An excerpt from the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts 2026 Annual Gala opening remarks

PRESIDENT & CEO, ULEM

Tonight’s Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts theme, “Leading with Purpose, Lifting with Power,” is more than a slogan. It is a charge. It is a reminder that leadership is not simply about position or prestige. Leadership is about responsibility. It is about courage. It is about the willingness to stand firm in your values and invest in people even when the political climate tells you to narrow your imagination, lower your expectations or abandon hope altogether.

This moment requires courage. It requires belief in a vision of this country and this world that is not constrained by the limits of our current political reality.

And truthfully, this is not the first time our people have faced such a moment.

More than a century ago, Black migrants fleeing racial terror, segregation and economic oppression in the South came North seeking opportunity and dignity. But they were met with exclusion, violence and systems designed to confine them to the margins of American life. This was only a decade and a half after the United States Supreme Court declared that “separate but equal” was the law of the land.

Yet even then, leaders like George Edmund Haynes and Ruth Standish Baldwin understood something powerful: our communities did not need charity. They needed opportunity. They needed investment. They needed access to education, employment, housing, entrepreneurship and the full promise of democracy.

That same belief brought this affiliate into existence in 1919 under the leadership of Eugene Kinckle Jones and early Boston civic leaders who believed that investing in people could transform communities and change the trajectory of lives.

And that is still the work before us today.

We believe in workforce development because we believe work should create dignity and stability. We believe in entrepreneurship because communities deserve ownership and economic power. We believe in education because every child deserves access to possibility. And we believe in advocacy because history has shown us that economic investment alone has never been enough.

Progress has always required organizing. It has required resistance. It has required people willing to defend democracy, demand diversity and defeat poverty in every generation.

That is why the Urban League continues to lean into civic engagement, public education, advocacy and community empowerment. Because democracy only survives when ordinary people participate in it, protect it and insist that it belongs to all of us.

Tonight is also about honoring those who embody these values through their leadership and service. Our awardees represent the very best of what it means to lead with purpose and lift with power. Through labor, business, public policy, advocacy, and community leadership, they have expanded opportunity, challenged injustice, and opened doors for others to walk through.

Their work reminds us that the progress this country has made did not happen by accident. It happened because people organized. People sacrificed. People spoke up. People invested in one another. People refused to accept that inequality was inevitable.

And as we gather here tonight, that responsibility now belongs to all of us.

So tonight, let us celebrate. Let us recommit ourselves to the work ahead. Let us continue building community wealth, expanding opportunity, strengthening democracy and creating a future where prosperity is not reserved for a select few, but shared broadly and equitably by all.

Because when we lead with purpose and lift with power, there is no challenge our communities cannot overcome.