Whitney Young and the Black Architectural Imagination

Abstract

This essay considers a speech delivered by Whitney M. Young Jr. in 1968 at the American Institute of Architects’ annual conference. The essay argues that Young’s call for greater diversity and for greater engagement with African American neighborhoods across cities in the U.S. crystalized concepts such as affirmative action and community participation that were not yet named as such, but would become emulated in the three decades that followed. Young’s speech provides new insight into how architecture might engage in conversations around race and the politics of injustice. By focusing on an important Civil Rights leader, the essay highlights the relationship between race and architecture – not only as it existed in 1968 – asking how the discipline can cultivate a contemporary concept of a critical theory of race and architecture.