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The Powerbroker follows Whitney Young’s journey from segregated Kentucky to the national campaign for equal rights. During the turbulent 60s, he was a dilpomat between those in power and those striving for change. Young had the difficult tasks of calming the fears of white allies, relieving the doubts of fellow civil rights leaders, and responding to attacks from the militant black power movement. This complex tale explores the public and private trials of the man at the center of the storm.

On February 6, 2013, Nine Community Cinema in St. Louis Missouri held a public screening of “The Powerbroker: Whitney Young’s Fight for Civil Rights,” at the Missouri History Museum. Whitney M. Young Jr. was one of the most celebrated — and controversial — leaders of the civil rights era. Unique among black leaders, he took the fight directly to the powerful white elite, gaining allies in business and government, including three presidents. Young had the difficult tasks of calming the fears of white allies, relieving the doubts of fellow civil rights leaders, and responding to attacks from the militant Black Power movement.

Nine Digital Producer, Philip Nations recorded these audience reactions following the film.

Two ways to observe Black History Month via the media:

“When a rapper says he’s gonna ‘pop a pill’ then ‘beat that p*ssy like Emmett Till,’ that’s when we know that he might have gone just a little bit too far,” Dr. Boyce Watkins wrote in his syndicated column. “But that’s just what happened this week, and the Till family isn’t happy.

“Lil Wayne and Future, two very talented hip-hop artists, have decided to push the envelope of disrespect by releasing a song called ‘Karate Chop.’

“In the song, Lil Wayne takes the liberty of turning the mutilated face of Emmett Till into a weary s*x organ, ridiculing the agony experienced by this young man many years ago. The matter is made is even sadder by the fact that Till’s legacy was trampled by Lil Wayne, Future and Universal Records right in the middle of Black History Month. . . . ”

On Wednesday, Epic Records apologized “and said it was looking to pull all traces off the Internet of the so-called unauthorized remix . . .” Natalie Finn reported for E! Online. “. . . Out of respect for the legacy of Emmett Till and his family and the support of the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., we are going through great efforts to take down the unauthorized version,” the company said.

By contrast, Bonnie Boswell Hamilton, niece of Whitney M. Young Jr., the underappreciated executive director of the National Urban League during the crest of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, has produced a film about her uncle that is to be shown on PBS this month.

“We just had a terrific launch party at the Ford Foundation in NYC,” Hamilton wrote via email. ” ’60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl moderated a panel following the screening with Ken Chenault, Vernon Jordan, Richard Parsons and Jeanette Takamura.” The men are African American business executives; Takamura is dean of Columbia University’s School of Social Work.

The film’s website says, “. . . During the turbulent 60s, he was a diplomat between those in power and those striving for change. Young had the difficult tasks of calming the fears of white allies, relieving the doubts of fellow civil rights leaders, and responding to attacks from the militant black power movement. This complex tale explores the public and private trials of the man at the center of the storm. . . “

The accomplishments of late civil rights leader Whitney M. Young, Jr. have been largely forgotten.

The celebrated and controversial life of Young, once executive director of the National Urban League (1961-until his death 1971), will be spotlighted in a dynamic documentary “The Powerbroker: Whitney Young’s Fight for Civil Rights.” The documentary premieres on Independent Lens on PBS on Monday, February 18, 10:00-11:00 p.m. ET.

“It shows the complexities and subtleties of how the whole movement was able to move forward. The fact that you didn’t have just one voice at the table, but you had many voices and different voices. And there’s an appreciation for different people’s roles in that movement,” Bonnie Boswell, Executive Producer and niece of Young said, in an exclusive interview with EURweb associate Tene’ Croom, about the special.

Young was among a cadre of civil rights leaders in the 1960’s including Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins and Thurgood Marshall (later become first Black U.S. Supreme Court justice). In the documentary Vernon Jordan, the next head of the National Urban League after Young, explained:

“Whitney understood power and he understood politics and most of all he understood people. They said Martin was in the streets and Roy and Thurgood was in the courts and Whitney was in the boardroom. One could not have been successful without the other.”

He spearheaded a bold approach to ending poverty and other social ailments in the nation’s cities, calling it a “Domestic Marshall Plan.” The idea to spend $145 billion over 10 years was weaved into President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty.

Young often met with the President and would forge a close friendship with Johnson. The President recognized his accomplishments. In 1968 Johnson bestowed upon Young the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.

His ability to broker with White conservative politicians and businessmen raised the ire of some in the Black community, like Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. “Whitey Young, I mean Whitney Young, is the Wall Street of the civil rights movement,” Powell once flippantly declared.

*The accomplishments of late civil rights leader Whitney M. Young, Jr. have been largely forgotten.

The celebrated and controversial life of Young, once executive director of the National Urban League (1961-until his death 1971), will be spotlighted in a dynamic documentary “The Powerbroker: Whitney Young’s Fight for Civil Rights.” The documentary premieres on Independent Lens on PBS on Monday, February 18, 10:00-11:00 p.m. ET.

“It shows the complexities and subtleties of how the whole movement was able to move forward. The fact that you didn’t have just one voice at the table, but you had many voices and different voices. And there’s an appreciation for different people’s roles in that movement,” Bonnie Boswell, Executive Producer and niece of Young said, in an exclusive interview with EURweb associate Tene’ Croom, about the special.

Young was among a cadre of civil rights leaders in the 1960’s including Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins and Thurgood Marshall (later become first Black U.S. Supreme Court justice). In the documentary Vernon Jordan, the next head of the National Urban League after Young, explained:

“Whitney understood power and he understood politics and most of all he understood people. They said Martin was in the streets and Roy and Thurgood was in the courts and Whitney was in the boardroom. One could not have been successful without the other.”

He spearheaded a bold approach to ending poverty and other social ailments in the nation’s cities, calling it a “Domestic Marshall Plan.” The idea to spend $145 billion over 10 years was weaved into President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty.

Young often met with the President and would forge a close friendship with Johnson. The President recognized his accomplishments. In 1968 Johnson bestowed upon Young the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.

His ability to broker with White conservative politicians and businessmen raised the ire of some in the Black community, like Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. “Whitey Young, I mean Whitney Young, is the Wall Street of the civil rights movement,” Powell once flippantly declared.

Journalist Bonnie Boswell has many fond memories of her uncle Whitney Young, Jr., a pivotal behind-the-scenes player in the civil rights movement. In fact, he’s the subject of her upcoming documentary, The Powerbroker: Whitney Young’s Fight for Civil Rights. (Independent Lens, 10 p.m. Feb. 18. Check local listings.)

Even though he was at the heart of civil rights, most people today don’t know Young’s name, much less his vast accomplishments. He excelled at being an inside man, eschewing fame for working to break down barriers in the boardrooms of countless corporations and the oval office of three presidents.

“I am not anxious to be the loudest voice or the most popular,” he once said. “But I would like to think that at a crucial moment, I was an effective voice of the voiceless, an effective hope of the hopeless.”

Young died too young. He was 49, and in the prime of his career when he drowned while swimming in rough surf not far from friends and family while visiting Lagos, Nigeria, where he was attending a conference. Boswell says some questioned the cause of his death, especially after a Lagos coroner had described a different cause of death (brain hemorrhage)  than the United States coroner (drowning). But his widow didn’t want to pursue it, and let it go, says Boswell.

Boswell recently ran across a letter Young had sent to her mother and father (Young’s sister Arnita Boswell, and her husband, Paul Boswell) just eight days before he died. Boswell wanted to share it with Independent Lens because he died so soon after, and mostly because “it shows what a sweet, thoughtful guy he was.” Although it is just a simple family letter, we thought it was pretty special, too, so we’re sharing it with you.

Yes, you could see the kind of man he was just by the two pages of this simple note written on the fly on United Airlines paper.

It’s pretty special to find something like this from such a great man. But even those of us who don’t have famous relatives may have some cherished items from people from previous generations.

What do you have in your family treasure trove? If you have a photo of it, or even a great family photo from way back when, we’d love to see it! (You can upload a photo with your comment.) To get you started, here’s a beautiful photo Bonnie Boswell sent us of her uncle as a boy, with his parents and sisters.