To make a difference.

L.A. Urban League President John Mack's low-key style earns him a reputation as the 'quiet warrior'

The day a picture of him touring riot-scarred South Central Los Angeles with President Bush was splashed across the nation's biggest newspaper, John Mack's "gut" told him he was in for some controversy.

His instincts, honed by 30 years in America's civil rights movement and countless City Hall sessions, proved correct. That May afternoon, Ron Brown, chairman of the Democratic National Party, phoned to tease his friend about being photographed with a man both want to vacate the White House.

Behind the kidding, however, Mack knew his walk and subsequent meeting with Bush would prompt detractors to accuse him of tilting toward the system he has crusaded to overhaul. Though now in his 23rd year as president of the Los Angeles Urban League, the patrician Afro-American leader still bristles at such jabs.

"Look, if people want to wear partisan blinders all the time, that's their concern," Mack, 55, says without identifying the critics. "But if I can move the President of the United States even just a bit on establishing an urban policy, you better believe I'd do it. And it doesn't mean I ever forget who I am: a black man living in America."

Besides, he asks, where were the critics when he championed reform of the Los Angeles Police Department after the Rodney King beating? Or lobbied day after day with other black leaders for police chief Daryl Gates' retirement? Or helped bring a $50-million shopping center to the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw area when Sears, Ralph's and other big retailers were pulling out?

"Those things get conveniently forgotten," says Mack, who juggles board memberships on Rebuild L.A., the United Way and the county's Private Industry Council with his Urban League duties. "It's in vogue now to say some of us are out of touch" with the problems of the younger generation.

Long known as the "quiet warrior" for his urbane, low-key style, Mack is outspoken on one point. Last spring's turmoil revealed the underlying class divisions that have widened in Los Angeles, in spite of the 1980s-fueled growth.

Because of the chasms, the economic barriers of the have-nots are now being thrust to the same level as the social-justice and education issues that used to dominate the agendas of minority advocacy groups. And it doesn't "take a brain surgeon" to offer solutions for South Central and other neglected areas, where unemployment is usually twice the state average.

Redevelopment dollars, Mack argues, must be shifted away from downtown L.A., regulators must come down harder on bank and insurance company redlining and the North American Free Trade Agreement must be crafted to prevent the sapping of once-plentiful manufacturing jobs. The overarching goal is getting business capital into communities starved for cash, lines of credit and technical know-how.

"Unless and until corporate executives and public officials understand their bottom line will be negatively affected whenever people are discriminated against, Southern California's crime problem will increase, the education system won't prepare our youth and the unemployment-welfare load will buckle," Mack rattles off without pause.

But unlike the aftermath of the 1965 Watts riot, when the federal government's anti-poverty initiatives poured in, this time is different. Recession or not, Mack warns, it will be up to corporate America to respond.

"We need more studies like we need a hole in the head. Black people have been studied to death," says the longtime ally of Mayor Tom Bradley. "Our challenge on RLA is to sustain the momentum, to be around for more than just a hot minute."

Asked where the new enterprises will come from, Mack points to partnership and franchise agreements -- between retailers, oil companies, supermarkets and minority entrepreneurs -- that Rebuild L.A. is trying to forge.

Asked if he and other leaders could have done more to stop the shuttering of major job sites like the Goodyear, Kaiser Steel and Lockheed plants years back, he retorts, "No question. We should have pushed harder."

Sometimes, he adds, being polite just doesn't cut it. Though it doesn't fit his signature collegial approach, he applauds the Brotherhood Crusade's drive to shut down post-riot construction sites that don't employ South Central workers.

"For some of these contractors to hire a work force with practically no blacks, it is the height of arrogance -- proof people can be business geniuses but village idiots when it comes to doing right. The contractors should be pressured," Mack says.

Now in its 71st year, the Los Angeles Urban League has a mission that is straight-forward enough: to provide economic and social hope for Southland minorities in the basics.

Through its Employment Service Department, the non-profit organization last year helped place some 6,000 people -- a mix ranging from homemakers and the laid off to high school dropouts and ex-convicts -- into jobs. In addition, the league runs a Head Start program, a government-subsidized education program for poor preschoolers, and other ventures to help small businesses obtain loans and teach the downtrodden independent living skills.

One of the league's most successful programs is its Data Processing Training Center, which began 24 years ago teaching the poor key-punch skills and now instructs them on personal computers, thanks to a partnership with International Business Machines Corp.

"What we try to do is emulate real-life work situations," explains Mack, who earns a $110,000-a-year-salary and manages a full-time staff of 50. "The dress codes are strict, tardiness is not allowed and we expect commitment. It's tough love. We're not just another program. We focus on results."

Apparently, others agree.

In the last decade or so, Mack has gotten some heavyweights to either join the league's board or contribute money or staff time -- outfits like Atlantic Richfield Co., Northrop Corp., Southern California Edison, Bank of America and the Anheuser-Busch Cos. With the help of those members, the organization's budget has steadily risen, from $6 million in 1987 to $8 million today, with less reliance on government funding than any time in its history.

"What John has done well, particularly after April's disturbances, is bring people together from the business community and his constituents in South Central," said Los Angeles Urban League Chairman William Rusnack, president of Arco's transportation company. "He also knows that it's not enough to have job training programs if there are no jobs to go to" and has secured posts for league trainees at major companies.

Rev. Cecil Murray, who heads of Los Angeles' First AME Church, says Mack has been successful because he moves between different worlds with ease and savvy.

"He's the perfect blending," Murray says, "of corporate, government and grassroots worlds, someone comfortable in the boardroom, on the sidewalk, in the ghetto and on the privilege hills."

Mack, who works out of the league's art-deco office near Baldwin Hills, attributes his staying power to the league's focus on programs and follow-through. But he admits that recession and regulation have forced him to postpone a new league-run child-care business.

Despite high marks for running one of L.A.'s most time-tested non-profits, Mack did catch heat several years ago over a minority-business-enterprise contract at Los Angeles International Airport that was given to a firm with which he was involved. City auditors eventually concluded the investors, including Mack and controversial businessman B.H. Brookins, had won the concessions contract fairly and not because of their ties to Bradley.

"The bottom line was that it was a valid business arrangement, that I didn't misuse my position to get filthy rich," explains Mack, an ex-mayoral appointee to the city's Board of Zoning Appeals. "I get $2,000 quarterly payments."

Mack's route to the West Coast was circuitous. The son of a discipline-minded Methodist preacher, he grew up in Darlington, S.C., a small agricultural city where segregation divided residents into two parts of town. A "B" student with an interest in football, girls and the world he only had read about, Mack enrolled at all-black North Carolina AT&T in 1954 as a shy kid nervous about his abilities.

Four years later, Mack had his B.S. in applied sociology and an offer to get his master's degree in social work from Atlanta University. It was in the "oasis of the South" where Mack's leadership skills flowered as a young student leader working with civil rights crusaders Martin Luther King, Jr. and Whitney Young. By his second year, he was organizing anti-racism sit-ins at department stores and government facilities, defying those who spat on him and called him "nigger."

Soon after graduation, Mack married a student at nearby Spellman College, named Harriet, and moved to Oxnard to work as a social worker at Camarillo State Hospital. Four years later, Young convinced Mack to join the Urban League's Flint, Mich., office. Ten months after that, when the presidency at the League's L.A. branch came open, Mack got the job. He was 27.

That was half a lifetime ago. Mack says these days he's less idealistic, more practical about expectations for change in a black community infinitely more complex than the 1960s.

"Some people have this notion you have to automatically sell yourself to make changes from within, that you need to be the perennial rebel," he concludes. "I don't agree. I like to think of myself as good inside body puncher."

SNAPSHOT

John Wesley Mack

Native of: Darlington, S.C.

Current residence: Los Angeles

Age: 55

Education: Bachelor of Science, applied sociology, North Carolina A&T, 1958. Master's degree, social work, Atlanta University, 1960