

THE JOURNAL ♦ WINTER 2019  | 59

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