Born in 1891, Arthur Clement MacNeal attended Straight University, a Black institution in his hometown of New Orleans, and then Talladega College, where he received a BA in 1913. He entered Yale as a junior. Following his Yale graduation in 1916, MacNeal moved to Chicago and served as an editor, along with Yale Law School graduate Joseph D. Bibb, of the Chicago Whip, which became a politically influential weekly Black newspaper. With Bibb, MacNeal helped spearhead the “Don’t Spend Your Money Where You Can’t Work” campaign. The campaign, which began in 1929, encouraged Black people to boycott white businesses that would not hire them. The organizers secured thousands of jobs for African Americans in Chicago due to their direct-action techniques, and the boycott campaign, which involved marches and other forms of direct action, was emulated in other cities, including New York. From 1933 to 1937, MacNeal served as president of the Chicago branch of the NAACP. Christopher Robert Reed writes in his history of the Chicago NAACP, with a chapter devoted to the leader, that "MacNeal left a lasting imprint on branch history." The Whip earned a reputation as politically militant, but it ended its operations in 1939 due to financial problems during the Great Depression. MacNeal died in 1958.
Image citation: Yale College Class of 1916 class book, Yale University Library