The Dual Agenda of African American Organizations since the New Deal: Social Welfare Policies and Civil Rights Dona Cooper Hamilton; Charles V. Hamilton Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 107, No. 3 (Autumn, 1992), 435-452. Stable URL hitp:/ links jstor-org/sicisici=0032-3195% 28 199223% 29 107%3A3%3C435%3ATDAOAA%3E2.0.CO% 3B2-H Political Science Quarterly is currently published by The Academy of Political Science, ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www,jstororglabout/terms.hml. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hutp:/www jstor.orgyjournals/aps.html. Each copy of any part of @ JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission. STOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact jstor-info@umich edu bupslwww jstor.org/ Sun Jan 11 14:18:37 2004The Dual Agenda of African American Organizations since the New Deal: Social Welfare Policies and Civil Rights DONA COOPER HAMILTON CHARLES V. HAMILTON ‘There are several extant discussions of public policy, race, and politics in professional journals, books, popular media, and on the political stump. These discussions involve debates about the “underclass,” about the most appropriate approaches to dealing with long-standing problems of racial discrimi nation, as well as the impact of racial issues on the major political parties, especially the Democratic party. The Supreme Court nomination of Clarence ‘Thomas focused more attention on a group of African American conservatives who have challenged what they call the outmoded policies of the traditional civil rights movement. One of the discussions, which this article joins, has centered on concerns about the most effective ways to deal with the persisting socioeconor problems of a vast number of African Americans. Some argue that these eco- nomic problems should take precedence over specifically defined “civil rights, race-specific” issues, and the civil rights groups should opt for more “universal” policies, ones that deal not only with race, but with the class dimension. In this way, the argument goes, the political coalitional base will be broadened, and blacks will benefit along with many others similarly situated. This is referred to as the “hidden agenda” of race politics. Others have pointed out that the explicit DONA COOPER HAMILTON isassosate professor of sosial work at Lehman College City Univer- sity of New York. CHARLES V, HAMILTON isthe Wallace S, Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia University. This article draws on their research fora larger study of socal welfare policies of civil rights organizations covering six decades, eka cence Query Yume 107 Sumber 1552 2s436 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY ‘emphasis on race has over the last twenty years sent many former Democrats and supporters of civil rights into the Republican party ranks, thus diminishing the carlier coalition that brought to fruition the political achievements of the liberal and civil rights movements in the 1960s. The current admonition is that the civil rights forces need to focus much more on social welfare, less on civil rights. Unlike the conservative vs. liberal debate, this discussion is mainly one between Ieft-of-center forces, ones who see themselves as progressive in both economic and racial matters. The suggestion is also made that the civil rights organizations have failed to recognize the central importance of socioeconomic structural con- sequences for poverty on not only blacks but other poor people as well. The ccharge is that the emphasis on civil rights per se has been too narrow, too race- focused, not only in the 1990s and 1960s, but even earlier. The argument is made that the social welfare agenda, one addressing the needs of all poor, black and white, has not received nearly the attention from civil rights groups that has been given the civil rights agenda. This emphasis, it is asserted, has been to the political and economic detriment of masses of black Americans. And the obvious conclu- sion is that this oversight needs to be remedied as liberals move into the 1990s and think about the kinds of politics necessary to mount viable political coalitions and fashion relevant policy demands." This article joins this particular discussion and examines the historical position taken by the major civil rights groups as far back as the New Deal. We focus on the two oldest and largest, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League (NUL). We contend that these civil rights groups have always understood the existence of two agendas: social welfare and civil rights, and they have attempted to deal with both. The struggle to achieve the goals of the civil rights agenda is well known. Much less is known about what those groups attempted to achieve regarding the social welfare agenda and how they responded to the political realities facing them over the decades. Indeed, many of the arguments made today about subordinating the race concern to the larger societal concern were made decades ago. Many of the warnings about political backlash made today were made decades before. In other words, harsh political realities faced in the 1990s are not new to the civil rights groups, who have always had to balance legitimate concerns for both agendas on a delicate scale of political calculation and pragmatic politics. Greater understanding of this history ought to improve discussion of the politics of race and social welfare today. CoNcERN ABOUT OTHER MATTERS On 2 July 1939, Eleanor Roosevelt gave a speech before the 30th Annual Confer- ‘ence of the NAACP in Richmond, Virginia. She stated: " William Julius Wison, The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago: Universit of Chicago Press 1987); Wiliams Julie Wilson, “Race-Neutral Policies and the Democratic Coalition,” The American Pros- eet 1 (Spring 1990): 74-81; Jim Sleeper, The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Polis ofSOCIAL WELFARE POLICIES AND CIVIL RiGHTS | 437 Its a great pleasure to me to be here today, but I think I should say at the start that while I think you have been considering subjects which are of primary importance to ‘you as a group in this nation, I feel that I must talk to you as citizens of the United States on things which are not only of interest to you but which are of interest to every citizen in this country.? Her point was that civil rights groups ought to be concerned with broader socioeconomic issues beyond the more narrow interests of their constituents in civil rights. In her speech she specifically mentioned education and health care, and she made reference to the “plight of all young people.” ‘This was an often heard admonition to civil rights groups then. As far as we ‘can tell, there were likely few, if any, in that audience that evening who disagreed with her. Certainly, the NAACP’s leadership did not disagree. But the leaders must have had a sense of frustration, because they knew that they had been devoting a fair amount of attention over the decade precisely to such universal economic issues. Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP, probably was turning over in his mind the correspondence two years earlier in 1937 between himself and Congressman Dow W. Harter (Ohio). Mr. White had received ac- knowledgment of a letter he had sent to several members of Congress. Harter’s 25 October 1937 response read: Dear Mr. White: ‘This will acknowledge receipt of your letter of October 21st. The Record will disclose that I have always been in favor of anti-ynching legislation. 1 am hopeful that a satisfactory bill may be passed at the coming session. Very truly yours. ‘The next day, Walter White responded: My dear Mr. Harter: ‘Thank you for your good letter of October 25. However, my letter to you of October 21 was not about the ant-lynehing bill but regarding the passage of anondiscriminatory ‘wages and hours bill atthe next session of Congress. !amnot surprised that you assumed that my communication had reference to the anti-lynching bill since that has been the subject of our correspondence for so long a time. But you can see from my letter of the 2Ist that afterall Ican write about other matters. Byer sincerely? ‘Race New York (New York: Norton, 1980); Thomas B. Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Revtion: ‘The Impact of Race, Righs, and Taxes on American Politics (New York: Norton, 1992); Theda ‘kocpol, "Sustainable Social Policy: Fighting Poverty Without Poverty Programs.” The American Prospect 1 (Summer 1990): 58-70. * Address by Eleanor Roosevelt before the National Association forthe Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Annual Conference, 2 July 1938, Richmond, Virginia, NAACP Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congres, Group 1, Box B-7. ® Correspondence between Congressman Dow W. Harter and Walter White, 28 October 1937, 26 October 1937, NAACP Papers, Group 1, C-286. (Emphasis added.)438 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY There has been over the past sixty years a social welfare agenda that has attempted to do what Eleanor Roosevelt advocated and many current-day ana- lysts suggest. We know, understandably, a lot about the civil rights agenda. We know about the struggle to overturn de jure segregation, but very little is known, about the struggle to achieve viable social welfare goals. Even in the 1930s com- plaints and criticisms were heard from blacks and whites urging the civil rights groups to pay more attention to socioeconomic problems. No less a sensitive activist-scholar than Ralph Bunche severely charged! It is typical of Negro organizations that they concern themselves not with the broad social and political implications of such policies as government relief, housing, social- ized medicine, unemployment and old-age insurance, wages and hours laws, etc., but only with the purely racial aspects of such policies. They are content to let the white citizen determine the expediency of major policies, and the form and direction they will assume, while they set themselves up as watch dogs over relatively petty issues, as ‘whether the Negro will get his proper share of the benefits and whether the laws, once made, will be fairly administered. They thus demark for the Negro a residual function in the society.* Research in the archives of these organizations reveals a quite different story, that the organizations, in fact, had a dual agenda. We focus on the following questions: What did these civil rights groups say and do about such other matters as social security, the various New Deal pro- ‘grams, health care, and employment? To what extent did they have a dual agenda, that attempted to address not only civil rights issues but the broader socio- economic issues as well? And equally important: how has that dual agenda evolved over the last sixty years? That is, what were the reactions to the civil rights groups as they pursued the dual agenda, and how did these reactions affect subsequent strategy choices? We identify three distinct stages in the evolution of the dual agenda. The Consensual Stage, the years of the New Deal into post-World War Il. The org zations attempted to reconcile their social welfare policy agenda with their rights agenda. Sometimes they even agreed to subordinate the latter to the former, when the political realities of the time indicated that civil rights issues were not popular and would only hinder the possible achievement of liberal social policies. The Conflictual Stage, the 1950s into the early 1960s. During the conversion to a peace-time economy and the heightened mobilization of the civil rights ‘movement we find continued agreement with the basic principles of the liberal- progressive forces pushing for particular kinds of social welfare polices. But now we see a new development, no longer a willingness to subordinate the civil rights agenda to the social welfare agenda. This development precipitated an intense “Ralph J. Bunche, “The Progress of Organizations Devote tothe Improvement ofthe Status of the American Negro,” The Journal of Negro Education 8 July 1938): 539-880SOCIAL WELFARE POLICIES AND CIVIL RIGHTS | 439 debate within liberal circles, coming close at times to mutual questioning not only Of strategy and tactics but of veracity. The Complementary Stage, beginning with the mid-1960s. On the heels of victories over de jure segregation and discrimination and with the rising concern, about issues of poverty, still another shift occurred. The organizations, as before, supported liberal social welfare policies (for example, full employment, expanded health care, increased governmental attention to the poor). But now they began. to say that more was needed. Socioeconomic conditions had become so severe ‘among some groups (especially blacks and Latinos) that more would be needed in the way of governmental assistance for these groups if the conditions were to be overcome. The legacy of decades of neglect, of failure to deal adequately earlier, now required more than mere attention to the problems of everyone. A vast left-out group had formed, and additional, targeted social policies would be needed. Thus, the dual agenda took on a complementary dimension, which spoke of something in addition, of filling out or completing. At the same time, the civil rights groups would continue to push for the end to discrimination and to overcome the effects of past discrimination. Each stage, of course, was influenced by its own peculiar brand of national politics and the economic environment. But an important point to emphasize is that throughout this sixty-year period, there has always been, in political terms at least, a distinction between social welfare issues and civil rights issues. This distinetion became blurred in the euphoria of the mid-1960s with the passage of both civil rights laws and antipoverty legislation when official and activist rhetoric began to equate racial conditions with poverty (almost exclusively economic conditions). ‘Tue CoNSENSUAL STAGE ‘The New Deal is the proper beginning for this discussion, because then this country launched its modern-day version of the American welfare-state. With the Social Security Act of 1935, the country established a two-tier social welfare system. ‘The first tier (social insurance) was contributory, funded from payroll taxes levied on employers and employees. Covering retirement pension and unemploy- ment compensation, it has expanded over the years to include dependents, survi- vors, disability, and health insurance. This was indeed landmark legislation coming out of the crisis of the Great Depression. In many ways, it laid a sound. foundation for the future economic protection of a working-class America. It ‘was based in the labor market. One was able to participate in this new, important social insurance system if one had a job that was covered by its benefits. The second tier (public assistance) was for those unable and generally not expected to work. This included dependent children (Aid to Dependent Children, later expanded to Aid to Families with Dependent Children) and the elderly poor440 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY who had not contributed to the social security fund. It has expanded to include disability and health care assistance. This category of assistance was means- tested, meaning that one had to prove that one was poor and in need. But it was also perceived to provide help on a temporary basis, because the able-bodied recipients were expected eventually to enter the labor market and become self- supporting. The elderly and to some extent the disabled, of course, were cons ‘ered deserving of help for the remainder of their lives ‘The NUL and the NAACP certainly agreed with the ideological premises of the legislation. They also agreed that government should develop mechanisms for social security and that the labor market should be the basis for receiving benefits in the first tier. But they did not support the bill, because it did not coincide with their social welfare agenda, that is, universal coverage under the first tier. The initial legislation did not cover agricultural and domestic workers, and this meant that initially a good two-thirds of the black labor force was not covered. Of 5.5 million black workers in the country, 2 million worked at that time in agriculture, and 1.5 million in domestic service. These occupations were left out, not, ostensibly because of their race but because of their unfortunate position in the labor market. Thus what was perceived by some as a universal Program was not that at all. ‘Testifying before the Senate Finance Committee on 9 February 1935, Attorney Charles H. Houston of the NAACP stated: ‘The NAACP regrets that it cannot support the Wagner Economic Security Bll (, 1130) approached the Bill with every inclination to supportit, but the moe studied, the more holes appeared, until from a Negro’s point of view it looks like a sieve with the holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.’ He noted that provisions for old people (in the second tier) depended on the separate states adopting a program of assistance, and this was problematic in southern states where mos elderly blacks lived. The NAACP thougit it was likely that the black elderly would either be excluded from benefits or provided with very low levels of public assistance ‘The NAACP favored a strictly federal old-age assistance program. The two tiers should be merged into one, under one national governmental program. Thus, the NAACP was not arguing for special treatment for blacks. The goal was to include blacks, to give them the same chance to be covered, to make it possible for them to contribute to the retirement funds, and therefore to be eligible for benefits. This meant, of course, being employed in occupations that ‘were covered by the act. In this sense, the NAACP saw the social welfare agenda as consensual with the civil rights agenda. Both agendas sought no special treat- ‘ment for blacks politically or economically. The appeal was economic, not race- specific. * Testimony of Charles Hamilton Houston, U.S. Senate Finance Commitee, Mth Congres, Ist sess. 9 February 1985, NAACP Papers, Group I, C257