Hugh B. Price (AC 1963) Papers

Hugh B. Price was born in 1941 to Kline A. Price Sr. and Charlotte Schuster, of Washington, D.C.. After attending Coolidge High School in the Northwest part of the District, Price spent four years at Amherst College and graduated in 1963. When he arrived at Amherst College in 1959, he was one of five African-Americans in a class of 250 freshmen. After Amherst, Price attended Yale Law School. During his time at Yale, Price became involved in the African-American community in New Haven, Connecticut which led to an internship with the New Haven Legal Assistance Association. The NHLAA offered representation for low-income individuals that needed assistance. Price formally joined the NHLAA after law school in 1966. While with the NHLAA he became involved with the newly-formed Hill-Dwight Citizens' Commission on Police-Community Relations and worked with individuals affected by the 1967 riot in New Haven. Price accepted a position with the city of New Haven as deputy director of the Model Cities program but soon after joined the Black Coalition, an umbrella organization of African-American advocacy groups in New Haven. In 1970, Price became a senior associate at Cogen Holt and Associates, a consulting firm. In 1975, Price moved into a position as human resources administrator for the city of New Haven - a cabinet-level position that oversaw service programs for senior citizens and elementary school students. In 1977 he was offered a position on the editorial board of the New York Times, where he spent five years as an editorial writer. In 1982, Hugh Price moved to WNET/Thirteen, the public television station in New York City. There he served as the senior vice president in charge of the Metropolitan Division and moved to the National Division in 1984. As head of the National Division, Price ran the department that produced such series for PBS as Great Performances and Nature and stood by the program NewsHour as it weathered a crisis in its early years. In 1987 Price moved to the Rockefeller Foundation, where he dedicated his energies towards school reform. It was at the Rockefeller Foundation that Price developed the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Corps (later the ChalleNGe Program) - a quasi-military program for at-risk youth. Price became the seventh president of the National Urban League in 1994. During his tenure he led the Campaign for African-American Achievement and took on discriminatory practices in the justice system and affirmative action, among other issues. Price's tenure ended in 2003. After a brief period at the law firm Piper Rudnick, Price joined the Brookings Institution before accepting a five-year appointment as a visiting professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.