Robert Clifton Weaver and the American city : the life and times of an urban reformer / Wendell E. Pritchett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pritchett, Wendell E.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Weaver, Robert C. (Robert Clifton), 1907-1997.

Weaver, Robert C.

United States. Department of Housing and Urban Development--Officials and employees--Biography.

United States.

Bernard M. Baruch College--Biography.

Bernard M. Baruch College.

Cabinet officers--United States--Biography.

Cabinet officers.

African Americans--Biography.

African Americans.

Urban policy--United States--History--20th century.

Urban policy.

African Americans--Government policy--History--20th century.

Cabinet officers--New York (State)--Biography.

African American college presidents--Biography.

African American college presidents.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (462 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

From his role as Franklin Roosevelt's "negro advisor" to his appointment under Lyndon Johnson as the first secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Robert Clifton Weaver was one of the most influential domestic policy makers and civil rights advocates of the twentieth century. This volume, the first biography of the first African American to hold a cabinet position in the federal government, rescues from obscurity the story of a man whose legacy continues to affect American race relations and the cities in which they largely play out. Tracing Weaver's career through the creation, expansion, and contraction of New Deal liberalism, Wendell E. Pritchett illuminates his instrumental role in the birth of almost every urban initiative of the period, from public housing and urban renewal to affirmative action and rent control. Beyond these policy achievements, Weaver also founded racial liberalism, a new approach to race relations that propelled him through a series of high-level positions in public and private agencies working to promote racial cooperation in American cities. But Pritchett shows that despite Weaver's efforts to make race irrelevant, white and black Americans continued to call on him to mediate between the races-a position that grew increasingly untenable as Weaver remained caught between the white power structure to which he pledged his allegiance and the African Americans whose lives he devoted his career to improving.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Preparing the Talented Tenth. The Weaver Family and the Black Elite

2. Fighting for a Better Deal

3. A Liberal Experiment. Race and Housing in the New Deal

4. Creating a New Order. Black Politics in the New Deal Era

5. World War II and Black Labor

6. Chicago and the Science of Race Relations

7. Searching for a Place to Call Home

8. New York City and the Institutions of Liberal Reform

9. The First Cabinet Job

10. The Path to Power

11. The Kennedy Years. A Reluctant New Frontier

12. Fighting for Civil Rights from the Inside

13. The Great Society and the City

14. HUD, Robert Weaver, and the Ambiguities of Race

15. Power and Its Limitations

16. The Great Society, High and Low

17. An Elder Statesman in a Period of Turmoil

Conclusion

Abbreviations Used in Notes

Notes

Figure Credits

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [357]-417) and index.

ISBN:

9786612537912

9781282537910

1282537911

9780226684505

0226684504

OCLC:

593240131