HISTORICAL FEATURE
EUGENE KINCKLE JONES & JEWEL THE DEVELOPMENT OF EARLY AFRICAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL WORK By Brother Felix
L.Armfield
The National Urban League has been particularly useful in its contribution towards the solution of the problem of races in the United States, because it has sought to secure the cooperation of leading people of both races in attacking these problems.' President Warren G. Harding, 1921 uring the 1920s, all of social work was undergoing professional transformation. Recognition of a need for transformation in the field may well be attributed to Carnegie Foundation representative Abraham Flexner who in 1915 told social workers they were not a professional group because they lacked scientific methodology in conducting their work. Following Fexner's Carnegie Foundation report, social workers began laboring to create a reputable body of knowledge. By 1921, many social workers felt scientific methods of research and study were being widely practiced in their field and they began to consider themselves as professionals. In their urgency to gain acceptance as a professional group, members of the field that year founded the American Association of Social Workers. The American Association of Social Workers was an organization founded by and for white social workers to address issues they considered urgent. When white social workers assisted the poor and less fortunate, who by in large were African-Americans, their services often were viewed by African-American social workers as charitable efforts and handouts that brought about little meaningful change. The attitude of African-American social workers is made evident in an article written by Jewel Brother Eugene Kinckle Jones, Executive Secretary of the National Urban League [1916-1940]. The 1921 edition of the Messenger carried Brother Jones' article entitled "Social Work Among Negroes" that stated: "In cases of white organizations, interested more or less in Negro welfare, it has taken on the character of material aid given with no special desire to render the recipient independent but to relieve immediate suffering. This is especially true of many southern communities where the Charity Organization Society or the
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AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY EDITION
Associated Charities has maintained a list of indigent colored people who have received the weekly basket."2 Brother Jones worked tirelessly throughout his life to change this dynamic. My purpose in writing this article for The Sphinx™ is to illustrate how Brother Jones worked with numerous other AfricanAmerican social workers to overturn this social handicap in many urban AfricanAmerican communities. The article also will focus on Brother Jones' contribution to the overall social work profession. During the 1920s, Eugene Kinckle Jones toiled to establish an acceptable working relationship among social workers, both African-American and white. It is this incessancy and poignancy that this study will demonstrate. Brother Jones, who lived from 1885 to 1954, grew up in an integrated environment in Richmond, Virginia. Less than a decade before his birth, Richmond was undergoing Reconstruction following the Civil War. Eugene Kinckle Jones' parents, Joseph Endom Jones and Rosa Kinckle Jones, were both educated in the North during Reconstruction. Brother Jones' father was a former slave who became one of the early African-Americans in Virginia to graduate from college. His mother was born free. Brother Jones' father