Economic Facts of the American Experiment, Le New Deal, The Myth of Black Capitalism, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty and Communauté Locale et Organisation Communautaire aux États-Unis

1971 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 376-377
Author(s):  
J. M. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Community Action ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
Black Capitalism ◽  
American Experiment

scholarly journals How Johnson Fought the War on Poverty: The Economics and Politics of Funding at the Office of Economic Opportunity

2014 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha J. Bailey ◽  
Nicolas J. Duquette
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
Economic Opportunity ◽  
Johnson Administration ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Office Of Economic Opportunity ◽  
Economic Opportunity Act ◽  
Political Variables ◽  
Economics And Politics

This article presents a quantitative analysis of the geographic distribution of spending through the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act (EOA). Using newly assembled state- and county-level data, the results show that the Johnson administration directed funding in ways consistent with the War on Poverty's rhetoric of fighting poverty and racial discrimination: poorer areas and those with a greater share of nonwhite residents received systematically more funding. In contrast to New Deal spending, political variables explain very little of the variation in EOA funding. The smaller role of politics may help explain the strong backlash against the War on Poverty's programs.

Who Belongs in the University?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Schryer
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Multicultural Education ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The University ◽  
Welfare Politics

This chapter focuses on Philip Roth’s late 1990s novel, The Human Stain, arguing that the novel draws an analogy between the university and the Democratic Party. In early War on Poverty–era novels like Portnoy’s Complaint, Roth developed an antiprocess conception of art and welfare politics, one that conceived of works of art and public institutions as products that require audiences to appreciate them on their own terms. In The Human Stain, Roth extends this conception to the postmodern academy, using it to criticize multicultural education and affirmative action. Linking the university and New Deal liberal coalition, Roth insists that both are under assault by cultural and ideological outsiders. This analogy leads Roth to embrace a strategic conservatism, one that echoes the politics of Bill Clinton, whose impeachment trial recurs throughout The Human Stain.

Black Arts and the Great Society

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Schryer
Keyword(s):  
Lower Class ◽  
Community Action ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Gwendolyn Brooks ◽  
Amiri Baraka ◽  
Participatory Art ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Black Arts

This chapter discusses two Black Arts writers who benefited from War on Poverty patronage: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Gwendolyn Brooks. In The System of Dante’s Hell and In the Mecca, the two writers developed distinct versions of participatory art. Like much of Baraka’s Beat-period work, The System of Dante’s Hell thematizes his dissatisfaction with the white counterculture and desire to create art that could connect him with black urban audiences. However, the novel draws on the counterculture’s essentialist conception of lower-class culture in ways that would continue to shape Baraka’s cultural nationalist output of the late 1960s. In contrast, Brooks’s In the Mecca rejects the immersive drama that defines Baraka’s Black Arts. Inspired by her Community Action Program–sponsored work with Chicago’s Blackstone Rangers, the collection insists that minority poets use the resources of poetic form to achieve a calibrated distance from their lower-class subjects.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Schryer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Community Action ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
Action Program ◽  
Amiri Baraka ◽  
Process Art ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Black Arts ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Community Action Program

Focusing on the African American poet and playwright Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), the Introduction explores links between 1950s and 1960s process literature and the Community Action Program. Baraka’s Black Arts Repertory Theatre and School (BARTS) was funded through the War on Poverty, and his version of process art fulfilled the participatory requirements of the Community Action Program. Both Baraka and many welfare activists allied with the Community Action Program also drew on a binary conception of class culture popularized by the post–World War II counterculture and liberal social science. This binary conception produced two figures that alternately incited and frustrated literary and social work efforts to bridge the gap between the middle class and the poor: the juvenile delinquent and the welfare mother.

“Dominant Decision-Making Authority”: Resident Leadership in St. Louis, Missouri, Model Cities Planning

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-353
Author(s):  
Sarah Siegel
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Community Action ◽  
Community Leaders ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
Model Cities ◽  
Improvement Programs

When federal policymakers created Model Cities in 1966, they envisioned it as an innovative approach to urban renewal. Part of the War on Poverty, Model Cities combined slum redevelopment, an expansion of social services, and citizen participation. Understanding community action as a critique of and attempt to reorient decades of failed urban policy, this article spotlights efforts by residents to seize and maintain control of urban improvement programs. Residents claimed expertise in urban planning by virtue of their experience living in impoverished neighborhoods. Their vision for their community suggested an alternate path for city planning that supported poor residents’ influence to achieve a more democratic society. This article traces how community leaders in St. Louis, Missouri, briefly achieved resident-controlled urban planning within Model Cities. Although residents’ ideas were never implemented as they hoped, these plans expose the opportunities and constraints of neighborhood activism in the War on Poverty.

scholarly journals A High-Wire Crusade: Republicans and the War on Poverty, 1966

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-405
Author(s):  
Mark McLay
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
Economic Opportunity ◽  
Great Society ◽  
Elementary And Secondary Education ◽  
Education Act ◽  
Economic Opportunity Act ◽  
Antipoverty Programs ◽  
The New Deal

Abstract:During 1966, the Republican Party launched a largely successful challenge to Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” Republican candidates pursued an anti–War on Poverty midterm strategy, which made antipoverty programs the symbol of Great Society liberalism, rather than its more popular programs, such as Medicare or the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Moreover, in Congress and on the campaign trail, Republicans offered well-crafted alternatives—such as their “Opportunity Crusade”—to offset charges of negativism and elitism that had dogged the Grand Old Party (GOP) since the creation of the New Deal in the 1930s. Significantly, while the War on Poverty survived the year, the Republican minority was unexpectedly successful in making important changes to the Economic Opportunity Act during the antipoverty legislation’s renewal. Overall, the Republican challenge to the War on Poverty in 1966, boded ill for the program’s longevity when the GOP finally secured the levers of power.

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