Civil Rights Advocacy on Behalf of the Poor

1. Anti-Poverty as a Civil Rights Issue?

C h a p t e r 1 Anti-Poverty as a Civil Rights Issue? I think certainly Katrina really underscored a real problem we’ve had in terms of black leadership . . . I’m talking about specifically black elected officials, black Democrats . . . and also the mainstream civil rights organizations: the NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and, to an extent, the Urban League. . . . What we’ve seen . . . post-Katrina, during Katrina, and pre-Katrina . . . [is] a neglect of the African-American poor in terms of proactive policy initiatives, an active lobbying voice for a comprehensive program to deal with black poverty. What we’re really talking about is a leadership that ignores, in terms of a comprehensive agenda, the poorest of the poor. —Earl Ofari Hutchinson, President, Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, News and Notes with Ed Gordon, NPR, September 23, 2005 On August 28, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans, eventually killing between fifteen hundred and two thousand people and leaving tens of thousands homeless. The images of New Orleans surprised some Americans, who were struck by the poverty there and that the majority of those affected were African American.1 The disproportionate levels of poverty experienced by African Americans in New Orleans became front page news; media outlets displayed imagery of African Americans trapped in the city with no means for evacuation. In addition to exposing the ongoing intersection of race and poverty in the United States, Katrina made the distance between policymakers, elites, and the experience of low-income African Americans apparent. While touring the Houston Astrodome in the weeks following evacuation, for- 2 Chapter 1 mer First Lady Barbara Bush remarked: ‘‘Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them.’’2 As Americans scrambled to understand the impact of Katrina and to respond to the devastation, charitable organizations and advocacy groups swung into full gear raising money, finding volunteers, and offering commentary and explanations of the inequality Katrina brought to light. Among the active groups were civil rights organizations, which mobilized their membership, set up field offices in Louisiana and Mississippi , and made advocacy at the federal, state, and city levels a priority. This advocacy might not seem particularly surprising: given the conflation of race and poverty in the general perception, it may seem apparent that civil rights groups that are focused on racial equality would also advocate for the poor.3 However, as the quote at the beginning of this chapter reflects, representation of the poor has never been the top priority of civil rights organizations , which exist to eradicate racially prejudiced and discriminatory practices and policies. Literature on the activities and ideologies of civil rights groups argues that such organizations have functioned with a distinct middle-class bias since well before the 1960s civil rights movement (Goluboff 2007; A. Reed 1999; Marable 1985). Additionally, all political organizations face disincentives to represent the poor: such advocacy is expensive, politically unpopular, and often involves trade-offs with other issues that are more central to organizations’ missions. Nonetheless, because of the disproportionate effects of poverty on African Americans, civil rights groups have historically considered economic issues and issues of poverty to be inherently part of their missions. Although they varied in their chosen tactics and strategies, groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) were particularly concerned with African American economic freedom.4 Organizations and activists struggled to balance their commitment to sometimes radical economic goals with the necessity of working toward civil rights goals that were palatable to white liberals and policymakers (Jackson 2007). For many activists and leaders, the goals of civil rights were inseparable from those of economic equity because activists on the frontlines were struggling to overcome both racial and economic oppressions. As John Lewis, former SNCC chairman, explained: People have said that the civil rights movement was a middle-class movement. . . . But, a lot of the people that made up the rank and file of that movement, the people that got arrested and went to jail, the people Anti-Poverty as a Civil Rights Issue? 3 that participated in the marches, that stood in that immovable line, they were dirt poor.5 Additionally, middle-class African Americans might have particular interests in addressing issues of economic...