NATIONAL NEWS: SPOTLIGHT ON CAMPAIGN HONORARY CHAIRMAN
John E. Jacob, front row, second from right as a member of the Howard University Army ROTC. At Howard University, front row first on the left. On page 59, Brother Jacob's yearbook photo from Howard University, with his daughter, Sheryl Renee Jacob, left and Silhouette Barbara Singleton Jacob.
On Social Work “My generation came along dur-
declared, “We won’t give you five million dollars; we will give you $4.5 million.” “I thanked him for it and proceeded to raise and secure significant funding for the National Urban League.” Albeit, according to Brother Jacob, the paradigm to raise and secure funding from corporations such as Philip Morris International, Rockefeller Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, United Parcel Service (UPS), Xerox, IBM and other major Fortune 500 Corporations took him across the country into a variety of corporate board rooms where he was very successful as the President & CEO of National Urban League, there too were disappointments and setbacks with corporations. “Setbacks in running an organization like the National Urban League is noth- ing new, you just face up to them and move on and keep moving forward.” In discussing the social work profes- sion and how it affected his ability to be a change agent in a world that lacked diversity, inclusion and opportunity, Jacob stated, “I am not the kind of social worker who knew he wanted to be a social worker, I am not the kind of social worker who during his undergraduate experience planned to attend the school of social work…I am one of those ac- cidental social workers.”
me…I worked in public welfare, child welfare and community organizations when I was a practicing social worker. I quickly learned that social work was not just a practice of helping people; it was also the business of helping people.” “My concern today is that I don’t see social work doing what it used to do, in terms of challenging the behavior of gov- ernmental leadership, that the govern- ment is not looking out for the people that it is empowered and in business to serve, I keep listening for the voices of social work on this concern, I’ve always seen social work as stepping into the role of advising America on what it should be doing and how it should do it.” “I tell you I have lived through a number of bad experiences with national leadership and the treatment of poor Blacks and immigrants in America, but I have never lived through a period like the one we are living through now. I have known conservative politicians and I have known liberal politicians and I have known folks who were exploiting the political process, but never have I known someone who was the worst president of anything. There is no value placed upon people, there is no appre- ciation placed upon government even during the Reagan years, public policy and social policy was nothing like it is
ing segregation. We came along during the days when most of us didn’t go to college, but the other thing about my generation was we knew that a college education would provide liberation for where you wanted to go in life.” “I was offered a means to attend Howard University School of Social Work even when I did not know what social work was. What social work did for me, clearly, was to reinforce a set of values that I had grown up with in my family and in my church. Social work as a practice coincided with the value system that I had grown up learning to believe in, so I always believed that every person should be treated the way, they themselves, wanted to be treated.” “I grew up believing that all men and women should be seen as equal, and given the opportunity they could perform that way, so attending Howard University School of Social Work, for me, reinforced those core values I had, that gave me some techniques and prin- ciples to implement and exercise actions that would allow me to help folks to get where they were trying to go…the entire notion of starting where people are and then helping them to get where they want to go, social work was what put the framework around this concept for
THE JOURNAL ♦ WINTER 2019 | 61
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