by Herb Boyd
While researching an obituary for Henry Kissinger, we discovered that he had at least one close African American associate: Lester Granger. If you know something about the history of the National Urban League (NUL), then Granger’s name should not be unfamiliar. Even so, many Americans have no idea who he was and what he accomplished during his 79 years. We start with his birth on September 16, 1896, in Newport News, Virginia.
He was one of six sons of a mother who was a teacher and a physician father from Barbados. Granger grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1918, where he was a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. Four of his brothers were also graduates of Dartmouth.
During World War I, he served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army and began his long association with the NUL in the organization’s Newark chapter.
After his military service, Granger was an extension worker with the Bordentown School, New Jersey’s state vocational school for African American youth in Bordentown. Eight years later, in 1930, Granger was in Los Angeles where he organized that city’s chapter of the NUL. In 1934, he was on the ramparts in the demands to include Black workers in the trade unions, persistently challenging racism by employers and the unions.
He was an unstinting activist during the Great Migration, heading the NUL’s Workers’ Bureau. According to Hugh B. Price, who led the NUL from 1994 to 2003, Granger should be appreciated for his attention to jobs, self-help, and political action. “If you’re to function daily, you need food, clothing, and shelter,” Price said. “And you want the right to vote and the right to not be lynched.”
By 1940, Granger was the assistant executive director of the NUL in charge of industrial relations, where the integration of the trade unions was a top item on the agenda. A year later, when Eugene Kinckle Jones was ill and no longer able to function as the organization’s executive secretary, Granger was appointed his successor. It was a propitious moment for him and he immediately lent his support to the proposed March on Washington by A. Philip Randolph.
Granger played a vital role in the desegregation of the armed forces, working with the Department of Defense. An article in the Dartmouth Alumni Bulletin noted that “In 1945, amid growing racial tension and conflict in the Navy—including a mutiny near San Francisco and a race riot in Guam—Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal, class of 1915, appointed Granger to investigate. In six months, Granger traveled 50,000 miles, visited 67 naval installations, and talked to nearly 10,000 Black sailors without their officers present. Largely at Granger’s behest, the Navy went from having the most severe racial policies among the armed forces at the time to the most liberal: It integrated facilities, removed restrictions that limited assignments to Black sailors, and commissioned more Black officers.”
Through his leadership and determination, a breakthrough occurred in 1946. This commitment to bringing about change in racial policies continued into the 1960s, particularly his concern about the discrimination in the nation’s educational system. U.S. President Harry S. Truman presented Granger with the President’s Medal of Merit in 1947.
He retired from the NUL in 1961 and later joined the faculty at Dillard University in New Orleans. At the NUL, he was succeeded by Whitney Young.
After ending his connection to the NUL, Granger continued to be actively involved in various issues of social work, and by 1952, he was the president of the National Conference of Social Work, the first American citizen to hold this position. In 1976, the same year Kissinger invoked his name during his address to the League’s annual conference, Granger died on January 9 in Alexandria, Louisiana.
Each year, the Tucker Foundation presents the Lester Granger 18 Award to a Dartmouth College graduate whose commitment to public service, social activism, or nonprofit professions has been exemplary.