Kenneth Marshall film collection

1964

Social worker and public administrator Kenneth Marshall (1925-1971) was the program director of Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU), a federally funded anti-poverty organization based in Harlem, New York.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Marshall received a bachelor of arts degree from City College in 1949 after serving with the Air Force in World War II. He earned master's degrees in psychology from City College, and in social work from Columbia University. He received a doctorate in 1969 from New York University. Marshall's dissertation was based on observations he made while working with youth gangs at the New York City Youth Board in the 1950s. From 1955 to 1966, Marshall was executive director of a Paterson, New Jersey, task force that instituted the anti-poverty programs he was developing for HARYOU.

HARYOU was founded by psychologists Kenneth Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark in 1962. That year, Marshall became program director of the organization, where he developed programs to support Harlem youth. It became known as HARYOU-ACT in 1964, after merging with Associated Community Teams (ACT), another federally funded youth services organization. HARYOU promoted arts programs and professional training for youth as part of a suite of services developed to combat poverty and systemic disinvestment. The organization detailed the challenges faced by Harlem youth and their corresponding plan in a report entitled Youth in the Ghetto: A Study of the Consequences of Powerlessness and a Blueprint for Change (1964). HARYOU was led by Julian T. Evell, director of arts and cultural development; Arthur C. Logan, chairman of the board of directors; Kenneth Marshall, program director; Cyril Degrasse Tyson, acting project director; and Livingston L. Wingate, president of the HARYOU-ACT board.

Marshall left HARYOU in 1965, to work for the Mobilization for Youth program, another city-funded program combating poverty and youth challenges in lower Manhattan. In 1967, he became vice president for community affairs, and later a Presidential Fellow, at the Metropolitan Applied Research Center. Marshall then took up a position as project chairman for the department of environmental research and development at the American Telegraph and Telephone Company in 1970. He died in 1971 in a boating accident.