In a comprehensive analysis of the activism of the Pittsburgh chapter of the National Urban League (ULP), Joe William Trotter Jr.'s Pittsburgh and the Urban League Movement explores “the Urban League movement's impact on the lives of poor and working-class blacks as they made the transition from farm to city” (p. 1). What is unclear, however, is how is Trotter defining the activism of this interracial organization as a social movement. Indeed, the ULP rallied behind A. Philip Randolph's 1948 call for a March on Washington and other civil rights initiatives in the city. Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was one of the big six civil rights organizations, and not a movement. Trotter illustrates the ULP's actions through its support for a CASH and NAACP protest, some picketing, and a march to protest the Board of Education. But even this does not constitute a large-scale social movement. Rather, Trotter reveals how “some scholars and popular writers argue that the Urban League movement was largely a conservative force that rarely improved the lives of the black poor. Others defend the Urban League as a progressive interracial social movement that eased the painful impact of migration, labor exploitation, and poor living conditions on thousands of southern black newcomers to the city” (p. 1).

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