Proud Heritage & Exciting Future

Next Monday, January 19th our nation celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday. Dr. King held a long and close association with the YMCA. He grew up in the Butler Street YMCA in Atlanta, and was involved in a capital campaign to build a modern Y for black youth and families in Montgomery, Alabama during the bus boycott of the 1950’s.

On Tuesday, January 20th Barack Hussein Obama II will be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. Barack Obama is the first African-American to be elected President of the United States.

We mark Black History Month in February. Carter G. Woodson resided at the Wabash YMCA in the 1910’s. In 1926 he organized the first Negro History Week in Washington, DC, which grew into Black History Month in the 1960’s.

For more information on the history of the YMCA Movement and prominent African-American leaders who have been involved in the YMCA, click on these YMCA Exchange resources (Username: YMCA Password: 9622). . . .

There is a Tide: A History of the YMCA Movement in the 1960s by People Who Helped Make It
http://www.ymcaexchange.org/front/membership/general_information/1960s_YMCA_history_2005-11-11.aspx

Famous People and the YMCA
http://www.ymcaexchange.org/front/ymovement/HistoryAndMission/Famous%20People2006-12-01.aspx

YMCA Firsts and Foremosts
http://www.ymcaexchange.org/front/ymovement/HistoryAndMission/firsts_and_foremosts_2004-05-19.aspx

YMCA Diversity Initiative
http://www.ymcaexchange.org/front/ymovement/national_diversity_initiative/

The Kautz Family YMCA Archives, one of 11 collections of rare and unique research materials at the University of Minnesota Libraries, maintains over 3,000 linear feet of historical records, books and journals, photographs, postcards, scrapbooks, films, videos, audio recordings, posters and broadsides of YMCA history. Visit http://special.lib.umn.edu/