The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964–1980 ed. by Annelise Orleck and Lisa Gayle Hazirjian (review)

In the spring of 1964 President Lyndon Baines Johnson dramatized his intention to wage an unconditional war on poverty in America by visiting the ramshackle home of an unemployed coal miner in the hills of eastern Kentucky. Johnson hoped that this event would help demarcate the efforts of his administration, and by extension postwar liberalism, to mobilize government programs against a major barrier to his vision of the Great Society. Yet the antipoverty campaign, along with struggles for racial and gender justice, contributed to the tumult of the 1960s. This series of initiatives also sparked a running debate that has involved pundits, politicians, scholars, and large portions of the public. The War on Poverty was either a costly and subversive failure or a valiant effort politicizing millions of poor people and altering the nation’s understanding of their plight.

The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964–1980 unabashedly champions the latter perspective. Drawing upon locally generated sources where possible, the contributors to this collection of essays trace the efforts of African Americans, Latinos, Chicanos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Appalachian whites to design and carry out education, employment, food assistance, health, housing, economic development, and social service programs themselves. Interracial coalitions sometimes formed. The venues varied: large cities such as Baltimore, Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, Milwaukee, and New York; smaller urban centers like Durham, North Carolina, and Selma, Alabama; and rural areas in places like Oklahoma, Texas, and the Mississippi Delta. Several authors call attention to the rise of “motherist politics,” as poor women of different racial and ethnic backgrounds became community activists in unprecedented numbers, believing that they could manage food, education, and health-care services for their children better than male organizers or government officials (p. 18).

A critical policy measure established during the War on Poverty assessed the extent to which the “maximum feasible participation” of the poor, as envisioned by the campaign’s enabling legislation, was actually achieved (p. 10). Essays in this collection apply that same standard to yield an almost familiar pattern. After some initial wariness, poor people became swept up in the promise of community action. Along with veteran activists, some local officials, and social welfare professionals, they negotiated their way through the process of obtaining federal antipoverty grants for relatively traditional betterment projects that rapidly became part of an agenda for empowerment. Demonstrations, marches, newsletters, petitions, packed meetings, lobbying, voter registration drives, the creation of childhood education centers, public health clinics, and affordable housing projects all reflected a determination to create a real path out of poverty.

Resistance to these challenges to the status quo appeared quickly. In recorded telephone conversations President Johnson, never a fan of community action and worried about public support for the War on Poverty and his chances for reelection, reassured disgruntled congressmen and mayors that he merely sought to replicate the New Deal’s job training and service delivery programs through existing federal agencies. These and other mainstream politicians were not convinced and used their power to stifle the insurgency. Because community organizations appealed directly for antipoverty funds without the approval of local bureaucracies and because activists demanded representation on community action program boards that spent the funding, city officials adopted compromises, divisive politics, and outright threats that preserved traditional municipal authority. Congressional reauthorization bills gave state and local governments even more restrictive financial and administrative controls. Southern segregationists equated the War on Poverty with the civil rights movement and refused to concede any ground to black participants in the antipoverty campaign. White leaders and their constituents, determined to maintain their power, engaged in widespread intimidation, bureaucratic manipulation, economic reprisals, repeated investigations, violence, and affirmations of white supremacy to block the potential of poor people’s coalitions and...