The National Urban League (Norman grantee 1944–1959) was founded in 1910 to help African Americans migrating from the agricultural and rural South find jobs, housing, and economic opportunity in Northern cities. By the 1950s, the second wave of the Great Migration was in full force, with millions of Black Americans leaving the South for Northern and Western cities in search of better lives, only to find that discrimination that systematically excluded Black workers and families followed them — in hiring practices, labor unions, and housing markets.

Under the leadership of Lester Granger, the Urban League had already secured a landmark victory in 1941 — helping win Executive Order 8802, the first federal prohibition on employment discrimination, which opened hundreds of thousands of defense industry jobs to Black workers. Building on that foundation, the League continued throughout the 1950s to challenge discriminatory hiring practices by convincing corporations to recruit on historically Black college campuses, promote Black workers to higher-level positions, and integrate labor unions that had long excluded Black workers. In 1952, Norman began supporting local affiliates — the Urban League of Westchester County (Norman grantee 1952–1959) and the Urban League of Greater New York (Norman grantee 1955–1959) — reflecting a commitment to both national advocacy and local impact.