How Lexington’s Urban League chapter grew from a speech to providing housing
Editor’s Note: As Lexington celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Herald-Leader and kentucky.com each day throughout 2025 will share interesting facts about our hometown. Compiled by Liz Carey, all are notable moments in the city’s history — some funny, some sad, others heartbreaking or celebratory, and some just downright strange.
When Lexington activist Harry Sykes first heard a speech from the National Urban League executive director at the University of Kentucky in the late 1960s, he knew he wanted to bring the organization to Lexington.
In his speech, Whitney Young said the Urban League was an organization focused on economic improvements.
“It was clear in the beginning that it wasn’t just another protest organization,” Harry Sykes said, according to the Urban League of Lexington-Fayette County. “It had very sound ideas of what was appropriate for the people: education, housing and employment.”
Founded nationally in 1910 and headquartered in New York, the organization is dedicated to economic empowerment, equality and social justice to raise the standard of living for African Americans and other historically underserved groups. The League works with community leaders, policymakers and corporate partners to develop programs that close the equality gap.
By 1968, the Urban League of Lexington-Fayette County was founded and needed to raise $25,000 to join the national League. Adjusted for inflation, that’s equivalent to nearly $230,000 today. The group raised the money, and all that was needed was an endorsement from a local newspaper.
Back then, the Lexington Leader and the Lexington Herald were headed by Fred Wachs. Wachs was afraid an endorsement would cause race riots in town, P.G. Peeples, Sr. and former Herald-Leader journalist Jacalyn Carfagno wrote in “The First 50 Years: 1968-2018,” about the history of the Lexington chapter.
Carfagno said Wachs was a racist who had refused to let the paper cover the Civil Rights Movement’s efforts in Lexington.
The group called on Young, a Shelby County native, to change Wachs’ mind.
“He was really a professional at dealing with people like Fred Wachs,” Carfagno told WUKY in 2018. “Somehow or other out of that [meeting], the Leader wrote an editorial endorsing the founding of an Urban League chapter here.”
Peeples joined the Urban League as its assistant director of education in 1969 and helped set up the group’s original office in the YMCA on Second Street. The next year, the office moved to Westside Plaza on Georgetown Street. Peeples would eventually become the group’s executive editor.
The Lexington Urban League worked for fair housing and economic opportunity and worked with local businessmen to raise $18,000 in seed capital to buy four houses on Chestnut Street that could be resold to Black families, Peeples said. As of 2018, the league has used that initial investment to purchase $28 million worth of housing for Black homeowners.
In the 1980s, the League sought to offer more than basic housing to clients and worked toward providing amenities to create safe places for working parents to raise their children.
The League also works on academic advancement and provides thousands of dollars in scholarships to students, as well as providing group counseling and mentoring services for middle and high schooler students.
Have a question or story idea related to Lexington’s 250-year history? Let us know at 250LexKy@gmail.com.