St. Louis to host National Urban League Conference this week

After a decade, the conference returns to the Gateway City to showcase its post-Ferguson reform efforts.

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The National Urban League will bring 4,000–5,000 visitors to St. Louis this week with its annual conference, which will be held July 26–29.

Free events and expos will take place Thursday through Saturday at the America's Center (701 Convention Plaza). They'll offer a networking and job fair for immediately available hourly jobs, a chance to audition for ABC's hit reality series Shark Tank, and a "community and family day" on Saturday.

The conference returns to St. Louis after a decade, and National Urban League president and CEO Marc Morial says St. Louis houses one of the best Urban League affiliates in the county. A strong affiliate presence, he says, allows the league to showcase the work it does in that community, as well as across the nation.

"We want to showcase how the Urban League has led the effort to turn the anger of Ferguson into action for reform and change," Morial says. 

To highlight that, he adds a can't-miss event will be a speaker session titled "Ferguson: From Anger to Action." Speakers will include CNN contributor Bakari Sellers and local community leader the Rev. Traci Blackmon. The National Urban League will also showcase the Ferguson Community Empowerment Center, a new facility it helped create to house the Save Our Sons program and other programs run by agencies in the St. Louis area.

"That is a commitment by the Urban League to strengthen the work we do to address the underlying issues that the Ferguson uprising raised," Morial says, adding: "It laid bare many of the problems of poverty and disparity when it comes to political participation, education, criminal justice that exist in Ferguson and in the St. Louis region." 

Other notable speakers throughout the conference include activist Al Sharpton and St. Louis treasurer Tishaura Jones. Expo experiences will be open to the public for free. Workshops, luncheons, and speaker sessions require registration and a fee, which can be completed online. The conference will kick off tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the Friendly Temple Baptist Church, where Morial will give his keynote speech.

"The goal for our conference is for people to leave St. Louis energized and ready to go back and fight for civil rights and economic opportunity in their hometowns," he says.

To see a full schedule of events, visit the National Urban League website. 

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