From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1965 by Jennifer Mittelstadt

Author:Jennifer Mittelstadt [Mittelstadt, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, United States, Social Services & Welfare, Social Science, 20th Century, Political Science, History, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9780807876435
Google: zNXE-lJCZrcC
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Published: 2006-03-08T09:23:16+00:00

Welfare, Civil Rights, and the PCSW

While welfare advocates at HEW negotiated with Peterson over welfare in the spring of 1963, they discovered a second means by which to force poor single mothers and welfare onto the PCSW's agenda. In May 1963 Grace Hewell noted that the commission neglected a particularly relevant topic: the status of African American women. Hewell pointed out to Wilbur Cohen “a lack of planned effort to improve the status of women in minority groups. . . . [I]t is strongly felt that a recommendation or strong statement is needed to direct attention to . . . the great masses of women who fall into this category.”30

Grace Hewell was joined in her call for more attention to African Americans by the deputy assistant secretary of HEW, Lisle Carter, who had been a lawyer for the National Urban League (NUL). Just days after Hewell protested to Cohen, Carter reviewed Peterson's version of the PCSW report and wrote to Hewell: “I am disappointed that the draft report makes no recommendation which gives specific attention to the more acute problems of the status of women in minority groups.”31 Carter's personal history made him particularly concerned about the need of some African American women for welfare services. In 1960, before joining HEW, he authored a legal brief for the NUL regarding racism in the welfare program. His brief to Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Arthur Flemming succeeded in helping overturn the state of Louisiana's decision to cut 6,000 African American women and their children from its ADC rolls.32 With support from national civil rights organizations including the NUL, Carter demanded more attention be given to the issue before the final PCSW report was published.

Esther Peterson faced pressure to consult African Americans not only from HEW and national civil rights groups but also from President Kennedy himself. In the spring and early summer of 1963, Kennedy was beginning the tensest months of his administration regarding civil rights. Under mounting pressure from civil rights groups, the president activated the National Guard to desegregate the University of Alabama. Soon thereafter, riots would break out in Birmingham, Alabama, civil rights activist Medgar Evers would be killed, and the March on Washington would take place at the end of the summer.33 On June 1, 1963, Cohen and other HEW staffers met with the president, the vice president, their aides, and cabinet members to try to address growing African American demands for action by the administration. Although President Kennedy told the meeting, “Almost anything we do won't satisfy them,” he nevertheless directed cabinet officers to sort through their existing policies and programs to see “what could be done to relieve Negro unemployment.”34 Within days Cohen produced several documents on “the potential opportunities for increased employment of Negroes under the 1962 Public Welfare Amendments,” noting that through the new rehabilitative titles “a substantial number of Negro mothers who are now receiving public assistance [will] . . . make satisfactory plans for their children and undertake employment.”35 The

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