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Jordon, Deborah E.; Richard B. Edmunds; Denise A. Pugh.

Contract Youth Leadership Program. [With a sheaf of other Program documents, including a newsletter, a detailed “Memorandum,” and a “Digest.”]

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1971. Booklet, 8vo (8.5” x 7.125”), b&w photo-illus. self-wrappers. 5 pp. on as many leaves. Other documents 11” x 8.375”, totaling 17 pp. on as many leaves, of which 7 (the newsletter) are stapled at top left corner. CONDITION: Very good, light wear and soiling to first page of the newsletter.

A gathering of papers pertaining to the activities of a grassroots leadership program for Black youth in Pittsburgh, which was sponsored by Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania.

In addition to an outline of program guidelines and summaries of participant accomplishments, the “Contract Youth Leadership Program” booklet contains a brief history of the program, which emerged in the summer of 1968 from “dialogues between representatives of Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania, Inc. and adult leaders of Pittsburgh’s black communities to determine meaningful programs pertinent to the needs of these communities.” Photo-illustrations show, among other subjects, “Richard Edmunds, coordinator of the Contract Youth Leadership Program, giv[ing] advice to a youth leader”; coordinator Denise Pugh “Lending a helping hand to the National Youth Development Conference,” and “youth leaders participat[ing] in various radio and television programs such as Bill Powell’s ‘Community Speaks’ broadcast on WAMO.” Most participants were college students or recent high school graduates who were paired with a mentor at a local organization, and divided their time between their paid work and their own community-based projects.

The newsletter, titled “‘What’s Happening’ News Rap,” is dated July of 1971, and outlines the activities of the program’s fifteen participants. It opens:

If there are things happening this summer in Pittsburgh that young brothers and sisters dig, chances are good Contract Youth Leaders are making them happen…That’s because the seven dudes and eight gals who’ve climbed into the youth leadership bag are hustling to put down together programs.

Projects ranged from drug prevention programs (“LEE DUNCAN and JOE MOSS are working as a team in the Hill District to prevent as many young people as they can from winding up stone cold dead in the morgue…”); a “charm school” (featuring “speakers on the care of Afro hair styles, sex education with the help of United Mental Health, Planned Parenthood and the Allegheny County Health Department as well as dating and education”); an “awareness program for youngsters who rarely, if ever, get out of the area” (organizing field trips to museums, the zoo, “and other fun places”); a “cooperative home-industry type of arrangement…involving the United Parcel Service…and elderly residents of the new Bidwell High-Rise in Manchester,” and more.

The “Digest of Contract Youth Leaders Program--Summer 1971” provides more information on “Columbia’s Role”—“Under the program, Columbia recognizes youth leadership potential and buttresses its development by contracting with various local social service agencies to hire and supervise specific youths to use and expand their already clear leadership talents…”—and outlines the multi-faceted “tangible benefits” of this arrangement, including “A new federally subsidized youth-written, youth-edited community newspaper on Pittsburgh’s North Side” and “A new police-community relations advisory committee in the East Liberty area with a strong young people’s voice.”

The “Memorandum,” from Deborah E. Jordon to T. L. Ryan, details the program guidelines, outlining the “Time-Sharing System,” “Determination of Projects,” and “Reports.” Other papers include a “Supervisor’s Reporting Form for Contract Youth Leaders Program” and the “Assignment for first week,” with prompts to help the youth leader consider “what resources are available in the communities in which they are working,” and how to build a program that will outlive the term of their own contract.

The program was coordinated at Columbia Gas by Richard B. Edmunds and Denise A. Pugh.

We locate no records of the Contract Youth Leadership Program in OCLC or, excepting just two brief newspapers references, online.

Evidence of Black youth empowerment and community resource development in Pittsburgh during the Nixon era.

REFERENCES: “Candy Aids Youth Jobs,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 7, 1972, p. 4; “NAACP Organizes Area Job Program,” The Pittsburgh Press, December 7, 1972, p. 34.

Item #8900

Price: $350.00

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