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dissertation entitled

THE BOUNDARIES OF SISTERHOOD: RACE, CLASS,
GENDER, AND PARTICIPATION IN MICHIGAN’S WELFARE

RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND RESPONSE TO WELFARE
POLICY, 1964-1972

presented by

CYNTHIA EDMONDS-CADY

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
of the requirements for the

Ph.D. degree in Social Work

 

 

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2/05 p:/ClRC/DateDue.indd-p.1

THE BOUNDARIES OF SISTERHOOD: RACE, CLASS, GENDER, AND
PARTICIPATION IN MICHIGAN’S WELFARE RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND
RESPONSE TO WELFARE POLICY, 1964-1972
By

Cynthia Edmonds-Cady

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Social Work

2006

ABSTRACT
THE BOUNDARIES OF SISTERHOOD: RACE, CLASS, GENDER, AND
PARTICIPATION IN MICHIGAN ’S WELFARE RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND
RESPONSE TO WELFARE POLICY, 1964-1972
By
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady

This historical, qualitative study used the combined methods of oral history and
document analysis to examine how race, class, and gender intersected in women’s
participation in the welfare rights movement and their responses to changes in welfare
policy during the period between 1964 and 1972. A multidimensional feminist standpoint
approach (Naples, 2003) and an intersectional approach were used to inform the
conceptual framework for this study, and the literature on women’s historical
participation in social movements, the development and dismantling of the National
Welfare Rights Organization, and historical changes in welfare policy during the Johnson
and Nixon administrations were also examined. This research focused on Detroit and
Southeast Michigan, and examined how women in the welfare rights movement crossed
and/or maintained boundaries of race and class while acting from a similar gender
perspective. Interviews were conducted with 13 participants in the welfare rights
movement in the Detroit, Michigan area and documents from various archival sources
were analyzed. Primary sources, documents created by movement participants, were
examined. Results of this study indicate that a shared standpoint of “woman” was
particularly evident in non-recipient “ﬁ'iends of welfare rights” initial motivation to join
the movement, and a strong poverty-class standpoint was emphasized in recipient

members’ participation. Matemalism was a signiﬁcant mobilization feature for the

friends of welfare rights; however, a practical maternal ism emerged within the
recipients’ motivation and involvement in the welfare rights movement. Documents that
responded to changes in welfare policy most frequently emphasized gender, particularly
motherhood and the right to ﬁnancial support. Overall, race and class based differences
were emphasized most in decision making, tactics, and control within the movement.
Within the documents, race was used in a more divisive way in responding to welfare
policy changes, calling up images of slavery and oppression, and class was used
ambivalently by including “working families” and “working mothers” in calls to ﬁght
against policies that would harm poor women on welfare. Where boundaries of race and
class were able to be crossed within this sample, it was when non-recipients engaged in
the same activities as recipients, but encouraged control and leadership to be maintained
by recipients. These results indicate that similarities in gender or motherhood status were
helpful in motivating some individuals to initially form linkages across difference, but
connections were complicated based on differences in the ways that class and race
intersected gender. This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study that ﬁlls gaps in the
literature within the ﬁelds of social work and community practice, social work advocacy,

women’s history, women’s studies, and sociology.

COPyﬁght by
CYNTHIA EDMONDS-CADY
2006

DEDICATION
This dissertation is dedicated to all of the women who are currently struggling or have

previously struggled on welfare. You are somebody, and you deserve the life you always

imagined possible.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work represents a journey, albeit one that is never quite over. For the journey
towards completion of this dissertation is also a journey towards learning and
understanding. As such, there have been many individuals I have met along the way who
have contributed to my eﬂ‘orts in some manner.

The ﬁrst individuals who must be thanked are those whose stories are presented
here. I am grateful to all of the strong, brave, courageous, proud, and wonderful ladies of
the welfare rights movement. To all of you who shared your kitchen tables, living rooms,
porches or ofﬁces with me, in order to spend some time talking about the past, I will
always be thankful. It is your work that made this work possible. It is your work that
stood the test of time. I hope all of you know that you did “make a difference”.

I next thank my family, especially my husband who at times took on more
responsibility than the equal partnership we originally agreed to. Without his support and
encouragement I would never have been able to complete this dissertation. During the
numerous occasions when I wished to “give it up”, he always encouraged me to keep
going, and was always prepared to hold down the fort when I needed to go away alone in
order to write. My three children also contributed, each in their own way. My oldest son
assisted in my completion of the dissertation by growing up and ﬁnally ﬁnding his own
trajectory, without mom. My daughter was always ready to ask what I had worked on that
day, and on occasion placed notes with encouraging and affectionate messages written on
them in my books, ﬁles, and papers. My youngest son gave me the hugs and kisses that I

needed to keep going, and he often seemed to genuinely want to know what “welfare

vi

rights” was all about, and who George Wiley was. Besides the emotional support I
received from my family, they also assisted in very concrete dissertation related work. I
will always be thankful for my father’s emergency assistance in the archives. He will
forever remain my “unofﬁcial” research assistant. My husband’s late night cassette tape
dubbing skills also came in handy on several occasions when copies needed to be made at
the last minute. I am also thankful to both my parents for listening to long passages of the
dissertation to see if it “sounded okay” and for lending me their empty house when I
needed to work alone. My sister and best friend both acted as helpful “sounding boar ”
when I needed to talk about the process of completing the dissertation itself. I am sure
they now know much more about feminist research and qualitative methods than they
actually care to. I am also thankful to my two youngest children for listening to my
endless descriptions of women and social movement activity, race, class, and gender,
etc. . . I am glad that they didn’t always tune me out.

There have been numerous colleagues, educators, and ﬁiends who have also
assisted me in formulating questions, understanding concepts, and clarifying this work. I
ﬁrst of all, owe a tremendous debt to all of my committee members at Michigan State
University. I am particularly grateful to my chair, Dr. John Herrick, who was always
ready with the right amount of encouragement and critique. I am truly thankful that I was
able to work with someone who, ﬁom the very beginning, seemed to understand how I
envisioned this dissertation. Dr. Herrick is a wonderful advisor, and his knowledge of
history and historical work is tremendous. I am thankful that he was in the school of

social work, and my only regret is that I was never able to take one of his classes.

vii

I am also thankful for the class I took with Dr. Maxine Baca Zinn. Her
understanding of intersectionality and the many discussions we had about this topic,
pushed me to think more critically about the theoretical framework for this dissertation.
Whenever I struggled with a concept, I was always able to see it more clearly after
talking with her. She encouraged me to read more and delve deeper into this very
complex but critical ﬁamework. I will remain ever grateful for her assistance.

I am grateful to Dr. Lisa Fine for agreeing to read a history paper I had written
early in my program, although she did not know me. This was the start of her thoughtful
assistance with my work. Her reading recommendations and suggestions on doing
historical work were invaluable. She often would ask critical questions, but then leave me
to discover the answers on my own. After I had struggled with something for awhile I
would ﬁnally see what she had meant, and I think the lessons were more powerful
because of this.

Dr. Kyunghee Lee has also been very helpful throughout this process. She asked
critical questions and gave important feedback from the comprehensive exam stage all
the way through to the ﬁnal stages of the dissertation. Her questions forced me to re-
examine issues, and deﬁne concepts more clearly.

Others who have encouraged or assisted me in this work include former advisors
and professors. I will always be thankful to Dr. Beth Glover Reed who, while I was in my
MSW program at the University of Michigan, exposed me to scholars such as Patricia
Hill Collins, Sandra Harding, Michel Foucualt, Nancy Hartsock, Donna Haraway, Pierre
Bourdieu, and others too numerous to list, and also introduced me to theories as diverse

as chaos theory and standpoint theory. Her classes were always full of stimulating

viii

discussions and maddening dilemmas. I am also thankful for her continued support and
stimulation of my work. I can be assured that when I think I have the answer, She will be
able to ask the kinds of questions that eventually lead me “back to the drawing board”.
For this, I am indebted to her.

I have also met individuals who have been integral to my decision and ability to
continue on my long journey. I will never forget the moment I realized that I could
possibly have the intellectual capacity to complete something as mentally arduous as a
dissertation. I had just received my graded essay back ﬁom Professor Jim Devries in my
sociology class at Monroe County Community College. I had ended that essay, on the
topic of education, by saying that I would have liked to go on in my own educational
career to try to obtain a Ph.D., but I probably did not have the capacity. In the margins of
the paper he had simply written, “You can do it. You have the ability to get a Ph.D.” As a
working class kid who had never really believed that I could do anything of importance,
this was a pivotal moment for me. I soon after began to take my work more seriously, and
to believe in myself. For the support and encouragement he has given me throughout my
academic career, I am ever grateful to Dr. Jim Devries.

Others who have helped me in this work include Dr. Cynthia Jackson-Elmoore,
who although her policy class was one of the toughest courses in my Ph.D. program at
Michigan State University, had a way and continues to have a way of pushing me to be
my best. She is my unofficial committee member, and someone who has an innate ability
to always be pragmatic and succinct. Her suggestions are always to the point, and helpful

to an idealist such as myself.

ix

Dr. Marya Sosulski has also served as my unofﬁcial committee member at
Michigan State University, throughout this journey. Her suggestions on my writing have
been enormously helpful, and so has the emotional support she has provided. She has also
served as an important traveling companion for research trips and conferences. She is
truly a colleague and a friend.

I am also grateful for the research funding I received from the Graduate School at
Michigan State University. I was fortunate to receive a Summer Acceleration Fellowship
during the summer of 2005, and was awarded the Dissertation Completion Fellowship
during the fall of 2005. I also received two Research Enhancement Awards from the
graduate school during my tenure in the doctoral program. This ﬁnancial support was
critical to my completion of this dissertation.

Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the critical support that I have received in the
past from the late Dr. Carol T. Mowbray, who served as my advisor at the University of
Michigan. There are no words to express how important she was to me in developing my
work and in modeling what a truly wonderful teacher, researcher, and mentor looks like. I
can never hope to even come close to living up to the example she set, but I continuously
try to imagine “what would Carol do?” when faced with a difﬁcult situation. I am
saddened that she is no longer here to offer her matter of fact advice and guidance, when
I feel I need it most. I will, however, always be grateful to her for steering me in the right
direction in the early stages of my dissertation planning. If it were not for here sage
advice, this would be a participatory action research project, and I would be nowhere near

ﬁnished. Therefore, I only regret that I can not tell her, “thank-you” for that.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ..................................................................... xvi
PART I: CONTEXTUALIZIN G
l. UNDERSTANDING THE PAST FOR A NEW APPROACH TO COMMUNITY
PRACTICE ......................................................................................... I
Background of Study .......................................................................... I
Overview of Chapters ........................................................................ 3
A Current Problem for Social Work ........................................................ 5
Past Social Work Position ................................................................... 6
Focus on the Welfare Rights Movement ................................................... 9
Focus on Detroit and Southeast Michigan ................................................ 12
2. WOMEN AND SOCIAL MOVEMENT PARTICIPATION ............................... 15
Focus on Race ................................................................................ 16
Focus on Gender ............................................................................. 20
Matemalist Perspectives .................................................................... 21
Focus on Class ............................................................................... 24
3. WELFARE RIGHTS, WELFARE POLICY, AND THE WAR ON POVERTY ....... 27
The National Welfare Rights Organization (N WRO) and Changes in Welfare
Policy .......................................................................................... 27
Beginning of the NWRO ................................................................... 28
Women’s Roles in the NWRO ............................................................ 30
The Importance of 640 Temple ............................................................ 32
The Ofﬁce of Economic Opportunity and Speciﬁc Programs ........................ 35
The War on Poverty in Detroit ............................................................ 38
Public Perception ............................................................................ 40
Welfare and Reproductive Control ........................................................ 42
Aid to Families with Dependant Children ................................................ 45
The Welfare Explosion ..................................................................... 47
The Work Incentive Program ............................................................... 48
The Family Assistance Plan ................................................................ 49
Ending the War on Poverty ................................................................. 52
PART II: CONCEPTUALIZING
4. UNDERSTANDING WOMEN’S STANDPOINTS WITHIN A PAST SOCIAL
MOVEMENT: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE STUDY ................. 55
A Feminist Historical Approach ........................................................... 55

xi

The Use Of Standpoint ..................................................................... 57

A Multidimensional Standpoint Approach ............................................... 60
The Use of Intersectionality ................................................................ 62
5. METHODOLOGY .............................................................................. 66
Sample ........................................................................................ 67
Data ............................................................................................ 73
PART HI: INTERSECTING BOUNDARIES
6. EMPHASIZING DIFFERENCE ............................................................ 78
Poverty Class Lives, Poverty Class Standpoints ........................................ 81
Importance of Family of Origin Class Status ........................................... 87
Race as Difference/Race as Sameness ................................................... 89
Other Social Movement Activity 95
Use of Difference ......................................................................... 100
7. FOCUSING ON SIMILARITIES ......................................................... 102
Gender ...................................................................................... 102
Practical Matemalism .................................................................... 108
Women’s Roles in Welfare Rights ..................................................... 115
Use of Sameness .......................................................................... 117
Shifting Standpoints ...................................................................... 119
PART IV: SIGNIFICANCE OF BOUNDARIES
8. CROSSING BOUNDARIES ............................................................... 121
The Meaning of Crossing Boundaries ................................................. 128
9. LIMITATIONS AND STRENGTHS OF THE STUDY: THE DANCE BETWEEN
DISCIPLINES ................................................................................................. 131
Juggling Disciplinary Boundaries ...................................................... 133
10.CONCLUSION: SISTERS TOGETHER YET SEPARATE IN THE STRUGGLE
.................................................................................................... 136
Implications for Social Work .............................................................. 142
Implications for Further Research ....................................................... 145
APPENDICES ..................................................................................... 148
APPENDD( A
Figure 2: Historical Timeline .............................................................. 150
APPENDIX B
Figure 3: Conceptual Map ............................................................... 152
APPENDIX C
Map of Southeast Michigan, Including Detroit and Pontiac .......................... 154

xii

APPENDIX D

Interview Guide ............................................................................ 156
APPENDIX E

Examples of Analysis Matrices Used ................................................... 159
PRIMARY SOURCES ............................................................................ 162
REFERENCES ..................................................................................... 164

xiii

List of Tables

Table 1
Basic Description of Sample ....................................................................... 70
Table 2
Further Description of Sample .................................................................... 71

xiv

List of Figures

Figure l
Intersectional Diagram .............................................................................. 65
Figure 2
Historical Timeline ................................................................................ 150
Figure 3
Conceptual Framework ........................................................................... 152

XV

List of Abbreviations
AF DC- Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
CAP- Community Action Program.
CORE- Congress On Racial Equality.
ERAP- The Economic Research and Action Project.
EOA- Economic Opportunity Act.
FAP- Family Assistance Plan.
MWRO- Michigan Welfare Rights Organization.
MFY- Mobilization For Youth.
NAACP-National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
NIMH- National Institute of Mental Health.
NWRO- National Welfare Rights Organization.
OC-MWRO- Oakland County, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization.
OEO- Ofﬁce of Economic Opportunity.
PRWORA- Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
SCLC- Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
SDS- Students for a Democratic Society.
SNCC- Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee.
TANF- Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.
WIC— Women, Infants and Children.
WIN- Work Incentive Program.

WSP- Women Strike for Peace.

xvi

Part I: Contextualizing
Chapter 1
Understanding the Past for a New Approach to Community Practice

Background of the Study

Although I began my interest in the historical trajectory of the welfare rights
movement as a not so young social work student pursuing my MSW degree, in many
ways I began struggling with questions about how race, class, and gender intersected in
women’s lives much earlier. Growing up in a working class family, as the daughter of a
steelworker, I was exposed early on to the belief that unions were important, and that
individuals were more powerful when they banded together. Later in my life, as I
experienced poverty ﬁrsthand, I ﬁnally began to understand the ways in which gender
and class intersected. When I eventually entered the academy I also began the process of
acknowledging my own privilege based on my social location as a white woman pursuing
graduate studies. I struggled to understand just how these categories of race, class, and
gender ordered individual lives as well as the macro social structures and institutions that
offered opportunity for some at the expense of others. Through my early graduate work
as I delved into postmodernist critiques of identity and attempted to deconstruct various
categories of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, I began to wonder whether and
how social mobilization of poor women was possible. Could women come together
across seemingly unbridgeable divides of race, class, and sexual orientation, not to
mention ability/disability status, or religion? Could this occur without essentializing the

category “women”? Was my father right about the possibility of individuals coming

together to work for social change? Ifthe answer to these questions was “No”, I feared
for the future of social work, particularly the kind of macro social work that I was
interested in. Therefore, I attempted to ﬁnd answers to these questions while still in my
MSW program. I formulated an independent study that used participatory action research
methods to bring together women on welfare in one small city. This project produced
more questions than answers. As I witnessed African American and white women talk
about poverty, welfare, and single motherhood, I saw instances of understanding as well
as misunderstanding between them. They had moments of agreement about what life on
welfare was like, and they had moments when they struggled to understand and clarify
misconceptions or stereotypical assumptions about each other’s lives. This was a small
group, and their goals did not include large scale social movement building. Where
would I ﬁnd an example of how mobilization occurs across difference, or if it is even
possible? I ﬁnally realized that I needed to look back at the large-scale historical social
movements that had already occurred in order to examine how women in the past worked
together for social change.

This dissertation examines how women involved in the welfare rights movement
mobilized arormd a similar identity as women and mothers, and it argues that this
mobilization was complicated by intersecting differences in race and class. It ﬁrrthermore
explores how these similarities and differences were evident in participants’ responses to
the changes in welfare policy that occurred during the Johnson and Nixon
administrations. This research explores how women participated in the welfare rights
movement in Detroit, and how they responded to changes in welfare policy from 1964 to

1972, across divisions and within similarities of race, class, and gender. It relies on

qualitative research methods, speciﬁcally oral histories and document analysis, and takes
a feminist historical approach using a multidimensional feminist standpoint and
intersectional perspective as a theoretical ﬁ'amework.

This study is based on concepts gleaned from the literature on women’s historical
participation in social movements and the ways in which women organized across
diﬁerence and within similarities. The categories that are examined in this study emerge
from the gaps and unanswered questions in the literature and are framed by the
theoretical ﬁamework used. A feminist historical approach to the problem of women
mobilizing for social change suggests that analyzing women’s lives over time will yield
critical and socially transformative lessons forthe present. A multidimensional feminist
standpoint approach assumes that knowledge can emerge from the social locations
(occupation of marginalized or privileged positions in society), the social experiences
(everyday lives), and the construction of a sense of community (historically embedded,
geographic or non-geographic, including individual voices as they relate to others) of
women (Naples, 2003).

Overview of Chapters

The chapters in this dissertation are organized into four sections. The sections are
organized by the main themes of the study, with several chapters in each. Section I,
Contextualizing, outlines the preliminary issues for the study and provides the necessary
context for the research presented in this dissertation. This section includes chapters one,
two, and three. These chapters describe the problem, provide a justiﬁcation for the

speciﬁc area of study, brieﬂy outline women’s social movement participation near the

time period of interest, and describe the development of the national welfare rights
organization as well as the various changes to welfare policy that occurred at this time.

Section II, Conceptualizing, includes chapters four and ﬁve. This section describes
the conceptual framework and the theoretical underpinnings of the study. There is a
discussion of the intersectional approach and feminist historical strategy used, and an
explanation of how a multidimensional feminist standpoint approach is applied, as well
as an outline of the speciﬁc methods, data, and sample for this dissertation. This section
delineates actual details of how the study was designed and carried out, including the
type of data collected and the methods used to analyze that data

Section III, Intersecting Boundaries, presents the main ﬁndings from the study. It
includes chapters six and seven, and displays ﬁndings related to how differences and
similarities were manifested within the movement. This section presents the places where
difference was most emphasized and where sameness was highlighted within the
ﬁndings. These results are presented in a way that illustrates how participants’ various
social locations intersected within their movement work, and how participants’ indicated
differing standpoints that were informed by race, class, and gender.

The last section, section IV, Significance of Boundaries, contains chapters eight,
nine, and ten. This section concludes the dissertation, with a return to the research
questions, and a discussion of the meaning of the results. It also includes an outline of the
limitations and strengths of the study as well as the implications and signiﬁcance of the

ﬁndings for the ﬁeld of social work and further research.

A Current Problem for Social Work

The 1996 passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) eliminated the program known as Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC), replacing it with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
(TANF). Welfare policy now explicitly promotes work and marriage as a means to
eliminate dependency on the state, with strict work requirements, active encouragement
for the establishment of two-parent families, and the use of numeric goals to coax states
into reducing out of wedlock pregnancies (Mink, 1998). TANF is based on the
assumption that work is the best means to self-sufficiency for poor women, and that the
poor need to gain better work habits, rather than more education and training (Lens,
2002). Many have been quick to call TANF a success because of the large overall
reduction in welfare rolls. However, according to the Census Bureau, female-headed
households with children had a poverty rate of 28.0 percent in 2003, compared with 13.5
percent for male-headed households (U .8. Census Bureau, 2003). As these ﬁgures
indicate, poverty is still very much in existence, and still disproportionately impacting
women. The “success” of welfare reform does not include long term self- suﬂ'rciency
and movement out of poverty for poor women (Lens, 2002). Success, as it is currently
framed, means ﬁnding employment that is often unstable, most likely low-wage, and
without beneﬁts (Hagen, 1999).

Within this climate of welfare reform it is particularly important that social
workers understand the issue of women’s poverty and past strategies for change. The
current environment of devolution, shifts to privatization, and downsizing of social

services makes it even more critical that social workers develop effective and creative

community intervention strategies (Mizrahi, 2001 ). The obligation to promote social
justice, inherent to the ﬁeld of social work, necessitates an examination of methods for
encouraging structural change that beneﬁts poor women, and an exploration of the
usefulness of these strategies within the context of TAN F. Although the number of
commtmity organizing programs increased in the 19605 and the 19705, by the 19803 a
ﬁscally and ideologically conservative climate resulted in a de-emphasis of community
outreach efforts (Mizrahi, 2001). Thus, large scale social change eﬁorts were declining
prior to the welfare reform of the 1990s.

Some observers have emphasized that current punitive welfare reform measures are
similar to those faced prior to the gains made during the social movements of the 1960s
(Piven & Sampson, 2001). Before a national welfare rights movement was established in
the 19603, welfare applicants requesting assistance were more likely to be turned down
rather than helped, similar to the current kinds of diversion of applicants into job searches
or privately funded services (e.g., charitable food banks) (Piven & Sampson, 2001). In
the early 19605 only 33 percent of those eligible for welfare were actually receiving it,
but by 1971, due to the combination of legal aid and community programs created by the
War on Poverty initiatives, as well as pressure from welfare rights groups, this ﬁgure had
risen to 90 percent (Berkowitz, 1991).

Past Social Work Position

There are linkages between the social work profession and the social movements of
the 19603, including welfare rights, which were forged primarily through individual
activist and community work (Naples, 1998; Reisch & Andrews, 2002). In a study of

radical social workers, Wagner (1989) found that many of those who became social

workers in the 19605 to the early 19705 indicated that they had entered the ﬁeld through
their community organizing work, and that they saw the social work profession as a
vehicle though which to continue their social action work.

The official position that social work held was more complicated. The two major
professional organizations, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and the
Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), had very little involvement in development
of the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty initiatives during the 19605
(Leighninger, 1999). The Johnson administration’s Ofﬁce of Economic Opportunity
(OEO) presented itself and its policies as forward thinking and optimistic, developing
innovative approaches to defeating poverty in the long run (Patterson, 2000). To those on
the OED staff, social workers represented an older more profession-oriented way of
dealing with poverty, and in fact, the CEO was not staffed with any social workers, nor
were there any social workers involved in the development of the new policy initiatives
(Leighninger, 1999). The crux of this gap seemed to be in the administration’s emphasis
on community based strategies, and social work’s insistence that only professionals work
within these organizations, or at the very least, train the citizens who would work there
(Patterson, 2000). Social workers in general, seemed to be ambivalent about the ability of
citizens to initiate and run community programs without professional assistance.

Throughout the War on Poverty, social work maintained a belief in the need for
professionalization of services to the poor, despite an outward stance that aligned with
social justice (Leighninger, 1999). This was illustrated in a 1961 NASW fact sheet
created in response to the new punitive measures adapted in Newburgh, New York for

AFDC recipients. While the fact sheet strongly condemned any removal of illegitimate

children from the rolls (which was happening as part of the city’s 13 point plan to deal
with a welfare crisis), it also contained a comment about not approving of immorality
(National Association of Social Workers [NASW], 1961). We can also see the social
work view of the importance of professionals to public assistance in this same fact sheet.
It contained a statement that social services should only be administered by social
workers, who would then help recipients become independent (National Association of
Social Workers [NASW], 1961).

Despite the lack of involvement in the policymaking of the OED, some social
workers did become involved in the War on Poverty through their frontline work in the
many community organizations that were established by Community Action Programs
(CAPS) and funded through the CEO. This is indicated in Nancy Naples’ (1998) study of
the New York City CAP workers in the mid to late 19605, and their common routes to
community work. Among those community workers who were not residents of the
community itself, many were led to that type of work through their experiences as social
workers (Naples, 1998). Therefore, while social workers may not have been directly
involved in creating the programs of the CEO, on one level they served as partners in the
War on Poverty, working in some of the frontline organizations of the time period.

Social workers also tended to lend their ofﬁcial, and sometimes physical, support
to the grass-roots initiatives of welfare recipients in local struggles, on a more
individualized basis (Reisch & Andrews, 2002). A 1968 welfare rights brochure
published by the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) explaining how to start
a local welfare rights group, illustrates social worker involvement in a directive to

recipients that they should appeal to local chapters of the NASW for assistance in starting

such a group.1 In a conference brochure from the 1973 NWRO convention, the NASW
indicated their support of the organization and also their support for several NWRO
initiatives.2 Social work beliefs about how best to deal with poverty were not
homogenous, but did reﬂect an overarching devotion to professionalism, as well as a
stance in favor of social justice.

Current advocates of social work community practice models emphasize that social
workers must not only understand that race, class, gender, and ethnicity act as structures
of inequality, but they must also make conscious efforts toward creating social justice and
equality (Gutierrez, Alvarez, Nemon, & Lewis, 1996). In order to more successfully work
with women who are currently marginalized on multiple levels, including race, class, and
gender, past social movements and efforts to mobilize the poor should be critically
examined.

Focus on the Welfare Rights Movement

The traditional cultural norms and ideology within US. society has tended to
dictate acceptable political behavior for both men and women. Differing expectations for
men and women have been based on accepted gender norms. When women organize and
act, it is often perceived and labeled differently from men’s work (Blee, 1998). While
men have taken on strong and very public leadership roles in protest movements, as this
has been accepted gender-based political activity, women have been perceived as
violating gender norms when engaged in similar social movement activities (West &
Blumberg, 1990). The welfare rights movement that occurred during the 19605 to the

19705 offers a unique opportunity to explore a movement focused on African American

 

' National Welfare Rights Organization, “How to Start a Welfare Rights Group”, pamphlet, 1968, From the
organintional ﬁles of the Oakland County-Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, OC-MWRO Files.
2 National Welfare Rights Organization, “1973 National Convention”, brochure, 1973, OC-MWRO Files.

women who demanded their right to receive welfare. Much of the past analysis of radical
movements and protest has focused on men, leaving women primarily invisible (Blee,
1998). This lack of visibility provides a justiﬁcation for examining the welfare rights
movement. Researchers have largely ignored women’s social movement participation, or
falsely represented it (West & Blumberg, 1990). These factors lmve led to a false
assumption that most protest participation or important political work has historically
been done by men, with women only fulﬁlling minor and rmimportant roles.

Although poor Aﬁ'ican American women were active in leading local welfare
rights activities during the 19605 and early 19705, many scholars have emphasized that
the leadership at the national level was male (Davis, 1996; Kotz & Kotz, 197 7; Nadasen,
2002; West, 1981). In spite of the early male leadership at the national level, the welfare
rights movement became a vehicle through which poor African American women could
voice their concerns, challenge assumptions about those in poverty, and examine
connections between race, class, and gender (N adasen, 2002). It is critical that we
thoroughly examine the activities and roles of women engaged in social movement
activity, because it may lead us to reconsider old ideas about what constituted political
behavior. This knowledge may inform contemporary practice and social movement
activities by social workers, suggesting alternative strategies.

By focusing on welfare as a civil right, the National Welfare Rights Organization
(NWRO) produced a movement where African American women living in poverty
became a potent political force (Toney, 2000). By using an intersectional focus within

this dissertation, whereby race and class are closely analyzed along with gender,

10

misconceptions about women’s participation in the welfare rights movement are clariﬁed,
and new information is provided for the historical record.

The welfare rights movement, although considered a movement of poor African
American women, was also made up of white middle class female supporters. In the
19605 and 19705 the “Friends of Welfare Rights” groups were non-recipient, white,
middle class women who became active in the larger welfare rights movement. They
were involved in fundraising efforts, negotiation of recipient demands ﬁ'om welfare
ofﬁcials, and some activism. However, members of the many “Friends of Welfare
Rights” groups were not allowed to vote on ofﬁcial NWRO issues or attend recipient
only meetings (West, 1981).

Since the welfare rights movement included both the recipient and the non-
recipient “Friends of Welfare Rights” groups, it offers a unique opportunity to examine
the mobilization of participants across divisions of race, class, and gender. For the
purpose of this study race was deﬁned as either African American or white, while class
was broken down into categories of poverty class, working class, middle class, and upper
middle class. The category of race was restricted through the sampling strategy, and
African Americans and whites were purposively chosen. The category of class was also
restricted, and either recipient or non-recipient pmticipants were chosen, with further
complications in class status also sought through the sampling strategy.

In order to produce a deeper understanding of mobilization within social
movements, the causes of participants’ attraction to the movement itself must be
examined. The welfare rights movement created a momentum that attracted members

who got swept up in the early gains (which included winning increases in basic needs

11

grants), and it also provided an ethnic and racial identity that made the local groups very
attractive to their members (Stevens, 1978). Even though men led the movement early on,
(with many of the legal aid attorneys and peripheral supporters white men) the movement
itself was identiﬁed by the general public as well as by members, as a poor women’s
movement (Bailis, 1974). Although the recipients involved in the movement did not
necessarily self-identify as feminists, the NWRO voiced feminist concerns, and it
therefore provides an example of the development of theory within a grass-roots
movement. More closely examining the welfare rights movement offers valuable
information about how linkages across differences in race and class were formed, as well
as how mobilization within the similarity of gender occurred.
Focus on Detroit and Southeast Michigan

Focusing on the Detroit Metropolitan area of Michigan offers an unprecedented
opportunity to analyze a movement of welfare recipients against the rich historical
backdrop of a city known for its labor movement activity. During the 19605 Detroit
experienced profound change. Racial transformation occmred as white ﬂight from the
areas surrounding the inner city took hold concurrent to blacks integration of these
neighborhoods. Economic transformation occurred as the auto industry’s decline
accelerated, resulting in increased lay-offs (Sugrue, 1996). As Detroit became more
segregated racially, it also became more segregated economically. As black middle class
families moved out of the city’s center, facing down violent encounters in their attempts
to integrate the surrounding white communities, the poorest citizens were left behind.
Many black middle class families claimed that they were ﬂeeing urban density and a

concentration of poor welfare mothers in their old center city neighborhoods (Sugrue,

l2

1996). While these trends had been occurring since early in the post-World War II period,
the 19605 saw acceleration in racial divisions, economic tensions, and growing violence
against blacks who tried to integrate white neighborhoods.

Racial divisions and tensions were also seen in political dynamics. While many
white conservatives preferred a strictly segregated city, some white liberals, inﬂuenced
by the Civil Rights Movement, fought alongside blacks for racial integration and the
creation of a uniﬁed city. By 1967, growing disillusionment among the Black working
class and the poor existed with the White liberal agenda in Detroit, as well as the Black
middle class that supported it. Speciﬁcally, the realization that whites continued to hold a
majority of positions of power in the city and the increasing racism and brutality of the
Detroit police helped set the stage for the July 1967 riots in which 33 blacks and 10
whites were killed (Thompson, 2001). Due to these dynamics of race and class, and the
historical shifts that occurred during this time period, Detroit offers an exceptional site to
examine the questions outlined in this study.

As this research examines questions of how women crossed racial and class
boundaries in order to work together in the welfare rights movement, women’s lives and
experiences are central to the analysis. By learning how women came together to work
for social change in the past, social workers can learn valuable lessons for working with
womeninthepresent. Whenworking withpoorwomenitis importantto startfrom
women’s lives and to understand their standpoint (Swigonski, 1996). A standpoint is a
critical perspective, about the ways in which tmequal power relations within society
operate, that individuals who are marginalized or oppressed may have. While some

scholars have indicated the importance of women’s standpoints to social work, others

13

have advocated the use of a feminist approach or radical model of social work practice
that integrates individual client needs and societal level change (Morell, 1987;
Pearlrnutter, 2002). Other scholars have also indicated that a shared identity within a
movement can increase political motivation and empowerment for participants (Erbaugh,
2002). This dissertation is focused on exploring concepts and questions that, while
historical, aim to offer usable information connected to current efforts at social change
for poor women.

Understanding responses to welfare policy is also important for social workers.
One possibly unintended consequence of the policy efforts during the War on Poverty
was that political participation by the poor, particularly poor Aﬁican Americans was
greatly increased (Havemen, 1977). Many of these policies and programs created
channels through which the welfare rights movement funneled their mobilization eﬂ’orts.
Understanding the past policies of the War on Poverty, particularly how individuals
responded to these policies, can also offer social workers lessons for current community

organizing efforts as well as policy advocacy strategies.

14

Chapter 2
Women and Social Movement Participation

This study is concerned with how women participated in the welfare rights
movement in the Detroit, Michigan area ﬁom 1964-1972, and how they responded to and
resisted many of the changes in welfare policy that occurred. As such, a brief review of
the literature in two areas is necessary: how women historically participated in social
movements, and how the National Welfare Rights Organization was established and
eventually dismantled as welfare policy developed and changed throughout the War on
Poverty. While these two areas offer important contributions to our understanding of how
women historically mobilized across social class and racial boundaries, there are also
signiﬁcant gaps in the literature regarding how divisions of race, class, and gender were
bridged or maintained in social movement work.

Analysis of women’s social action has often been viewed only through its
connection to men’s movement work (Blee, 1998). Therefore it is crucial to thoroughly
examine the activities and roles of women involved in past social movements on their
own terms. Blee (1998) indicates that the radical nature of women’s organizing is
overlooked when we fail to examine the informal networks and social organization in
which women engaged: “The study of women’s radical protest requires a broadened
sense of the spatial contexts in which activism outside the mainstream political process
takes place” (p. 4). Before we examine the development of the welfare rights movement,
it is important to explore earlier social movements. Perhaps the most inﬂuential of these

was the Civil Rights Movement.

15

Focus on Race

The relationships and social networks that historically existed within the Black
church provide an example of what Blee (1998) referred to when she implored scholars
of radical protest to examine informal spatial contexts, or “spaces” in order to understand
women’s activism more clearly. In her work on African American women and their
history of work and family life, Jones (1995) indicated that the Black church was a place
of respite from racism for African American women, and as such offered a natural path to
these women’s civil rights work. It was through their participation in the church, which
was male dominated, that they were able to temporarily transcend the racism of their low-
wage work outside the home. These women were responsive to the calls ﬁ'om the pulpit
for participation in the Civil Rights Movement (Jones, 1995). Although the most visible
leadership positions were denied them because of their gender, the informal leadership
roles and positions they occupied should not be overlooked or minimized for their
contribution to the Civil Rights Movement. These social networks and connections
developed within the church offer an example of women’s non-traditional avenues to
social protest.

Payne’s (1990) examination of African American women’s participation in the
early civil rights activities in and around Greenwood Mississippi, illustrate the
importance of informal religious and social networks. In interviews with women involved
in the Civil Rights Movement in the Mississippi Delta during the summer of 1964 it was
discovered tlurt many of them were motivated to participate through strong religious
convictions, as well as through ties to family members and friends involved in the

movement (Payne, 1990).

16

Within civil rights organizations such as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), there were differences in how white and African American women
were treated (Rosen, 200). Many white women workers complained of “being protected”
or “watched over” during movement activity, while many Aﬁican American women were
expected to take on informal leadership positions in the somewhat dangerous outreach
work that placed them side by side with African American males on the frontlines. When
white women complained that they did not have enough independence and leadership in
the organization, many African American women could not relate to their complaints.
Race further complicated the relationships and roles of women in SNCC and similar
organizations, due to the strict social mores of the South and the taboo against interracial
relationships. Much has been written about the sexual exploits of young, Northern, white
female activists in the South during “The Freedom Summer” of 1964. The sexual
relationships that they engaged in with African American males enraged not only racist
white Southerners, but also many white Southern female activists who tmderstood, and
for the most part adhered to, the strict conservative sexual code of the South (Rosen,
2000). These differences in roles and expectations for white and African American
women of the time period illustrate how gender was complicated by race.

Studies of women in The Southem Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), The
Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), and The Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) found that African American women fulﬁlled critical grass-roots
leadership roles (Robnett, 1997). Their race as well as their gender allowed them to
occupy more localized positions, not available to their white female counterparts. While

their gender kept them out of more prominent and formalized positions in these

17

organizations, since they were reserved for African American and white males, their race
allowed African American women more mobility in the ﬁeld. The active positions they
held within the community led African American women to become what Robnett (1997)
refers to as “Bridge Leaders” in the Civil Rights Movement.

The term “Bridge Leader” is used to describe the types of linkages that women
participants in social movements were able to form between individual members’
personal identities and the movement’s political identity. By using social networks and
connections formed through their community work, they were able to connect members
to the goals of the organization. Aﬁican American women in the Civil Rights Movement
were able to utilize these linkages to help sustain the movement and achieve mobilization
of members ﬁ'om differing social locations (Robnett, 1997). The work of these “Bridge
Leaders” illustrates the point that women were critical to the success of the Civil Rights
Movement and the many organizations that were a part of it. This fact may be overlooked
if we only focus on traditional, male forms of prominent and highly visible leadership,
and assume that women were treated equally regardless of racial differences.

As the modern women’s movement developed, many African American women
engaged in activism that they saw as unique. Jackson (1998) notes that Aﬁican American
women activists were reluctant to either identify with the modem women’s movement or
to label themselves as “feminists.” Although many engaged in activist work with
organizations that could have easily been considered “feminist,” based on their work,
they felt that the ‘ eminist” label held a negative connotation. They viewed the women’s
movement as one-dimensional, focused only on gender, and thus forcing a choice

between competing oppressions of race and gender. The civil rights and social justice

18

work that African American women engaged in necessitated a consideration of race and
class ﬁrst, but also emphasized women’s concerns, although they themselves did not
view these concerns as “feminist.” African American women activists were also reluctant
to separate ﬁ'om their alliances with men in efforts to promote racial and economic justice
(Jackson, 1998).

The rise of the Black Power movement in the late 1960s encouraged greater ties to
race than gender, exploiting black women’s reluctance to separate from men in their work
towards racial equality. According to Black Power adherents, African American male
leadership needed to be reasserted in order to ﬁght for racial liberation. Part of this new
leadership emphasized a sharply gendered division of labor for African American
households. While some African American women admired the Black Power movement
for its ability to instill a new sense of racial pride and self-conﬁdence, many did not agree
with its sexist message that the pr0per place for African American women was in the
home reproducing the next generation (Jones, 1995). Questioning how race and gender
intersected led some African American women to identify sexism in the Black Power
movement and search for a kind of movement that would address both racial and sexist
systems of oppression.

The number of women’s liberation organizations in the modern women’s
movement grew in the early 19703 with African American women working to develop
organizations committed to emphasizing their own agenda, expanding their focus to
include issues of both race and gender (Papachristou, 1976). In 1973, the Black Women
Organized for Action and the National Black Feminist Organization were both

established. They placed race alongside gender as a critical social location. In the 1973

19

statement of purpose for their organization, the National Black Feminist Organization
criticized the women’s movement heavily for being what they deemed a white middle
class movement (Papachristou, 1976).

Focus on Gender

Feminist Scholars have advocated using a gender lens to study social movements in
any time period (Kuumba, 2001). Instead of taking an approach that attempts to simply
add women to the analysis, this approach offers a way of assessing how structural
inequalities faced by women impacted their organizing attempts. If we analyze a
movement through the lives of the women who participated in it we can better understand
how gender operated on both a structural level and within the relational “micro level”
processes of women’s everyday interactions. Many scholars have argued that it was at
this micro level that recruitment processes and sustenance of past social movements
actually occurred (Evans, 1979; Kuumba, 2001; Robnett, 1997).

Some scholars have indicated that the civil rights, student, and New Left
movements have themselves contributed to the creation of the modern women’s
movement, or “Second Wave Feminism” (Evans, 1979; Rosen, 2000). Although the
women’s movement was bmely in its infancy during the time period examined in this
study, some critical observations can be made that inform an analysis of the welfare
rights movement. Evans (1979) argued that the seeds of women’s liberation and the
modem women’s movement were sewn speciﬁcally from the work of women activists in
the Civil Rights and New Left movements. She posited that women equated the separate
spheres of women and men with the “separate but equal” rhetoric of the Jim Crow era,

and having worked to dismantle the inequalities of race, they were in key positions to

20

deconstruct the gender-based divisions that they experienced as members of earlier social
movements. In her interviews with key social movement participants she uncovered a
connection between their work in these earlier social movements and their later
establishment of organizations that were critical to the development of the early women’s
movement. Similar to later scholars (Blee, 1998; Jones, 1995; Robnett, 1997), Evans
(1979) emphasized the informal social networks of women as critical sites for community
organizing work. The activist women that she interviewed had long been involved in the
Civil Rights and New Left movements and it was through connections made with women
in these earlier movements that they began to organize for women’s rights.
Matemalist Perspectives

When analyzing the connections made based on a shared identity as “woman”, it is
important to understand that the category gender may contain a matemalist perspective.
Matemalist movements began in earnest in a variety of countries during the early
nineteenth century. This was an age when women reformers began to organize around
society’s moral obligations to women and children. These early maternalists structured
their social concerns within the context of their difference from men, and shifted a moral
vision to political action with their attempts at social reform for women and children
(Keven & Michel, 1993). This use of matemalism was seen in more modern social
movements as well. Women Strike for Peace (W SP), which began on Nov. 1, 1961 as a
one day strike by women in order to demand an end to nuclear arms proliferation, has
been called a matemalist movement. WSP’s activities throughout the 19608 expanded
into a general movement for peace, carried out by white middle class mothers (Swerdlow,

1993). While the movement goals were radicaL and could have even been denigrated as

21

communist (considering the level of Red baiting that occurred during this time period),
the women gained some legitimacy and respectability through their status as concerned
white middle class mothers (Swerdlow, 1993). However, although their images
represented white middle class motherhood, these women deﬁned motherhood in terms
of a concern for all children, not just those within their own families. They used the
language of concerned mothers in protesting the war in Vietnam, advocating for the
children and mothers of the foreign communities being bombed and burned.

Matemalism was also integral to Northern white women’s Mcipation in the Civil
Rights Movement, as the ideal of “motherhood” played a critical role in women’s
motivation to become involved (Blumberg,1980). Although other scholars (Collins, 1994;
Naples, 1998) have identiﬁed a sense of “motherwork” or “activist mothering” as
associated historically with Aﬁican American women, the Northern white women civil
rights activists that Blumberg (1980) studied also indicated a similar feeling of
responsibility for the larger society and social justice goals as coming from their roles as
mothers. They had a goal of creating a less racist society that they identiﬁed through their
motherhood (Blumbeg, 1980).

In Polatnick’s (1996) study of women’s liberation groups from the 19603 some
insight into the intersection of race and matemalism is provided. The study examined
women’s views of motherhood, and explored how these views related to their activist
work and the prioritization of goals for the women’s liberation movement overall. While
Blumberg’s (1990) research on Northern white women’s participation in the Civil Rights
Movement found matemalism as a motivating factor, Polatnick discovered striking

differences between poor and working class African American women’s and middle class

22

white women’s motivations for their social movement work. While the African American
women in the women’s liberation groups acknowledged the need for access to birth
control, for example, they identiﬁed having too many children, rather than the choice of
whether or not to have children, as a high priority women’s issue. They held a positive
view of motherhood, seeing it as a powerful identity from the perspective of their own
families and social neighborhood networks. They viewed their own children as primary
to their lives and much of their activism emphasized a concern for all children within the
community. They saw the education of children in their commrmity as a highly political
act and a way to promote social change. In contrast, the white middle class women in the
women’s liberation groups held a somewhat negative perception of motherhood, seeing it
primarily as a means of oppression, and birth control as a way to prevent having any
children, rather than simply controlling nmnbers of children. They held somewhat
condescending attitudes towards those who would place their children ﬁrst. They equated
having children with dependence on men, rather than viewing women’s ability to
reproduce as a site of power, as the African American women did. White women activists
focused on reproductive rights and workplace equality rather than work with children and
economic justice in contrast to the African American women. As these ﬁndings indicate,
race and the type of social movement women participate in can intersect with their use of
matemalism.
Inwritingabouttheconceptofmotherhoodandtheuseofwhatshereferstoasa
matemalist standpoint, Sara Ruddick (2004) uses the term “maternal thinking” to
describe the contribution of the values of women’s caring labor to feminist standpoint

thinking. She imagines that through the mothering work that women have historically

23

engaged in, a speciﬁc value of peace, as opposed to militaristic values might be gained
(Ruddick, 2004). However, she does warn that this vision is not automatic by virtue of a
woman’s motherhood status, but rather it must be achieved through the daily struggles
and caring work in which mothers are engaged (Ruddick, 2004). The view of
matemalism that is embedded in the matemalist standpoint is not without controversy.
Some claim that matemalism essentializes women or assumes all women are the same (di
Leonardo, 1985), while others have presented it as a successful method used in many of
the social movements of the early twentieth century (Koven & Michel, 1993).

As these examples indicate, the ideal of motherhood has been constructed
somewhat differently by poor women, middle class women, white women, and women of
color. Therefore, race and class provided a complex interaction within past matemalism,
matemalist strategies, historical images of motherhood, and women’s social movement
work.

Focus on Class

When assessing previous social movements in relation to the welfare rights
movement, there were linkages discovered between the initiatives of the Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS) and the welfare rights movement. The Economic Research
and Action Project (ERAP) was created by SDS in 1963 to focus on economic issues in
Northern cities. While ERAP failed in its efforts at large-scale structural level change and
in bringing about what organizers called an interracial movement of the poor, it was
successful in small concrete ways. By helping ameliorate some of the speciﬁc problems

that the poor were facing in a variety of communities, and by instilling a desire for

24

activism and community organizing in both the leaders of the movement as well as the
community members involved, it did have a lasting impact (Frost, 2001).

Within ERAP, many women activists proved particularly eﬁective at using
community organizing techniques (Evans, 197 9). They saw the community organizing
work they engaged in as assisting them in making direct connections between poverty,
gender, and activism. The men in the project had unsuccessfully tried to make
connections with poor males in the community, but the women activists believed that
reaching poor women was necessary to build a successful organization. Women activists
stood in food stamp lines and talked to mothers in welfare ofﬁces in order to try to form
relationships with poor women in the community (Rosen, 2000). Many of the concerns
that ERAP focused on were “women’s issues,” such as child-care, welfare, and the day-
to-day living needs of the poor. Much of their work necessitated organizing women on
welfare (Evans, 1979). Casey Hayden, former leader of SNCC and later SDS, worked in
ERAP and recalled how working with the women on welfare helped her conclude that
organizing women was the key to social change. Hayden went on later to co-write “A
Kind of Memo,” the famous manifesto calling for women in the civil rights, student, and
peace movements to come together to examine the roles they had been occupying within
these groups. The manifesto eventually reached a wider audience, and many consider it
pivotal in the development of the modern women’s movement (Rosen, 2000). Other
women working in ERAP at the time also indicated that working on welfare rights
brought them a renewed sense of the importance of women to social movement work
(Evans, 1979). An examination of the speciﬁc tactics used to organize women as well as

an assessment of women’s leadership opportunities are both critical to the analysis of

25

how race, gender, and class intersected in welfare rights organizing, as the examples of
these social movements illustrates.

It is important to note that there were class differences in many of these earlier
social movements that have not been critically analyzed, although racial differences have
been studied. This leaves the question of how class intersects with race and gender in
social movement participation. It also leads us to question why the Northern white
women activists involved in the Civil Rights Movement that Blumberg (1980) studied
viewed their movement participation as motivated by a sense of matemalism, while the
women’s movement participants that Polatnick (1996) examined indicated race-based
differences in motivation. This indicates that matemalism, and the category of gender
itself, is complicated in social movement participation by race, class, and the type of
movement. An analysis where race, class, and gender are simultaneously viewed as
critical sites of inquiry and where participation in the group itself is complicated by these
intersections is missing from these examples. This omission leads to false assumptions
about social movement work, including misunderstanding how women mobilized across

differences and within similarities.

26

Chapter 3
Welfare Rights, Welfare Policy, and the War on Poverty

In looking at the history of the War on Poverty, it is important to assess the
complex changes made in welfare policy. Gordon (1996) argued that most research on
the development of the early welfare state and continuing welfare policy assumed a
gender neutral stance, resulting in distortions to our understanding of poverty and how
welfare policies affect, and are affected by, women. Examination of the welfare state
should be embraced as a legitimate feminist topic, one that includes an analysis of the
classed, raced, and gendered structures of welfare policy, and assesses resistance to these
structures by subordinate groups (Gordon, 1990).

The National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and Changes in Welfare Policy

The development of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) occurred
parallel to speciﬁc changes in welfare policy ﬁ'om 1964-1972. (Figure 2, on page 150
shows a historical timeline of both). A major focus of this dissertation is how participants
in the welfare rights movement responded to policy changes. This makes it necessary to
review literature on the establishment and the dissolution of the NWRO as well as the
changes in welfare policy that occurred during this time period.

Writing in 1977, Friedman argued that the Great Society programs of the Johnson
administration did not come out of any social movement, and that this contributed to their
eventual demise. This perspective assumes that without a consistent sustained movement
to maintain pressure and support, anti-poverty initiatives will be modiﬁed by existing
power holders representing the middle class. Since Friedman did not acknowledge the

contributions of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) as being equivalent

27

to that of a large scale social movement such as the Civil Rights Movement, this view
threatens to erase the already obscured social movement work of women, particularly
poor African American women, in the welfare rights movement.
Beginning of the N WRO

The establishment of a National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) to assist in
mobilizing welfare recipients was an important step in the process of empowering poor,
mostly Aﬁican American, women. In May of 1966 George Wiley, a tenured professor of
chemistry at Syracuse University, and an active member of the civil rights group the
Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), left his faculty position to found the
Poverty/Rights Action Center in Washington, DC. (Davis, 1996). Although this
ofﬁcially marked the beginning of a national movement for welfare rights, many welfare
recipients had already been informally gathering and organizing in various cities across
the United States (Abramovitz, 1996). There were also initiatives such as the
Mobilization for Youth (MF Y) neighborhood centers in New York City that were
informally organizing welfare recipients in the early 19603 (Rabagliati & Bimbaum,
1969). Organizations coming out of the civil rights and New Left movements, such as the
Students for a Democratic Society’s (SDS) Economic Research and Action Project
(ERAP), also engaged in organizing welfare clients from 1963 to 1965 (Evans, 1979;
Rosen, 2000).

Some of the grass-roots groups that were initiated by the women recipients
themselves seemed to occur almost simultaneously in various parts of the country (Pope,
1990). Sometimes the small local groups were formed after a welfare recipient had

attended one of the newly established NWRO conferences. In analyzing the development

28

of the Brooklyn Area Welfare Rights Organization, Pope (1990) noted that local women
who had attended NWRO conferences in other cities came home and began the group in
Brooklyn. The connections they made with other women who were dealing with
problems with welfare similar to what they had experienced, provided the spark needed
to begin organizing within their own communities. In store-front organizations in
commrmities across the United States women gathered informally to ﬁght the welfare
system (Abramovitz, 1996; Pope, 1990; West, 1981). In August of 1967, NWRO held its
ﬁrst national convention in Washington, D.C., with 300 delegates attending, from twenty-
six states. During that ﬁrst convention there was much discussion and debate about the
appropriate rules for the organization, as well as voting on delegates. Throughout much
of this debate George Wiley was heard very little, only offering occasional suggestions
about procedures. At one point, Johnnie Tilmon, an Aﬁican American welfare recipient
from California who had not yet been elected chair of the NWRO, addressed the group.
She spoke in a very powerful and commanding voice, telling the group of women who
were questioning Wiley’s role that, “George Wiley does not run this organization, we run
the organization, George has to do what we sa ”.3 This ﬁrst convention mainly focused
on nominating and electing delegates and establishing rules for the organization. Later in
the ﬁrst session of the convention, a woman from Brooklyn, New York stood up and
statedthatshehadtraveledalongdistancewithherﬁve children,andthatherﬁiendhad
come with her fourteen children, and since they fought the rats and cockroaches at home,

they came to the convention to ﬁght for their rights, not to worry about rules and

 

3 National Welfare Rights Organimtion, “First Convention”, tape recording of National Welfare Rights
Organimtion’s ﬁrst convention held August 26-27 of 1967 in Washington, D.C., alter-noon plenary session
of August 26, 1967, Wiley Papers, reel 22-part I of side one.

29

regulations.4 Despite the spirited debate about rules at that ﬁrst meeting, the NWRO
continued to attract new members. By 1971 there were 900 local welfare rights
organizations afﬁliated with NWRO (Abramovitz, 1996).

After George Wiley established the Poverty/Rights Action Center, he began
working with Ohio welfare rights groups to plan a 155 mile “Walk for Adequate
Welfare” in June 1966. The media attention that this march garnered helped support the
growth of the National Welfare Rights movement, with more local and state level groups
afﬁliating from across the country (Gilbert, 2001). Early on, various local afﬁliates
focused on the grievances of individual welfare recipients, such as the need for funding to
buy basic necessities, claims of unfair treatment by caseworkers, and unfair termination
of beneﬁts (N adasen, 2002). This early emphasis on individual grievances helped drive
the speciﬁc tactics that became the trademark of welfare rights groups all over the
cormtry.

Women ’s Roles in the NWRO

Some of the tactics that welfare rights participants, the majority of whom were
women, used were controversial because of their level of militancy. The activist tactics
that were so controversial outside NWRO came to be called the “street strategy” by
members (West, 1981). An example of the usefulness of these activist tactics is illustrated
in a 1968 New York Times article that reported on an organized ﬂurry of demonstrations
and sit-ins by welfare recipients at various social service agencies around New York City
which resulted in an increase of three million dollars in grant monies for recipient

clothing and furniture (Kifner, 1968).

 

’ National Welfare Rights Organization, “First Convention”, tape recording of National Welfare Rights
Organimtion’s ﬁrst convention held August 26-27 of 1967 in Washington, D.C., continuation of plenary
session from August 26, into August 27, 1967, Wiley Papers, reel 22-part 11 of side one.

30

Although successful in many instances, activist tactics used by welfare rights
participants alienated the movement from the support of the Black church. Leaders of
various Black churches expressed concern for those living in poverty, but many chose not
to afﬁliate with the welfare rights movement, due in part to a dislike of the women’s
militant tactics (West, 1981). A middle class African American member of a friends of
welfare rights group in Detroit gave the example of a male member of her church who
knew of her involvement with the movement and asked her to make the women stop
protesting, saying that he would gladly give the mothers some money if they would just
stop picketing.5 Other religious organizations were very involved in the welfare rights
movement. Two of the most involved were United Methodists, and Roman Catholics,
with their white middle class members becoming most visible (Pepe, 1990). The Catholic
diocese was also integral to some local level organizing. Typical of this was the Brooklyn
Area Welfare Action Council (B-WAC), established in the late 1960s. This group had the
support of both nuns and priests in the commrmity, and they were initially funded by
Catholic Charities of Brooklyn In Jackie Pope’s (1990) research on this organization, she
indicates that many times it was the white male priests who organized meetings, arming
the women recipients with information about minimum standards and special needs
welfare grants. The priests and nuns also marched alongside the women in their direct
action attempts to receive special needs checks at the local public welfare oﬂices.
According to Pope’s (1990) analysis, it was the nuns who overcame divisions of race and
class to help the women recipients organize and eventually take full control of the groups

themselves. Across the country many women church members ended up joining the

 

5 Evelyn, African American middle class member of Detroit welfare rights group, phone interview, Oct. 22,
2005, California.

31

“Friends of Welfare Rights” groups that were being established as places where non
welfare recipients could offer their support for the movement (West, 1981).

Common strategies used by welfare rights participants in Detroit included requests
for fair hearings, and demonstrations at the main welfare ofﬁce downtown. The local
Welfare Employees Union responded to these actions. In a document titled “Welfare
Employees News Bulletin” dated April 5, 1968, it was stated that the use of lawyers by
welfare recipients who were pursuing fair hearings was causing abuse towards the
welfare workers, and the union was suggesting that legal representation also be provided
for the workers during these fair hearings.6 However, this type of response by welfare
workers to welfare rights members’ tactics was not uniform. In a docmnent written by a
Welfare Employees Union member in response to recent large scale demonstrations at
Detroit’s main welfare office, the author asked fellow union members to consider that the
clients had a right to demonstrate and that they shouldn’t deny these women the same
rights to protest and organize, that they themselves were entitled to.7 The document
illustrated sympathy with the Detroit area welfare rights groups, but it was also pointed
out that although workers may not agree with the women, they should respect their right
to protest.

The Importance of 640 Temple
Detroit based welfare rights groups engaged in many demonstrations and protests
within the city of Detroit as well as at the state capitol. One event was so important that it

gained an almost mythical reputation with participants in the welfare rights movement in

 

6 Article written by an rmknown member of the Detroit Welfare Employees Union, titled “Welfare
Employees News Bulletin”, bulletin, WEU Collection, box 2, folder 14.

7 Statement by an rmknown member of the Detroit Welfare Employees Union in response to Detroit area
welfare rights groups’ demonstrations at the main welfare ofﬁce in Detroit, newsletter, n.d., WEU
Collection, box 18, folder 4.

32

 

Southeastern Michigan. This was a protest aimed at increasing school clothing
allotments. Welfare rights members occupied the Wayne County Department of Social
Services headquarters at 640 Temple St. in order to protest the small school clothing
allowance for their children ($22 a year, as Opposed to the women’s demands for $75
yearly).8 Prior to this ﬁnal occupation, welfare rights members had engaged in a three
day “camp-in”, but then called a moratorium on protests so that the governor could have
time to respond.9 The ﬁnal demonstration led to more than 59 arrests and the temporary
closing of the Department of Social Services ofﬁce.10 This event was mentioned by many
of the welfare rights participants who were interviewed for this study and was an
important historical marker for the kinds of tactics and roles that the women involved in
the welfare rights movement engaged in.

There were divisions by race and class in the types of strategies used by the
recipient members and the non-recipient “Friends of Welfare Rights” groups. For
example, there was a desire from both the NWRO as well as local level welfare rights
groups to keep the strategies and responsibilities of the Friends of Welfare Rights
separate ﬁom those of recipients. The NWRO’s ofﬁcial stance on non-recipient groups
was that they should not be allowed to vote or attend NWRO meetings. In an article titled
“Why Welfare Rights?” that was printed in Wayne State University’s The South End
newspaper, a community organizer named Pamela Blair talked about the need to mobilize

not only recipients but also friends of welfare rights, as long as they understood their

 

‘ “Welfare Protests Resume”, Article in the Detroit Free Press, Sept. 16, 1969, DCCR Collection, box 78,
folder 33.

9 “Until ADC Demands are Met: Mothers Vow Long Camp-In”, Article in the Detroit News, Sept. 2, 1969,
DCCR Collection, box 73, folder 33.

'° Commission on Community Relations, “Demonstrations by National Welfare Rights Organization”,
memo to ﬁeld staff, Sept. 15, 1969, DCCR Collection, box 78, folder 28.

33

proper place within the movement.‘1 Friends of Welfare Rights groups were only allowed
to assist in funding efforts and in presenting recipient’s demands to welfare Ofﬁcials. This
separation of roles and responsibilities by race and class stemmed ﬁom a fear by
members of the recipient groups that their movement goals and agenda would be co-
Opted by rrriddle class whites (West, 1981). In many instances this was a justiﬁable fear.
A black, male, outside observer to a 1969 meeting of the Michigan Welfare Rights
Organization (MWRO) noted that the non-recipient leaders in attendance at the meeting
(who, he noted, were both black and white) constantly interrupted and attempted to
control the direction. He concluded that they were attempting to impose their own middle
class values on how the welfare rights organization was run.12

Questions Of leadership and proper roles for the “outside” groups of the movement
increased as the NWRO gained strength. Eventually tensions between the white, middle
class non-welfare-recipients in the Friends of Welfare Rights groups and the welfare
recipient members, primarily Aﬁican Americans, escalated. Many Of the Friends Of
Welfare Rights members were frustrated at being held back from more politically active
roles. While they were originally content to stay in the background, mostly doing
fundraising, they soon began to initiate and participate in decisions about direct action
and policy advocacy, which caused conﬂict with welfare recipients (West, 1981).

The national leader OfNWRO, George Wiley, received increasing criticism for
hiring white, middle class organizers and workers at the national level (Kotz & Kotz,

1977). African American women welfare recipients felt increasingly threatened by the

white organizers and supporters of the movement (West, 1981). Within some Of the local

 

" Pamela Blair, “Why Welfare Rights?”, Article in Wayne State University’s The South End newspaper,
WEU Collection, box 17, folder 8.
‘2 “Observation ofMichigan Welfare Rights Organization Meeting”, 1969, Wiley Papers, box 25, folder 5.

34

welfare rights groups, racial differences were only emphasized around concerns over
leadership. As welfare recipients began tO gain knowledge and training about securing
their rights, they began to demand more leadership and control over the movement.13 In
Michigan, conﬂict ensued over the appointment of a white student community organizer
to work with the out-state welfare rights groups. NWRO ﬁnally intervened by surveying
all of the groups in Michigan in order to determine whether this organizer should be
removed from her position.14 At issue seemed to be the Detroit based groups’ desire to
have someone who was a recipient take over this NWRO supported position.15 Tensions
occurred frequently at the national level, and George Wiley’s desires for more coalition
building with outside groups caused much resistance (Kotz & Kotz, 1977). In 1972, he
left his position with NWRO to form the Movement for Economic Justice, handing the
tOp leadership position to Johnnie Tilmon, an Aﬁican American woman who had
established one Of the early local level welfare rights groups in California, and who had
served as one Of Wiley’s top aides (Gilbert, 2001). The NWRO did not survive the
tensions, internal rifts, and the changes in welfare policy Of the Johnson and later Nixon
administrations, and it disbanded completely in 1975 (West, 1981).
The Oﬂice of Economic Opportunity (0E0) and Speciﬁc Programs

In March, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson Ofﬁcially announced a War on
Poverty with ambitious policies aimed at tackling poverty in the United States. The

poverty level stood at 22 percent in 1960, and eventually fell to a low Of 12 percent in

 

'3 Anita, white middle class member Of a welfare rights group in Southeast Michigan, personal interview,
Oct. 24, 2003, Detroit, MI.

“ George Wiley, “Letter to all Michigan Welfare Rights Organizations”, July 31, 1969, Wiley Papers, box
25, folder 5.

'5 NCC Delegate Mamie Blakely, telegram to George Wiley, June 11, 1969, Wiley papers, box 25, folder
5.

35

1972 (Abramovitz, 1996). Johnson’s declaration of a War on Poverty represented a new
approach to ﬁghting poverty. The Economic Opportrmity Act of 1964, administered
through the newly created Oﬂice Of Economic Opportunity (OEO), focused on involving
the poor in programs aimed at solving the problem of poverty (Lynn, 1977). Writing in
1977, Economist Robert Haveman identiﬁed multiple factors that led to the development
Of a war on poverty and the initiatives Of this time period, including widespread fear Of
violence and rioting as a reaction to the growing inequality in the United States, the
newfound conﬁdence in social planning based on social science research, and an
administration with a somewhat progressive approach to poverty (Haveman, 1977).

The Mobilization for Youth (MF Y) program, created in 1962, was an example Of
the grass-roots initiatives that became common druing the OEO’s tenure. MFY was
funded in part by the National Institute Of Mental Health (NIMH), the Ford Formdation,
and former President Kennedy’s Committee on Juvenile Delinquency as an attempt to
combat juvenile delinquency by increasing the Opportunities and local power provided to
low-income citizens (Heifetz, 1969). MFY was based on the sociological theories Of
Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin, who were both teaching at Columbia University at the
time. Cloward and Ohlin theorized that juvenile delinquency was caused by the
differential between poor youths’ desires and the societal Opportunities that existed for
them (Heifetz, 1969). Many Of the youth studied by Cloward and Ohlin were poor
African Americans. An end result Of many MFY programs was that they provided grass-
roots leadership Opportlmities to disaffected citizens.

By the summer Of 1965, Mobilization for Youth (MFY) workers began attempting

to organize welfare cheats in New York City, as they saw a common thread in their

36

clients’ complaints about the welfare system (Rabagliati & Bimbaum, 1969). Some
viewed MFY’s community development programs as having the overt goal of organizing
the poor in order to promote social change (W eissman, 1969).The framework for MFY
was used in other anti—poverty programs developed through the OED.

The 0E0 initiated Community Action Programs (CAPS) in key urban areas. They
were expected to create anti-poverty initiatives at the grass-roots level in some of the
most impoverished communities (Patterson, 2000). The existence of CAPS and the CEO
programs in general have been heralded for providing a critical contribution to the
development of many of the grass-roots organizations that were agitating for social
change for the poor throughout the decade of the 19605 (Hertz, 1981). This new anti-
poverty approach called for community involvement with unprecedented and innovative
“maximum citizen participation”. CAPs and legal services programs had an explicit goal
of increased political participation by the poor. This strategy was used because it was
assumed that if the poor became more explicitly involved in decision making within the
social organizations that provided access to jobs, goods, and services, this would
automatically lead to demands that these institutions, and not larger scale social
institutions, be restructured in order to better meet their needs (Haveman, 1977). Some
scholars have thus concluded that large scale structural change was never a goal of the
CEO programs and the War on Poverty (Haveman, 1977; Patterson, 2000; Peterson &
Greenstone, 1977, Piven & Cloward, 1979), although they did provide some political

power to the disenfranchised.

37

The War on Poverty in Detroit

Early in the War on Poverty citizens and oﬂicials in the Detroit area were
particularly responsive to the OED initiatives (Thompson, 2004). Both white middle class
leaders and the Black middle class community were supportive and involved in virtually
all of the War on Poverty initiatives in Detroit. Jerome Cavanaugh, the white mayor of
Detroit, supported the War on Poverty, and his administration was very involved in
planning numerous anti-poverty initiatives around the city. Detroit’s War on Poverty was
comprehensive, spanning a wide range of programs and services for the poor (Thompson,
2004). Detroit actually began developing anti-poverty initiatives six months prior to the
Economic Opportunity Act’s implementation. It had received the largest grants for these
initiatives, among all cities in the nation, as of December 1964.“ Mayor Cavanaugh’s
Total Action Against Poverty (TAP) program was quickly launched aﬁer the Johnson
administration’s announcement of a War on Poverty. Detroit was seen as a leader in the
development of anti-poverty initiatives, by many oﬁcials in other cities. '7 Although
much of Detroit’s TAP initiatives were aimed at job training, services for youth, and
structural issues, one of the early programs aimed at women with children, focused on
helping them become better homemakers. A 1965 article in the Detroit News spoke
glowingly about a TAP program that trained middle class women to go into poor
women’s homes and assist them in learning how to cook, make curtains, restore furniture,
do better grooming, and learn about money management. The article states that the

program “. . .is based on the belief that poor home environment helps perpetuate poverty

 

'° City of Detroit, “Department Report and lnfornmtion Committee”, report, Dec. 17, 1964, Cavanaugh
Collection, box 178, folder l6.

'7 Mayor of Fort Worm, Texas, letter to Mayor Cavanaugh, December 4, 1964, Cavanaugh Collection, box
178, folder 16.

38

in succeeding generations”.l8 This is in spite of the fact that a February 1965 study of
low-income families on public assistance in Detroit found that inadequate income and
unemployment were among the most signiﬁcant problems they faced. ‘9

Nationwide, programs such as CAPS became particularly important to racial
minorities living in low-income communities, since they were the population speciﬁcally
targeted for these initiatives (Patterson, 2000). African Americans responded to these
programs in great numbers because they had been excluded from the political process for
so long. Participants in the CAPS ultimately politicized the issue of poverty so that racial
and political inequality became intertwined in the discourse on poverty (Peterson &
Greenstone, 1977). These community based programs subsequently offered natural
avenues for the social mobilization of the poor.

Although Detroit’s War on Poverty initiatives were widely supported early on, as
conﬂict and unrest within the city increased they began to be criticized by the public. In
the aftermath of the Detroit riots of July, 1967, Mayor Cavanaugh received a growing
amount of criticism and faced new difﬁculties amassing support for ongoing, as well as
new anti-poverty initiatives. Reports to the city commission in the summer of 1967
blamed the riots on continued racial segregation in employment and housing, persistent
poverty, and Detroit police as symbols of white power, among other factors.20 Mayor
Cavanaugh’s answer to the riots was to create more War on Poverty type programs.

Recommendations made to the commission charged with Studying the riots included a

 

" Judy Rose, “Fight the Cycle of Poverty: Train to Help Homemakers”, article in the Detroit News,
Wednesday, March 24, I965, Cavanaugh Collection, box 264, folder 10.

'9 Greenleigll Associates, Inc. New York/Chicago, “Home Interview Study of Low-Income Households in
Detroit, Michigan”, report, February 1965, Cavanaugh Collection, box 249, folder ll.

2° Detroit City Commission, report on Detroit Riot, Summer of 1967, Cavanaugh Collection, box 393,
folder 1.

39

call for more intensive federal programs aimed at eliminating or reducing poverty, more
research into the problems of urban communities, more programs to create jobs
(including those from private industries), encouragement of black owned businesses, and
a focus on more effective education programs. Mayor Cavanaugh indicated that any of
these solutions that were implemented should also be an attempt to ameliorate years of
discrimination.21 He insisted that programs aimed at addressing structural level
inequalities were necessary to combat poverty and racism within Detroit. Unfortrmately,
after the 1967 riots, it became increasingly difﬁcult to convince others that anti-poverty
programs were working.
Public Perception

The political climate overall during the mid to late 19605 was conducive to
organizing, thanks in part to the Office of Economic Opportunity (CEO) and the
implementation of many community based programs and initiatives that allowed welfare
recipients a place to meet, ﬁnd common ground, and take action (Davis, 1996). Poor
women began to see welfare as a right and to ﬁght for their access to all the legal beneﬁts
they were entitled to (Abramovitz, 1996). It is important to note that the view of welfare
as a basic “right” was not something with which the general public agreed.
Unemployment rates and inflation were low, GNP was increasing, and many began to
question why poverty still existed amid such levels of affluence (West, 1981).

As early as 1960 welfare was portrayed by the media and viewed by the public in
gendered, racialized, and sexualized terms (Neubeck & Cazenave, 2001). A 1960 article

in Atlantic Monthly titled, “Detroit’s Welfare Empire”, was indicative of the public’s

 

2‘ Mayor Cavanaugh, “Recommendations to the Kerner Commission”, report on Detroit Riot, summer of
1967, Cavanaugh Collection, box 393, folder 2.

40

derogatory view of welfare recipients. It complained of a welfare explosion in Detroit,
and blamed it on the promiscuous and lazy lifestyles of poor African American women
who were accused of having illegitimate children, partying and prostituting all night, and
sleeping all day. The crux of the author’s argument was that the poverty of these women
was behaviorally driven and related to moral failings (Mosley, 1960).

The Moynihan Report”, authored by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Assistant Secretary
of Labor under President Johnson, portrayed Aﬁican American family structures as
pathological. Illustrating the connection between the breakdown of the African American
family and the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC), Moynihan
argued, “The steady expansion of this welfare program, as of public assistance programs
in general, can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family
structure over the past generation in the United States” (p. 14). 23 He saw African
American families as highly unstable and led by black matriarchs with illegitimate
children or children who were overwhelmingly the product of divorce. The only solution
to this pathology, he felt, was a concerted effort to strengthen the Black family.
Moynihan viewed the structure of African American families as the measuring stick used
to determine whether or not civil rights and social welfare policy were working
(Rainwater & Yancey, 1967). In his assessment, welfare policies, especially AFDC and
its support for African American female headed households and their illegitimate

children, had contributed greatly to the problems of the Black family.

 

22 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action”, Report, Published in
March 1965 by the United States Department of Labor Ofﬁce of Policy Planning and Research, United
States Department of Labor.

23Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action”, Report, Published in
March 1965 by the United States Department of Labor Ofﬁce of Policy Planning and Research, United
States Department of Labor.

41

Welfare and Reproductive Control

Even before the Moynihan Report, race strongly inﬂuenced perceptions of
illegitimacy. Regina Kunzel (1993), in her examination of out of wedlock pregnancy and
the connection to social work, found that as early as the 1940s race was becoming more
salient than class in the perception of illegitimacy. Beginning in the 19405 individual
African American women’s out of wedlock pregnancies were seen as symptoms of
cultural pathology, while white women’s illegitimate pregnancies were seen as symptoms
of an individual psychiatric neurosis (Kunzel, 1993). This discourse on illegitimacy
assumed that white women could change their behavior, since it was individually
motivated, and implied that African American women’s illegitimacy was caused by the
intractable pathology of black matriarchal families which were threats to society (Krmzel,
1 993).

Assumptions about poor women’s sexuality were routinely involved in denials of
welfare beneﬁts or in termination of cases. Before welfare rights groups and their
demands for fair hearings were an established force in Detroit, many of the letters to the
mayor’s ofﬁce and subsequently forwarded on to the City of Detroit Department of
Public Welfare complained of having cases terminated or denied based on allegations of
illegitimacy.24 A 1964 letter argues that a woman was denied assistance because she had
a “continued pattern of promiscuity” and “continued intimacy” with the father of two of
her children (whom she was not married to). The commrmication from both the mayor’s

ofﬁce and the Department of Public Welfare in this case pointed out her possible support

 

2‘ Complaintsby individualcitizensofDetroit,var'iousletterStoMayor Cavanaugh’s Office, 1964,
Cavanaugh Collection, box 15], folders 7, and 15-28.

42

ﬁ'om the man she was currently involved with as a reason for ternrination.25 In another
letter from 1964, the explanation for case termination was the woman’s illegal co-
habitation, since She had re-married without properly divorcing her ﬁrst husband.26
Another case termination was explained by a woman having ﬁve illegitimate children and
a man found in her house.” All were seen as legitimate reasons for termination of welfare
beneﬁts. A letter written by an African American woman complained that ADC beneﬁts
were terminated because her sister’s caseworker had seen her with the white man that she
had been dating, who was also the father of her child. In this woman’s view she had been
reported not only because she was seeing a man, but because she was seeing a white man.
Her case was eventually reinstated, but only after the State of Michigan’s Department of
Social Welfare was certain that she was cooperating with eligibility requirements and no
longer seeing the man in question.28 One could dismiss these as small examples of
egregious views of poor women, but other scholars have provided Similar examples,
indicating that welfare policy developed within these raced, classed, and gendered
assumptions (Neubeck & Cazenave, 2001; Quadagno, 1994; Solinger, 2000).

According to Solinger (2000), when oral contraceptives ﬁrst became available in
1960, there was much discussion by policy makers and service providers about whether
or not their distribution to poor women should be supported. Much of this debate
reﬂected fears that supporting the distribution of oral contraceptives would give an

impression of approval of promiscuity or, conversely, that lack of support would lead to

 

2’ Mayor Cavanaugh’s Ofﬁce and Detroit Department of Public Welfare, correspondence between ofﬁces
regarding a citizen denied public assistance, I964, Cavanaugh Collection, box 15], folder 21.

1‘ Detroit Department of Public Welfare, letter to citizen whose welfare beneﬁts were terminated, 1964,
Cavanaugh Collection, box 151, folder 28.

27 Detroit Department of Public Welfare, letter to Mayor’s Ofﬁce explaining why a citizen’s welfare
beneﬁts were terminated, 1964, Cavanaugh Collection, box 15], folder 28.

2' A Detroit citizen, letter to Mayor Cavanaugh’s Ofﬁce complaining of termination of welfare beneﬁts,
I965, Cavanaugh Collection, box 230, folder 5.

43

an increase in illegitimate births to Aﬁican American poor women. A fear of African
American illegitimacy and a view of Aﬁican American women as sexually promiscuous
pervaded the ambivalence around contraception. Many of the letters to Mayor
Cavanaugh’s ofﬁce during 1964 discussed the provision of birth control advice to welfare
recipients. Letter writers often identiﬁed themselves as “taxpayers” and most were in
support of providing advice on birth control. One stated that although he was Catholic he
still felt that something had to be done and that birth control Should be given to women
on welfare.29

The issue of birth control for welfare recipients was a point of contention between
the State of Michigan and the city of Detroit during the mid 19608. A February 16, 1965
article in the Detroit News indicated that the Michigan Catholic Conference was
requesting that the state level birth control policy be limited so that social workers would
be forbidden ﬁom initiating conversations about birth control or making referrals for

women on welfare to receive birth control.30

In Detroit, the city welfare commission had
adopted a liberal policy that allowed case workers to initiate conversations about birth
control and family planning with welfare recipients. Interestingly, it was noted that in
working with single women, “. . .it should be recognized that family planning or
limitation should not in itself be viewed as resolving the basic problem”.3 ' The
“problem” for unmarried women on welfare was not deﬁned by policymakers and the
public as a lack of birth control, but rather as promiscuity and illegitimate children.

Although the Detroit policy was seen as liberal by the press and public since it allowed

 

2’ A Detroit citizen, letter to Mayor Cavanaugh’s Ofﬁce in support of giving birth control to welfare
recipients, 1964, Cavanaugh Collection, box 15], folder 13.

3° Jo Ann Hardee, article in the Detroit News, February 16, 1965, DCCR Collection, box 73, folder 27.

3' The City-County Bureau, article in the Detroit News, Wednesday, June 16, 1965, DCCR Collection, box
78, folder 27.

for a discussion of birth control, and although many of the letters to the Mayor’s office
took a stance that birth control Should be offered to women on welfare, it iS important to
examine the racialized and sexualized assumptions of these positions. According to a
February 1965 study of low-income households in Detroit, 83.7% of those on public
assistance at the time were black, and 15.9% were white (0.4% indicated “otltcr”).32 The
deﬁnition of the real “problem” for women on welfare occm'red through the intersection
of racist, sexist, and classist stereotypes of poor black women as promiscuous. A
compromise on birth control was reached during the summer of 1965 when the state
Department of Social Services allowed caseworkers to inform recipients of the
availability of birth control only when requested by recipients themselves. It also
mandated that all city and county policies be revised in order to conform to the new
requirements.33 The birth control controversy strongly illustrates the intersection of race,
class, and gender in policies that impacted women’s everyday lives.

Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)

During the postwar years white women were warned not to enter the paid work
force, since it was believed that working outside the home would cause problems for their
children (Solinger, 2000). Popular magazines of the day as well as many psychiatrists,
presented negative views of work and self-sufﬁciency for white middle class women, and
advocated dependency on men. The strength of racial assumptions led to a different belief
about black women in the workforce. African American and poor women’s children were

not portrayed as being psychologically damaged by their mother’s necessity of working

 

32 Greenleigh Associates, New York/Chicago, “Home Interview Study of Low-Income Households in
Detroit, Michigan”, report, February, 1965, Cavanaugh Collection, box 249, folder 11.

’3 Robert 1.. Pisor, “Welfare Board ores Birth Control Policy”, article in the Detroit News, August 31,
1965, DCCR Collection, box 78, folder 27.

45

outside the home. In fact, African American and poor women were not given the same
opportunity for dependency as white middle class women (Solinger, 2000). The issue of
dependency was seen in a positive light for middle class white women, and viewed very
negatively for poor Aﬁican American women. While the “family ethic” and an idealized
conception of a male breadwinner and female stay at home mother (Abramovitz, 1996),
were certainly part of the social construction of the family that all women had to contend
with, African American and poor women were historically held to very different
standards in practice.

Mothers’ employment was also treated quite contradictorily within the Aid to
Families with Dependant Children (AFDC) program (Abramovitz, 1996). The stated
purpose of AFDC was to allow mothers without male support to stay home to care for
their children. The reality was quite the opposite as work incentives were built into the
policy as poor women, particularly poor women of color, on AFDC became more
stigmatized (Gordon, 1994).

During the War on Poverty, AFDC contained harsh sanctions. “Man in the House”
rules and “Suitable Homes” policies allowed public welfare ofﬁcials to terminate
assistance for women suspecting of having a man in the house, or for women who had
children out of wedlock (Neubeck & Cazenave, 2001). Welfare recipients involved in
welfare rights organizing were put on the defensive by these sanctions, as illustrated in
the infomration included in a Michigan Welfare Rights Organization’s (MWRO) 1968
handbook. It outlined a recipient’s right to have a man in the home as long as the

ﬁnancial support he gave her did not exceed her eligible income level for AFDC.34

 

3‘ Wayne Cormty Welfare Rights Organization, “Welfare Rights Handbook”, handbook, 1968, OC-MWRO
Files.

46

Eventually, the Man in the House rule and the Suitable Homes policy were struck down
by the courts (Quadagno, 1994). The Man in the House rule was commonly used as a
way of reducing the welfare rolls (Nadasen, 2005), and after it was struck down, welfare
rights groups printed details of the nrling so that recipients would know it was no longer
legal.35
The Welfare Explosion

Many of these sanctions and tough work requirements were thought to be a
reaction to the “welfare explosion” of the 1960s (Quadagno, 1994; Solinger, 2000). The
“welfare explosion” also had racial implications. The dramatic increase in welfare rolls
between 1965 and 1970 occurred from adding African Americans to the rolls, so that by
1970, 45 percent of those receiving AFDC were African American (Neubeck &
Cazenave, 2001). Taken together with the number of Latino/a families receiving AFDC,
for the ﬁrst time a majority of those receiving welfare were people of color (Abramovitz,
1996).

Piven and Cloward’s (1979) analysis of the growth in welfare rolls attributed this
increase to the mobilization of the poor by groups such as the National Welfare Rights
Organization (N WRO). They contended that the poor used direct action techniques
learned ﬁom the Civil Rights Movement and that their militancy was rewarded with
increases in federal welfare assistance as a way to control or appease this unrest (Piven &
Cloward, 1979). This view has been challenged. Some scholars claim that the pressure to
create new anti-poverty initiatives occurred ﬁom both below and above, from grassroots
organizations and from elite policymakers (Patterson, 2000). Mobilization of the poor

was also accompanied by federal level policies and programs of the War on Poverty.

 

3’ Michigan Welfare Rights Organintion, newsletter, n.d., OC-MWRO Files.

47

Since these factors did seem to occur almost simultaneously, their impact was more
dramatic and substantial (Patterson, 2000). During the mid 19608 these multiple factors
coalesced to produce a climate conducive to organizing as well as a welfare backlash.

Some have claimed that President Johnson set unreasonably high expectations for
the War on Poverty programs by arguing that poverty could be eliminated. When the
welfare rolls began to increase during the “welfare explosion”, the War on Poverty
programs were seen as failures (Berkowitz, 1991). Between 1962 and 1967 AFDC
payments increased ﬁom $1.2 billion to $2.0 billion as welfare caseloads increased
(Lynn, 1977). AFDC beneﬁts also increased 36 percent ﬁom 1967 to 1970 (Abramovitz,
1996). These factors occurred against the historical backdrop of racist attitudes towards
the poor, inviting a welfare backlash (Quadagno, 1994). The AFDC program was
criticized as being supportive of welfare cheats and mothers with illegitimate children. In
response to these concerns, Congress initiated the 1967 amendments to the Social
Security Act, which emphasized work requirements for AFDC recipients, establishing the
WIN Progmm (Lynn, 1977)-

The Work Incentive Program (WIN)

In 1967, when AFDC was modiﬁed, the Work Incentive Program (WIN) was
initiated. The WIN program was intended as a means of encouraging more recipients to
work. WIN contained an encouraging as well as a punitive component. Work training,
increased funding for day-care assistance, and allowing recipients to keep the ﬁrst $30 of
monthly earnings and one-third of the amotmts over $30 were meant as encouragements
to work. Prior to WIN, recipients’ income from work was directly subtracted ﬁorn their

welfare allotments. The punitive feature of the program was the workfare component,

48

which allowed States to deny welfare to any “appropriate” person who refused work or
training “without good cause” (Patterson, 2000). Welfare rights participants generally
opposed the WIN work requirements, and the NWRO ofﬁcially opposed the workfare
component of WIN because they felt that it forced women to work (N adasen, 2005).
Many tensions developed between local welfare rights groups and the national chapter at
this time. A 1969 New York Times article reported contention between local afﬁliates and
NWRO around the issue of WIN, because of NWRO’S acceptance of a $434,930 federal
contract to provide assistance to recipients in the WIN program (Clines, 1969). This
reﬂected tensions around leadership and control within the movement at the national
level as well as concern over its direction. Because of its strong work component, WIN
was seen as an egregious program overall. Any sign that the national level movement was
aligning itself with WIN was viewed by some local welfare rights groups as betrayal to
movement goals (Gilbert, 2001).

The Family Assistance Plan (FAP)

The welfare crisis set the stage for the Nixon administration’s dramatic plan to end
welfare. In August 1969, President Nixon proposed eliminating AFDC and replacing it
with a guaranteed annual income, the Family Assistance Plan (FAP). FAP would have
provided a guaranteed income of $1,600 per year for a family of four. The FAP proposal
represented 42.7% of the poverty threshold for a family of four in 1969.36 In 2005 dollars

42.7% of the 2005 poverty threshold would be approximately $8,486. 37 Since F AP

 

36 According to the US. Census Bureau, the poverty threshold for a family of four during 1969 was

$3,743, data available from the US. Census Bureau’s website displaying historical poverty tables,
http:wawccnsusgovr'hhes/wwwvlpovertv.”histpov’hstpovel .html.
37 This is according to data from the US. Census Bureau on the 2005 poverty threshold for a family of four,
comprised of one adult and three children, last updated February 1, 2006, available at,

http://www.censusgov«"hhesJ’wwwipovertvs’thrcs1105.html.

 

49

would have allowed some of a family’s earnings from work to be disregarded when
estimating a family’s beneﬁt, the program was aimed at the working poor as well as the
non-working poor (Lynn, 1977). Nixon was interested in not only dismantling AFDC, but
in supporting low-income working families. The President was strongly inﬂuenced by
Daniel Patrick Moynihan who, although a Democrat, was a respected advisor in his
administration. Moynihan encouraged Nixon to move away from a service based Strategy
for solving the problem of welfare and to move toward a cash based approach that would
also support families of the working poor. The FAP contained a $720 work disregard for
a family of four in determining support payments. Nixon wanted to disentangle welfare
policy from the image of the single-parent non-working family that AFDC had
symbolized (Berkowitz, 1991).

One of the factors in F AP’s eventual demise was that conservatives believed it
contained a strong work disincentive (Lynn, 1977). This work disincentive would have
appeared at the break even point for FAP eligibility, Since those who were working
would not have qualiﬁed for the additional beneﬁts of food stamps, Medicaid, and
housing subsidies, creating an imbalance for some families. The FAP did not appeal to
either conservatives or liberals. Besides believing that FAP contained work disincentives,
conservatives feared it would be exorbitantly expensive. Liberals disliked FAP because
they thought annual income limits were set too low. Others felt that FAP would be
difﬁcult to administer and that it would require an overhaul of several social service
programs associated with welfare (Berkowitz, 1991).

The FAP proposal was of major importance to the NWRO. The ﬁght for a

guaranteed annual income for the poor was a pivotal point in the ending of the War on

50

Poverty, as well as the ending of the NWRO. The NWRO almost immediately began
mobilizing against FAP after it was announced (Patterson, 2000). While it supported the
concept of a guaranteed annual income, it argued that proposed income levels were too
low. The NWRO subsequently offered an alternative proposal with a $5,500 guaranteed
annual income for a family of four, which was signiﬁcantly above the poverty threshold
for 1969 (West, 1981).38 Again, in 2005 terms this same percentage above the poverty
threshold would be equivalent to $29,214 as a guaranteed family income for a family of
four in 2005. A major difference in the NWRO proposal was that it would have placed
families above the poverty threshold in 1969. This alternative to F AP would have also
allowed families with annual incomes under $10,000 to receive some level of assistance,
and would have provided for fair hearings, legal services, emergency grants, and day-care
assistance as part of the overall plan (Nadasen, 2005).

Social Service employees also took an ofﬁcial stance against FAP. The president of
the National Federation of Social Services Employees felt that FAP would destroy the
family and create a new slave labor force consisting of the poor, and that it would also
destroy organized labor.39 In a letter to the Detroit Commission on Commrmity Relations
the Detroit area Welfare Employees Union ofﬁcially leant their support to the NWRO’S
proposal in response to FAP.40 Much of the support that NWRO received from social

service employees 1mions was due to the fear that FAP would result in unemployment or

 

3‘ lt is important to note that the NWRO’S proposal, in conuast to FAP, was signiﬁcantly above the poverty
threshold for a family of four for 1969, and in fact represented 147% of the 1969 poverty threshold. Data
on historical poverty thresholds is available from the US. Census Bureau’s website,

http: G’www.Censusgovillhesiwww/povemir’histpovl .html.

39 Ozzie Edwards, “FAP is Back”, n.d., WEU Collection, box 18, folder 12.

‘0 James BiSh, President of the WEU, letter to the Detroit Commission on Community Relations, March 8.
1972, WEU Collection, box 2, folder 20.

 

51

loss of seniority for state and local welfare employees.41 Despite this support, the ﬁght
lasted from 1969 until FAP’s ﬁnal defeat in 1972, and it proved to be a strong factor in
the weakening of the NWRO due to the depleted resources and increased internal conﬂict
in the aftermath of the battle (West, 1981).

Although members of the NWRO actively enlisted help from their white middle
class allies in the Friends of Welfare Rights groups in order to advocate against FAP, the
response was not uniform. Many of the non-recipient welfare rights supporters felt that
the NWRO should have accepted the initial version of FAP, in hopes of creating a
foundation or precedent that could be built on.42 Increased reliance on outside groups’
assistance in the ﬁght against FAP marked a shiﬁ in national welfare rights tactics and
member roles. Non-recipient participants were taking on more decision-making and
policy work within the movement (West, 1981). This shift was not viewed favorably by
recipient members and many thought the non-recipient participants of the welfare rights
movement were taking the movement in unwanted directions (Gilbert, 2001).

Ending the War on Poverty

While the NWRO may have seen their goals partially realized with the defeat of
FAP, they did not see implementation of their own more substantial guaranteed annual
income policy. They also lost the battle over work requirements, although they fought
hard against the WIN program (Kotz & Kotz, 1977). In 1971, AFDC work requirements
became even more stringent when the “Talmadge Amendments”, mandating work

requirements for mothers caring for children over six years old, were enacted (Berkowitz,

 

" AFL—CIO, “Legislative Brief H.R. l, Welfare Reform- the Need for Employee Protection Provisions”,
1971? , WEU Collection, box 18, folder 12.

‘2 Anita, white middle class member ofa welfare rights group in Southeast Michigan, persoml interview,
Oct. 24, 2003, Detroit, MI.

52

1991). When WIN was originally implemented, registering for this work component was
voluntary, now it had become mandatory (Patterson, 2000).

The CEO programs and the BOA created a complex mix of federal mandates and
localized control (Friedman, 1977). Although Detroit had developed its own initiatives
and received large 0E0 grants early in the War on Poverty, by 1967 Mayor Cavanaugh
was demanding more localized control over how 0E0 funds were allocated.43 While
decentralization of power within programs such as CAPS had been posited as a key
mechanism allowing for participation of the poor, this localized control may also have
produced vulnerability in War on Poverty programs. “Local forces” could co-opt and
control local programs either for the good of the community or for their own more
narrow interests (Friedman, 1977).

Considering this criticism of localized control within the War on Poverty, social
work offers a different perspective. Empowerment practice in social work views grass-
roots localized control as a critical factor in macro interventions (Parsons, Gutierrez, &
Cox, 1998). When empowerment practice is employed in work with individuals or with
groups, critical knowledge is gained for the individuals and groups involved, as well as
for the ﬁeld of social work (Gutierrez, Alvarez, Nemon, & Lewis, 1996). Fostering
localized control in macro interventions is tantamount to engaging in empowerment
practice for oppressed groups or populations. Knowledge created by oppressed groups
through their own political struggle constitutes a particular “standpoint” (Hartsock 1998).

Social workers should be able to obtain radical insights for social change by locating and

 

‘3 Remarks of Mayor Cavanaugh before the Senate Sub-Committee on Employment, Manpower, and
Poverty, Cavanaugh Collection, box 385, speeches folder.

53

utilizing the “standpoint” of poor women in all community organizing or social

movement work.

54

Part II: Conceptualizing
Chapter 4
Understanding Women’s Standpoints within a Past Social Movement: A Conceptual
Framework for the Study
A feminist historical and a multidimensional feminist standpoint approach, as well
as the literature, informed the conceptual framework for this study (see Figure 3, on page
152 for a diagram of the conceptual map). This framework was developed in order to
illustrate all of the factors to be examined in the study, and to depict how various
components interacted in women’s social movement work. The conceptual map is
organized into three chronological phases: 1.) before participants were involved in any
social movement activity or activism; 2.) when they were involved in other social
movement activity or activism before welfare rights, and; 3.) when they were involved in
the welfare rights movement. The theoretical framework used, as well as the literature in
social work, history, sociology, and women’s studies, informed my development of this
conceptual map. The interview questions and categories for analysis emerged from this
ﬁarnework.
A Feminist Historical Approach
Since this research examined a speciﬁc time period it is considered historical
research. Historical methods attempt to bring together several sources from the past in
order to form a cohesive narrative account of events and/or processes (Gottschalk, 1967).
Examining the everyday lives of women is a major goal of feminist research, always
remembering and making visible the fact that their lives were shaped by social forces and

social structures which they simultaneously helped to shape (Acker, Barry, & Esseveld,

55

1996). This research uses an historical approach, emphasizing feminist methodology
which is most appropriately suited to the research questions that are addressed.

While there is no single research method that is universally considered feminist, a
conscious feminist approach or methodology can be utilized regardless of the methods
chosen (DeVault, 1996). Feminist researchers have critiqued traditional science for
viewing humans as made up of facts, and subsequently objectifying those studied. In
contrast, a feminist methodology consciously attempts to avoid exploiting the subject and
objectifying participants (Gorelick, 1996).

A feminist methodology emphasizes action leading to social change (DeVault,
1996). This means that the goals of the research must be emancipatory, since it is
understood that women’s lives are shaped by the larger dominant power relations, based
on racial, class, and gender statuses, that are inherent in our society (Acker, Barry, &
Esseveld, 1996). Olson & Shopes (1991) speak of the researcher acting as a “citizen-
scholar-activist” who approaches his or her research as an engaged member of a
community and works towards social change while maintaining a critical focus on power
and inequality (p. 201). My research is consistent with my ongoing concern for women in
poverty. It also acknowledges my previous activist work for social justice for poor
women. The goal of this research is not simply academic. It is embedded in my concern
for social justice and my emancipatory goals for the participants in my research,
particularly poor minority women.

Feminists have noted that studying women’s lives ﬁom women’s perspectives can
produce information on how social policy shapes women’s everyday lives, and how

women resist as well as reinforce this. DeVault’s (1991) study of women and the work

56

they engaged in to feed their families discovered that poor women were much more
restricted in their daily life choices than middle class women. Those on AFDC and
receiving food stamps and/or W1C (the Women, Infants, and Children program) coupons
(for food and infant formula) received strict guidelines about proper mothering and
family nutrition. These guidelines were based on socially constructed assumptions about
what constituted proper care, acting as strong inﬂuences in poor women’s lives. Middle
class women who did not use these forms of assistance in feeding their family were not
subject to these same assumptions, and were in fact allowed more choices in how they
would provide meals for their families (DeVault, 1991). These revelations about
differences in women’s lives based on social class are understood when the researcher
starts from women’s lives as they are lived within their unique contexts.

In order to utilize a feminist approach to research, one must also strive to
understand knowledge constructed by women themselves, particularly those whose
voices have not been heard or have been silenced in many ways. Nadasen (2005) claims
that the welfare rights movement itself oﬁ'ers an opportunity to examine how a unique
form of feminism developed based on the day to day lives of poor black women. A
feminist approach would attempt to more closely examine these women’s lives, through
their own perspectives, and then disseminate this knowledge so that it may become
socially transformative for all women.

The Use of Standpoint

Examining the standpoint of women as Smith (1987) articulates, means obtaining

tmderstanding through the analysis of women’s everyday lives as they exist in a

particular historical moment, and as they are shaped or inﬂuenced by the “ruling

57

apparatus” of a male dominant society (p. 108). Within this structure of dominant power
relations women have been viewed as objects, and their voices have not been heard or
understood through their own subject positions. A standpoint of women strives to provide
an honest and accurate understanding of women’s lives through the lens of their own
experience (Smith, 1987). In this dissertation I examine women’s standpoints, as
reﬂected in interviews with women who participated in the development of the welfare
rights movement in Southeast Michigan. Although I am interested in exploring women’s
standpoints, and examining whether or not gender was a key organizing factor, or
commonality, I am also interested in investigating the various positionalities of
participants, and thus how race, class, and gender converged to shape their lives.

I deﬁne standpoint theory as found within Harding’s (2004) discussion of the
emergence of standpoint thinking. She refers to standpoint theory as “. . .a kind of organic
epistemology, methodology, philosophy of science, and social theory that can arise
whenever oppressed pe0ples gain public voice” (p. 3). This perspective also relates to
feminist standpoint theory as articulated by Hartsock (1998), who assumes that those who
are oppressed live in material worlds created by structures of domination developed by
oppressors, and that it is through their struggle to comprehend this world that “partial
perspectives” (Haraway, 2001; Harding, 2001), representing critical knowledge are
created. “Standpoints” are not automatic, and they must be uncovered through the
oppressed group’s political struggles. Through these struggles, poor women, particularly
women of color, can make visible to the larger society the ways in which systems of
domination have structmed their lives and can allow the oppressive “insane” features of

these systems to be known (Hartsock, 1998). Social theories without this key component,

58

which assumes that knowledge is created by those who are oppressed, will risk
reproducing systems of domination and oppression. Collins (1998) argues that many past
social theories that have been produced by elites, or those occupying privileged race,
class, or gender positions, actually maintained hierarchical and unequal power structures.
Critical social theory that is in true opposition to oppression is only produced when
conscious efforts are made to make clear the unique contribution and knowledge of those
occupying marginalized positions in society.

For the purpose of this study I identify the “standpoints” of participants as they
emerged through their political struggles based on their existence within lives structured
by the power relations inherent in the historical social locations they occupied. I deﬁne
their standpoints as the unique and critical knowledge that they indicated possessing
based on their own political struggles. I deﬁne “social location” as the existence within
privileged and oppressed positions within society, based on gender, race, and class.
Individuals who occupied speciﬁc social locations may have actively achieved particular
standpoints informed in part by their social location. However, the use of standpoints in
this study represents an assumption that critical insights are not automatic, but struggled
for and achieved and subsequently emphasized by those occupying marginalized
positions in society. Standpoints were identiﬁed in this study where individuals indicated
that they possessed critical insight into the unequal systems of social relations that
structm'ed all of their lives. This insight was evidenced in the ways that women in this
sample emphasized or focused on a unique knowledge that they had achieved based on
their social location, their social experience, and their political struggles. “Standpoints”

are also identiﬁed within the documents analyzed, where this insight, or a certain tmique

59

perspective, is posited based on an assumption of a shared standpoint. This is typically
where a “better” or “clearer” view of policy changes is presented in the documents, based
on a certain shared standpoint, or as a strategic way of targeting other members of certain
oppressed groups.

A Multidimensional Feminist Standpoint Approach

In Naples’ (2003) attempt to outline a “materialist feminist conceptual framewor ”
for researching women’s lives, she presents a “multidimensional standpoint analysis” as a
way of investigating the diversity of women’s standpoints and the shifting nature of the
social dynamics in which standpoints may be identiﬁed. She presents a multidimensional
feminist standpoint approach from her attempts to understand women’s experiences
within varying social locations at varying points in time within her own research. This
framework illustrates how standpoints represent individual knowers’ experiences. These
experiences both shape and are shaped by the macro societal level, as well as the smaller
community level, and are also a site of inquiry.

Although in Collins (1998) view of standpoint thinking, group membership is
deﬁned mainly through a historically structmed social location, a multidimensional
feminist standpoint approach allows for a geographic or non-geographic construct of
“community” which individuals can achieve through participation and interaction with
others in that “commrmity” (Naples, 2003).

In research on community activists, Naples discovered that participants occupied
simultaneous “insider” and “outsider” positions that were dependent on different
geographical and historically embedded contexts. Using a multidimensional feminist

standpoint perspective allowed her to thoroughly examine various and relational

60

experiences of individual knowers as well as to investigate the shifting nature of the
standpoints they emphasized. An analysis of race, class, and gender within the welfare
rights movement should focus on the multiple social locations of those who were
involved, and must recognize that participants simultaneously occupied outsider and
insider locations within the larger society and the movement.

Since this study focuses on both African American and white women in the Detroit
area who were recipients of welfare and who were middle class or working class
members of the “Friends of Welfare Rights” groups, the framework of a
multidimensional feminist standpoint approach is most appropriate. The use of a
multidimensional feminist standpoint approach and an intersectional analysis allows for
an emphasis on standpoints of race, class, and gender when analyzing women’s responses
to changes in welfare policy, as well as their participation in the welfare rights
movement.

The results of this study are organized according to how these standpoints
emphasized difference or similarities among women. The concept of difference is meant
to include historical socially constructed categories of power and domination in which
women lived. There is a conscious effort in this work to move away from the
essentializing idea of “woman” as a homogenous group. Thus, the idea of a multiracial
feminism is also important to the analysis used in this study. The construct of multiracial
feminism allows for a critical emphasis on the socially stratiﬁed categories of race and the
subsequent power relations that this represents, when examining women’s lives (Baca
Zinn & Thornton Dill, 1996). Since this study examines how white and black women of

varying social classes came together to participate in a social movement, as well as how

61

they responded to changes in welfare policy, the categories of race, class, and gender are
the main foci. These categories are ﬁrst and foremost understood as structural,
historically embedded social locations, which were simultaneously experienced although
not necessarily simultaneously expressed or acknowledged.
The Use of Intersectionality

Collins (1998) advocates using an intersectional approach to the analysis of groups,
arguing that “. . . race, class, and gender mutually construct one another in historically
distinctive ways” (p. 209). By using an intersectional approach to examine groups, the
group itself remains a shaping feature, placing individuals within a speciﬁc,
hierarchically structured, unequal social location. Simultaneously, a deeper understanding
of how these oppressive mechanisms work can be achieved as we explore variations in
group membership based on other positionalities (Collins, 1998). An intersectional
approach allows researchers to explore the history of women as lived within the social
locations of race, class, and gender. It allows us to discover how women impacted and
were impacted by their social locations. Crenshaw (1995) offers a powerful example
illustrating the importance of intersectionality when she outlines the case of a Latina non
English speaking woman who was denied entrance to a domestic violence shelter due to
the shelter’s policy requiring English proﬁciency. This example highlights the danger in
an assumed generic model of “domestic violence victim” which does not include or take
into account the lived experiences of many immigrant women. It illustrates the
importance of tmderstanding differences among the category of “woman”, and the need

to view gender as it intersects with race and class, as well as sexuality.

62

Baca Zinn and Thornton Dill (1996) indicate that an intersectional analysis
examines the agency of women, as it exists within and in response to, the converging
categories of race, class, and gender, and the dominant power relations therein. Collins
also (1993) explores the concept of intersectionality as a category of analysis that moves
away from seeing race, class, and gender as dichotomous either/or categories and moves
towards analysis that acknowledges them as ever present categories simultaneously
shaping and inﬂuencing, acknowledging that one particular category may be emphasized
more than others at certain points in time. Intersectionality refers to the socially
constructed categories of race, class, and gender as converging and interlocking
dimensions that contain speciﬁc power relations which impact and structure all of our
lives (Weber, 2001). A key feature of intersectionality is that each of these categories
converges and impacts the other, and thus, can not be separated and examined
individually or additively (Anderson & Collins, 2001). This is the crux of how difference
and similarities are examined in this study. There is an understanding of simultaneous
race, class, and gender categories that position women within certain power domains, as
well as an examination of how these categories are expressed, experienced, and
responded to, at certain points in time, through interaction in a speciﬁc social movement.

The concept of intersectionality is important to this study since it moves away from
a dichotomous perspective that sees individuals as either oppressed or privileged, and
encourages an analysis which assrnnes that individuals can occupy simultaneous insider
and outsider locations, which may shiﬁ over time. My work takes an intersectional
approach to the analysis of race, class, and gender, examining not only how these

categories shaped women’s lives, but also how women indicated shifting standpoints that

63

were used or expressed within their social movement work and within responses to
welfare policy that occurred during the War on Poverty.

Although the use of “difference” and “sameness” is explored in this study, these
constructs are deﬁned as the ways in which participants themselves emphasized these
concepts within their participation in the welfare rights movement, and how race, class,
and gender intersected within their perspective of “difference” and “sameness”. In order
to truly utilize an intersectional framework, even as race, class, or gender are emphasized
individually within concepts of “difference” and “sameness” in participants’ responses, at
times representing their differing standpoints, it is also necessary to explore the unspoken
ways that race, class, and gender simultaneously converged to shape their lived
experiences and structure their lives. Since systems of race, class, and gender are
interrelated and operating at all times, even those which were unmentioned were still
impacting, shaping, and inﬂuencing all of the participants in this study’s lives. Therefore,
examining the impact of race, class, or gender by itself, even as it was emphasized within
participants’ standpoints, does not provide sufﬁcient understanding of how women
participated in the welfare rights movement. Categories of race, class, and gender
converged to produce the speciﬁc experiences and interpretations of social movement
participation, and responses to welfare policy that are outlined in this dissertation. Figure

one, below gives a graphic representation of the intersectional framework for this study.

F igurel . Intersectional Diagram

 

 

 

 

 

.= Welfare Policy Gender
= The Welfare

Rights Movement

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O = Individual Participants

65

Chapter 5
Methodology
This study examines the following overarching questions. How did women
involved in the welfare rights movement mobilize across differences and within
similarities? How did women’s responses to changes in welfare policy reﬂect differences
and similarities? To answer these questions, I focused on those participants involved in
welfare recipient groups as well as those who were involved in non-recipient groups in
Detroit and Southeast Michigan. I also examined archival records such as newsletters,
brochures, manuals, correspondence, ﬂyers and other materials created by those involved
with the overall movement in order to analyze participants’ responses to changes in
welfare policy.
My research questions are:
1. How did women mobilize across difference in race and class within the welfare
rights movement?
2. How salient was gender as a mobilizing factor in the development of a welfare
rights movement in the Detroit, Michigan area?
3. How did race and class manifest in welfare rights movement participants’
responses to changes in welfare policy?
4. How salient was gender in welfare rights participants’ responses to changes in
welfare policy?
Research questions 1 and 2 are answered by oral history interviews. Research questions 3
and 4 are answered through analysis of archival materials produced by participants in the

welfare rights movement.

66

Sample

For the oral history interviews, the sampling frame included women who
participated in the early form of the welfare rights movement in the Detroit, Michigan
area between 1964 and1972. African American and white women who were poor,
working class, middle class, or upper middle class at the time of their participation were
included. Race was purposively dichotomized for this study, as either African American
or white. This was done because most of those receiving welfare in the Detroit area at
this time were Aﬁican American,44 and most of those involved in the “ﬁ'iends of welfare
rights groups” during this time period were white (West, 1981). This is not assumed to
represent the full category of race, as the author understands that race is indeed a broader
category and should not be dichotomized in most cases. The concept of class was
identiﬁed through participant self-identiﬁcation as well as other factors such as
occupation, education, father and mother’s occupation, and father and mother’s
education.

Twelve women and one man who participated in the welfare rights movement in
the Detroit, Michigan area between 1964 and 1972 were interviewed. African American
and white women who were poor, middle class, or working class at the time of their
participation were included. Small samples used in qualitative research have been
criticized for not being heterogeneous and speciﬁcally for not including women of color
and working class women (Weber Cannon, Higginbotham, & Leung, 1991). Taking this

criticism into account, and considering the research questions in this study, a strong

 

‘4 Greenleigh Associates, New York/Chicago, “Home Interview Study of Low-Income Households in
Detroit, Michigan, report, February, 1965, Cavanaugh Collection, box 249, folder 1 1.

67

attempt was made to obtain diversity within this sample. The sample achieved for this
study does represent diversity in race and class.

A snowball sampling method was used to locate participants, using information
obtained from key informants chosen for their leadership roles in the movement. A
purposive theoretical sampling strategy was also applied, as women of different classes
and races were interviewed in order to examine how different social locations impacted
the organizing attempts of participants, and to prevent essentializing the category of
woman. As Higginbotham, Weber Cannon, and Lueng (1991) point out, more time may
need to be allotted for sampling strategies used to reach women of color and working
class women as they may be more reluctant to participate in research studies than white
middle class women. The white middle class non-recipients in this sample were found
much more quickly and agreed to participate more readily than did the welfare recipients,
working class women, and African American women. Considerable time was needed to
contact them, and it took persistent efforts before they agreed to be interviewed. Because
of the particular difﬁculty in locating welfare recipients, the sample consists of a majority
of middle class participants, and only one working class participant. Nevertheless,
sufﬁcient heterogeneity was achieved for the purpose of examining the research
questions. This is a particularly positive outcome since a major component of this study
was to examine how differences in race and class manifested and intersected.

Researchers using a purposive, theoretical sampling strategy attempt to choose
cases in relation to the theory, examine deviant cases, and understand that the sample size
may need to change when and if new factors emerge during the research (Silverman,

2000). I speciﬁcally sampled women of different classes and races in order to examine

68

how different social locations impacted the organizing attempts of participants in the
welfare rights movement in the Detroit, Michigan area. Thus, I followed the demands for
stratiﬁcation that the theoretical framework indicated.

In order to begin obtaining the sample I initially contacted a former legal-aid
attorney for Detroit area welfare rights groups. He gave me several names of members of
“friends of welfare rights” groups and welfare rights members who were active from
1964-1972. I then began contacting individuals, who referred me to others.

The sample included ﬁve women who were welfare recipients and eight non-
recipients (seven female, one male). Although my interest was in interviewing only
women who were involved in the welfare rights movement, since several participants that
I contacted referred me to the same male, I felt it necessary to include him in the sample.
The age of participants ranged from 59-83, with most in their 70’s when I interviewed
them. All of the women in the sample had between one and eight children, with 3.5 as the
average number of children. There were no differences in the numbers of children that
non-recipients and recipients had. Table one, below, describes the sample in terms of

several basic factors.

69

Table I. Basic Description of Sample

 

 

Pseudonym Recipient Race Class Gender
Status
Anita friend white middle class female
Delores recipient black poverty class female
Patricia friend white middle class female
Anna friend white middle class female
Martha friend white u. middle class female
Ruth friend white middle class female
J une friend black working class female
Victoria recipient white poverty class female
Robert friend white middle class male
Evelyn friend black middle class female
Gladys recipient black poverty class female
Vivian recipient black poverty class female
Helen recipient black poverty class female

 

All of the interviews were conducted by the author between the fall of 2003 and the fall

of 2005. Table 2, below, provides more information on the sample.

70

Table 2. Further Description of Sample

 

 

Pseudonym Interview Date, and Age Place of Initial Year of
Interview Location Birth Involvement in
Welfare Rights
Anita 10/24/03, Detroit, MI 63 Indiana mid. to late
1960’s
Delores 11/07/03, Detroit, MI 59 Louisiana between 1966-
1968
Patricia 11/14/03, Farmington, MI 76 Illinois early 1970’s
Anna 11/19/03, Berkley, MI 73 Michigan mid. 1960’s
Martha 9/06/05, Bloomﬁeld Hills, 78 New Jersey 1968
M1
Ruth 9/09/05, Detroit, MI 82 Michigan mid. 1960’s
June 9/27/05, Bloomﬁeld Hills, 79 Tennessee mid. 1960’s
MI
Victoria 10/11/05, Pontiac, MI 75 Michigan 1970
Robert 10/12/05, Detroit, MI 75 Michigan 1968
Evelyn 10/22/05, Spring Valley, CA 74 Ohio 1969
Gladys 10/25/05, Detroit, MI 83 Alabama late 1960’s
Vivian 10/26/05, Detroit, MI 66 Mississippi 1969
Helen l 1/ 17/05, Dearbom, MI 72 New York early 1970’s

 

71

All interviews were conducted in person, by the author, except the California
interview, which was conducted over the phone, by the author. For the purpose of
simplifying the discussion of ﬁndings from this study I refer to all non-recipient members
in the sample as “friends” and all welfare recipient members as “recipients”. Most of the
non-recipient members interviewed for this study were members of various ﬁiends of
welfare rights groups throughout Southeast Michigan. One was a CAP worker, one
worked as an organizer for the NWRO during involvement in the welfare rights
movement, and one worked extensively with a welfare rights group in Detroit.

Most of the participants interviewed ﬁrst became involved in welfare rights
organizing in the middle to late 1960’s and all continued their involvement throughout
the 19703. Most were in their 30’s and 40’s when they were involved, and two women
were in their 205. Only three participants did not begin their involvement in the welfare
rights movement until 1970-1972, and all three of these women were approximately 35-
40 years old at the time of their initial involvement. Although it is understood that
women’s roles and place in society were historically beginning to change during this time
period, there were no real differences in the ways that the three women who became
involved later talked about gender roles in society as compared to those who became
involved earlier. As far as the impact that changing roles for women had on the NWRO,
it wasn’t until after Wiley leﬁ, in 1972, that women leaders in the NWRO began to more
clearly connect the welfare rights movement to the Second Wave Women’s Movement.
In July of 1973 the NWRO’s female recipient leaders issued a press release that explicitly
stated their intent to make major changes in the welfare rights movement, and to more

directly connect their work to the women’s movement (Nadasen, 2005).

72

All of the participants in this study were involved in one of two major welfare
rights groups in Detroit that were afﬁliated with the NWRO during the 19603 and 19703,
or one of two major friends of welfare rights groups in Oakland County that were
afﬁliated with the NWRO at that time (see Appendix C, on page 154, for a map of
Detroit and Southeast Michigan).

Data

In historical research, oral history interviews allow the researcher to actively resist
the idea of simply gathering historical facts and instead focus on a more interactive
process whereby the researcher attempts to understand the participants’ own
constructions of their lives and historical events (Gluck & Patai, 1991). When conducting
oral history interviews, careful attention must be paid to how dominant ideologies of
race, class, and gender have shaped women’s meanings as well as how this dominant
discourse individually constructs the concepts of race, class, and gender themselves
(Sangster, 1998). In my use of oral history interviews I set out to understand how the
dimensions of race, class, and gender shaped women’s experiences historically as well as
the meaning that individual women gave to these categories.

Feminist oral historians have made signiﬁcant contributions not only by making
women’s lives visible but also by contributing to the development of feminist theory
(Perks & Thomson, 1998). By utilizing oral history as one of the methods in this study, I
was able to gain new insights into our understanding of how women came together across
differences and within similarities to work for social change. The use of oral history
interviews and document analysis analyzed through a feminist lens allowed me to

emphasize the social action and social change that these women worked toward.

73

Women and the women-focused organizations or movements that have been
historically ignored can be examined and given voice through a qualitative feminist
analysis of their documents, records, and lives (Reinharz, 1992). Oral history methods are
well suited to social work research since they are compatible with social work’s mission
to those from oppressed populations, to give them a voice by allowing them the space to
ascribe their own meanings to particular events and experiences from the past (Martin,
1995).

The oral history interviews used in this study produced knowledge about the
meanings that women who participated in the welfare rights movement attributed to their
involvement as well as the ways that race, class, and gender interacted in these meanings.
The data collected led to an understanding of what factors were involved in women’s
decisions to engage in activism as well as the ways that their different social locations
affected their decisions. My goal was to learn how women of different races and social
classes perceived their involvement in the movement. The interviews also provided
insight into the importance that other social movement activity played in their decisions
to become involved in welfare rights organizing.

The instrument used for the in-depth oral history interviews was a semi-structured
interview guide (see Appendix D on page 156) that had been reﬁned after initial piloting
of the instrmnent. The interviews lasted from one and a half to three hours. The in-person
interviews were conducted in the interviewee’s home or oﬂice. I took notes while
conducting all of the interviews and they were all tape-recorded. The tapes were then
transcribed. The most recent UCRIHS (Human Subjects) approval for this study was

granted on December 5‘“, 2005, and it expires on December 4‘”, 2006.

74

Interview transcripts were entered into Nvivo, a software package for qualitative
analysis (QSR International, 2002). All transcripts were initially coded using the study’s
conceptual framework categories as a guide. As common themes developed more fully,
and similarities in descriptions emerged, subsets were then coded. Because I had the
entire interviews transcribed and transferred to a database created within the computer
analysis program, I was able to employ the constant comparative method of analysis
(Silverman, 2000), analyzing and comparing within case data before moving on to
examine between case comparisons. The ﬁnal themes which emerged after re-coding
were then organized into matrices, based on the study’s conceptual framework, in order
to see larger patterns and relationships (see Appendix E, on page 159, for examples of
cross-case matrices used in the analysis). I also employed deviant—case analysis strategies
when examining those cases which did not seem to ﬁt the emergent themes (Silverman,
2000). The cases of “boundary crossing” that are discussed in chapter eight provide
examples of the results of this analysis strategy. Data from the analysis of oral history
interviews were used to answer research questions 1 and 2.

The second method used in this study was an analysis of documents from various
archival collections that were created by participants in the welfare rights movement.
Most of these documents came from the Michigan and Detroit area. Others were
produced by the national welfare rights organization and prominent individuals. The
major criterion for inclusion was whether the documents were written or created by those
who participated in the movement and whether or not the documents focused on welfare
policies. Primary sources, including manuscript collections from various archives were

analyzed. See page162 for a detailed description of primary sources.

75

Since the focus of this study is an examination of the intersection of race, class, and
gender in movement participants’ responses to welfare policy, analysis of documents
encompassed more than simple, quantitative counting or content analysis. If one is
interested in more than a simple counting procedure for proposed research, one can
attempt a more complex analytic strategy in order to examine the ftmction and deeper
meaning of documents (Prior, 2003). The documents were analyzed using the conceptual
framework of the study as a guide and were assessed through an intersectional approach.
A matrix was designed in order to categorize the documents according to the conceptual
framework for the study (see Appendix E, on page 159 for examples of matrices used in
the analysis).

In feminist research, qualitative analysis of documents and newspaper accounts
have been used in conjunction with interviews as a way of broadening insight into the
research topic (Reinharz, 1992). In this dissertation the methods of document analysis
combined with oral history interviews were used in order to gain a more insightful and
rich understanding of the past mobilization attempts of women. A feminist approach to
analysis of documents focuses on dissecting the patriarchal assumptions in views or
images of women, and/or the ways that these images are structured in relation to societal
power and control (Reinharz, 1992). This feminist approach to document analysis ﬁts
cohesively with this study, since an explicit goal was to understand the ways in which the
locations, identiﬁcation, and power relations embedded in the dimensions of race, class,
and gender acted on the mobilization efforts and the responses to welfare policy by

women.

76

The conceptual map for this study contains square boxes that represent the
document analysis phase of the study. Documents were assessed as they represented the
policy phases identiﬁed in this study, such as “welfare policy during Johnson
Administration-early war on poverty initiatives” and “erosion of War on Poverty
initiatives- late Johnson administration, early Nixon Administration”. The documents
were organized in a matrix, according to speciﬁc policy focus (i.e. “F AP”, “WIN”) and
emphasis on race, class, and gender. Using the categories that came ﬁ'om the conceptual
map, the theoretical framework, and the literature, participants’ responses to welfare
policy, as they were evident in the documents collected, were analyzed and organized. As
with the data ﬁ'om the interviews, patterns and themes both within similarities and across
differences of race, class, and gender were assessed. Data from the analysis of the

documents is used to answer research questions 3.and 4.

77

Part III: Intersecting Boundaries
Chapter 6
Emphas-ng Difference
“I am an expert on poverty. I have been poor all my life. I was born poor and Black
and unless things change a lot in this country I’m going to die the same way. Everyday
I live with this knowledge. Everyday I see, feel, taste, smell and touch the poverty of
my people and my community, Everyday I live with the knowledge that you want us
poor—just in case you need your bedpans emptied, your shirts ironed, your yards
mowed, your houses cleaned and your children tended——and just in case General
Motors should need some cheap and temporary help. You brought my people to this
country to use our men for labor and our women for housework and pleasure, and
little has changed. Today my caseworker denies me help with my college expenses
because she says that I have a job skill and need no more education. I understand
that—aﬁerallwhowill emptythebedpanswhenlbecomeanurse?lunderstandwhat
you are, I rmderstand what you think of me and my people and I know how you intend
to continue to use us.”
Joycelyn Hubbard, Leader in Michigan’s Welfare Rights Organization,197245
The analysis of data from both interviews and documents are presented in this
section in order to produce a better understanding of how women in the welfare rights
movement participated within similarities of gender and across differences in class and
race. Direct quotations ﬁom the interview transcripts are used to highlight speciﬁc
ﬁndings or themes. Following the conﬁdentiality agreement in the study protocol, each
participant was given a pseudonym. Quotations are cited by the pseudonym, race, and
class (at the time of their involvement in welfare rights) of participants, with the
transcript page number for the quotation included.
Findings presented in this chapter relate to the emphasis participants placed on
difference. It is important to note that the concept of difference is not being used here as

simply one of superﬁcial differences or individual differences in identity. Rather, similar

 

’5 Joycelyn Hubbard, testimony given at a hearing on federal welfare reform legislation at the city-county
building, Detroit, sponsored by the Leadership Conference for Welfare Reform, January 17, 1972, OC-
MWRO Files.

78

to what Baca Zinn and Thornton Dill’s (1996) concept of multiracial feminism advocates,
difference here moves beyond the idea of diversity among women to place the construct
of gender squarely within the racial/historical structures of domination that are inherent in
our society. Therefore, when differences are presented, they are simultaneously
understood within the interlocking systems of domination that structure our society as
well as through the women’s own understanding and emphasis on difference within their
participation in the welfare rights movement. The ways in which participants’ themselves
emphasized difference are illustrated, as well as the ways in which race, class, and gender
intersected in participants’ lives.

When all the participants mentioned difference, they most frequently focused on
class-based differences, emphasizing a dichotomy between welfare recipients and non-
recipients. Recipients and ﬁiends spoke very distinctively about their own social class as
well as those of others; however they emphasized very different things. When recipients
talked about class as difference they emphasized the differences between themselves and
the friends, privileging their own “insider” positions within the movement and
emphasizing their control over decision-making. The one white recipient in the sample,
Victoria, indicated the different worlds that the friends lived in based on their class status:

[The friends] “I don’t think ever knew any. . .any want in their life, you know? It’s, it’s
a different world when you’ve never. . .needed anything that you couldn’t obtain.”
(Victoria, w, pc, p. 37).
Vivian, an African American recipient also talked of division around decision making in
the movement:

“They got involved, but we would TELL them. You know, we would tell them
what. . .we wanted, or how, you know. ...things like that” (Vivian, b, pc, p. 19).

79

Victoria also spoke about the members’ control over decisions:

“Well I think that they [the friends] acted more as advisors, but they didn’t make
decisions you know? And when we [the recipients] decided to. . .march. . .that’s what

happened.” (Victoria, w, pc, p. 33).
The recipients spoke of the difficulty in making the non-recipients understand what it was
like to be on welfare, as Vivian illustrated in the following:

“We would. . .try to explain to them what it’s like on welfare. And like, on the end of

the month, when your food stamps, or your food is you know, at the end of the

month, you don’t have that much, try’ in to stretch it to the next month. We had what

we call a ‘welfare meal’ and they would come and eat some beans and rice, and

(chuckles)....beans and rice and Jell-O.” (Vivian, b, pc, p. 11).

What remained unsaid within their discussions of class as difference, was that race
and gender also intersected class within all participants’ lived experiences. Although
recipients emphasized the ways in which class formed a division between themselves and
the friends, their poverty class status was also shaped, for most of them, by their status as
black women. These locations inﬂuenced and structured their lives, choices, and
opportunities. However, it was the immediacy they felt at being on welfare, and their
desire to maintain control over the direction of the movement, that interacted with their
strong focus on class as a form of difference. As recipients they needed to maintain their
power over decision-making within the movement, since only they were experiencing the
day to day indignities of life on welfare. This was their focal point within the movement,
and this was where they needed to exert power and control.
When the friends talked about class as difference, they emphasized the division in

tactics that were used within the movement, focusing on how they raised the money and

the recipients were more militant. The only upper middle class ﬁiend in the sample,

Martha, stated:

80

“And that funded the ofﬁce. And so that’s what Friends were for, to keep the ofﬁce.
Cause of course, the members of welfare rights only paid ﬁve dollars a year.” (Martha,
w, umc, p. 16).
A white middle class friend, Anita, also noted the widening division between how policy
decisions were made within the movement:
“The people who then went in the ofﬁce really started to analyze policy and make

decisions on where we were going to come down on policy. And they did not do it in
a way where they invited the welfare rights mothers in to vote on it, or. . .or be an

integral part of that decision making.” (Anita, w, me, p. 22).

The fact that the friends’ own race and gender were not focused on within their
perception of class as difference in tactics within the movement, allowed them to obscure
the ways in which their own privileged race and class offered them more access to policy
information and resources within the movement. Rather than a difference in tactics based
on class status alone, the difference in tactics emphasized by the ﬁ'iends reﬂected
differing power relations inherent within the intersecting categories of race, class, and
gender.

Poverty-Class Lives, Poverty-Class Standpoints

Interestingly, although recipients indicated poverty class status as being the most
important motivator for their involvement in the welfare rights movement, friends also
talked about class as motivation. However, when the friends that did mention social class
spoke about it, they most often mentioned ideals like social justice, and understanding of
their own class privilege and the need to give back. This represented their own class and
race privilege as it intersected within their participation. Martha summed up her
motivation to get involved this way:

“To whom much is given, much is required. Because really I’ve had such a wonderful
life. And. . .was given ALL these opportunities, these pleasures, these trips you know.”

81

(Martha, w, umc, p. 27-28).
When talking about her motivation to get involved in social movement work, Martha also
talked about the importance of growing up in a privileged family and seeing how her
mother gave back to the community:
“Well, I thank goodness my mother, way back in the depression years, she would
regularly, about once a week anyway, would load up the car with food and clothing,
and go around to some of these back woodsy places where they were living in shacks,
and distribute food and clothing. And I think some of that rubbed off, you know?
Concern for the poor in general. At one point, we had to have Saturday lunches of
white bread, one slice of cheese, and water. . .to simulate what the poor were going
through, you know?” (Martha, w, umc, p. 6-7).
Robert, the only male in the sample, also talked about poverty and his religious
background:
“But my motivation really came from getting to know people. And being in situations

where. . .you actually were talking to someone that was poor. Really poor!

And...(pause)...I think a motivation of my...religious backgrormd, too. I mean, the
Scripture’s always talking about. . .amazing how much it talks about. . .the poor.”

(Robert, w, me, p. 22).
June, the only working class friend, who was a CAP worker at the time, talked about her
own class status and the need for an income as her motivation:
“My paycheck. (Laughs)..l was workin’ for OEO and they paid us mileage, ‘cause we
had a lot of mileage, and then they paid us a salary, a bi-weekly salary, which was
very good.” (June, b, we, p. 11).
In June’s case, she was very pragmatic about the need to earn money, but also doing it by
engaging in something that she ﬁrmly believed was important. These examples offer a
glimpse into the ways that the friends’ more privileged race and class status structured the
ways in which they viewed poverty and the need to assist those who were less fortunate.

In many cases the experience of witnessing or viewing poverty for the ﬁrst time was a

powerful motivator for their involvement.

82

In contrast to these examples, when recipients talked about class as a motivating
factor, they were referring to their lived experiences as poor women on welfare.
Recipients spoke about being drawn to the movement based on their need for concrete
assistance, but continuing in the movement because of wanting to help other poor women
on welfare. Vivian talked about how she ﬁrst got motivated to become involved with
welfare rights:

“We didn’t have any furniture, we didn’t have anything. Just the bag that we brought
[when she and her children came up ﬁom the South, ﬂeeing an abusive husband]. So I
ended up goin’ to the Welfare Department. And my ﬁrst worker, I don’t know how to
say it (chuckles), but I wasn’t getting’ anything done. And so that’s how I ended up at
the group. So, I went to their meeting, and you know, continued, because
Mrs. she was real nice to help me get a.. .at the time you could get
appliances- from the Welfare Department” .like stoves and reﬁigerators. It took some
timeformetogetit, butafterl gotintheirgroupthat’ swhattheyhelpedmewith.”

(V ivian. 19, P0, P- 23)-

 

Recipients were also motivated by the need to counteract the stigma and poor treatment
they received as welfare mothers. Gladys explained:

“Iheardaboutit,IhadheardabouttheorganizaﬁomsoonedayIdecidedtogotothe
meeting. And...I liked it, and that’s how I got involved. It was...teachin’ us about

how bad the social workers [welfare case workers] were. And how they were treating
us. You know? And that we had a right to live just like anybody else.” (Gladys, b, pc,

p. 10).
Another recipient, Delores, spoke about her involvement in terms of what she had to lose
or gain:

“But it was nothin’ for us to go into a welfare ofﬁce and scare, and take it over.
Because we have nothin’ to lose, but we got a world to gain, because we got to break
the ice, that recipients understand, that they can’t keep you in the closet
like they did.” (Delores, b, pc, p. 42).
Although many recipients joined the movement out of concrete needs, they stayed
in the movement for more complicated reasons. Here, Vivian, who had needed the stove

and refrigerator, talked about what kept her participating:

83

“That’s how I got in, cause I was so NEEDY. But once I got into it, I liked it,

and. . .we would go around and try to help others with whatever their problem was,
you know? And we would go to the Welfare Department to. . .try to get new. . .you
know, members to come in, with the group. Well, I was excited about. . .after I

got. . .you know. ..IN the group, that I could help others. That was kinda exciting. They
would cut their lights off, and their gas off in the wintertime, and we had to make calls
to try to get it back on. And so just helpin’ . ...you know. . .and there was always
somethin’ to do.(Vivian, b, pc, p. 7).

When the friends talked about their own class status they spoke about it in a way
that acknowledged their own lack of information or lack of real knowledge about the
difﬁculties of recipients’ lives. They ﬁequently mentioned the shock of seeing or
witnessing poverty for the ﬁrst time. However, although they indicated outrage at the
existence of real poverty, the fact that they were able to remain unaware of these realities
for so long speaks to the intersection of their own race, class, and gender. Here, Martha,
the only upper middle class friend in the sample told a story about the time that a
community activist who she was working with had taken her to visit some of the poor
areas in the community:

“And so he took us to this HOUSE, where the water had been turned off, for
like, two weeks, because of inability to pay the bill. There were cockroaches
everywhere, and some were dropping down ﬁom the ceiling onto our

heads. ..80 I came home to. . .(chuckles), ﬁrst of all I came home and tore off all
my clothes and jumped in the shower (chuckles) you know, to make sure I
hadn’t brought any cockroaches in. And then I got on the phone and started
calling the water department, and demanding (chuckles) that their water he
turned on. Well, of course they needed money, so I had to come up and give
something like 200 dollars to turn their water back on, and...so I saw it
ﬁrsthand. I saw poverty ﬁrsthand, and it just...it just blew me away.” (Martha, w,
umc, p. 4).

Patricia also talked about the impact of seeing the recipients’ problems on a day to day
basis:
“I couldjustseewhatwasgoingon, youknow, and....seewhatwas, I mean, when

you’re in the welfare rights ofﬁce, it’s people constantly calling and saying, ‘My
electricity’s shut off.’ Or, ‘What do I do? My worker just closed my case’, and so on

84

and so forth.”(Patricia, w, me, p. 8).

The friends tended to talk about class in a way that sometimes indicated
understanding of their own privilege, and they also spoke about their attempts to
understand what a life of poverty was like. However, the recipients seemed to speak
about their daily lives through the lens of being poor and being on welfare. They
presented a poverty class standpoint that was informed through the daily struggles and
discrimination they endured due to their race, gender and welfare status. Vivian spoke
powerfully about the difﬁculties with housing that she endured because she was poor:

“And it was terrible, the places that you had to rent, you know. . .The place I lived in,
ﬁnally I got this place, and it. . .you know we lived there, but it was terrible. And then
they started breakin’ in. . .But I think it was really the neighbors. Every time you
leave. . . [it was broken into]. But I didn’t HAVE anything, so sometime they would
just come in the house (chuckles), and. . .and go leave out! So that’s how it is, you
know, up here in the projects.” (Vivian, b, pc, p. 14-15).
Gladys also talked about the daily strife and stigma she experienced by being on welfare:
“They’d [caseworkers] treat, talk to you so bad. . .that’s what would hurt mostly,
is the way they would talk to you, you know, like you’re dirty, nasty, lazy, didn’t want
to work, and all kinda stuff. Where, you take a woman that has six or seven children,
how could she work?...and back in those days, the jobs wasn’t payin’ that much. The
only thing they could do was day work. ‘Cause I did it on many a day. You know?
So. . .they just. ..I just really can’t explain how bad it DID feel.” (Gladys, b, pc, p. 27-
28)
This last example illustrates what Harding (2004) refers to as the “epistemic privilege”
that comes from standpoints, or the particular insights that oppressed groups may attain
(through political struggle, as standpoints are achieved rather than ascribed) about the
social systems which structure their lives. Thus, she indicates that standpoints have the
potential to transform “. . .a source of oppression into a source of knowledge. . .” (p. 10).
Recipients in this study possessed a struggled for and unique knowledge, which informed

their strong poverty-class standpoint. Their understanding of the fact that they held a

85

clearer view of their lives, bmed on their shared class status, represented the standpoint
they indicated. Although this was the standpoint they emphasized within their
participation, it must be noted that their own race and gender also converged with their
class status to help shape their experiences and inﬂuence their lives.

When documents that responded to policy changes during this time period were
examined, a more ambivalent view of poor women was oﬁen seen. These documents
were created by participants in the overall movement, not necessarily by the actual
participants in the oral history interviews. Some of those who created the documents were
recipients and some were non-recipients. In many cases speciﬁc authorship was not
known. Nevertheless, these sources showed how race, class, and gender were emphasized
in response to policy changes.

The use of a well deﬁned poverty class standpoint in the doctunents was not always
clear. Many of the responses to changes in welfare policy did emphasize class and
attempted to focus on how the change would harm the poor as well as present the unique
perspective that those in poverty possessed. However, this seemed conﬂicted, as phrases
such as “working families” or “working poor” were also included. In an informal letter to
citizens of the district, a leader of one of the Oakland County Friends groups claimed that
proposed federal level cuts would result in only those on welfare being eligible for
services such as day-care and family planning, thereby reducing assistance for the
“working poor”.46 Another example of a more complex appeal to class is found in
documents responding to Michigan’s attempt to pass new residency requirements for

welfare recipients. A document from the group Citizens for Welfare Reform describes

 

“Margueritexowaloslti,“WhatredemICuthacksMeantothcromr,0penLeaertoCinzemof0aklmd
County, April, 1973, OC-MWRO Files.

86

residency requirements as uprooting poor working families, and asks whether “. . .poor
working people who aren’t earning enough- should be pulled from their jobs. . 3’." Those
working in the welfare rights movement seemed to emphasize a strong class-based
standpoint at times informed by the critical knowledge gained from a life in poverty, but
reached out across divisions of class at other times. In a press release of a speech given
by George Wiley in 1970, he clearly made an appeal for the middle classes to join in the
movement.48 Therefore the conﬂicted portrayal of class is understandable, as the welfare
rights movement needed to reach out across class lines in order to build support and
sustain itself, while it simultaneously needed to maintain a sense of class solidarity or
insider status for recipients.
Importance of Family of Origin Class Status

Another example of the emphasis on working poor or working families as opposed
to the poor or welfare recipients, can be seen in the ways in which the friends and the
recipients in this study talked about their family of origin class status. Most friends in the
study indicated (by their own identiﬁcation as well as by the occupation and educational
status of parents) that they were either poor (4) or working class (2) growing up. Only
two friends indicated growing up in middle class or upper middle class homes. Of those
who grew up poor, their fathers worked as either farmers or scrap collectors. Of those
who indicated that they were raised in working class families, their fathers worked as bus
drivers, or factory workers. Their mothers rarely worked outside the home, or only

worked later in life. When mothers did work they most often worked as seamstresses or

 

‘7 Norm Thomas, “Justice to the Poor vs. the Residency Requirement”, press release. June, 22, 1971, WEU
Collection, box 2, folder 1].
“ George Wiley, “Welfare Rights Speech”, press release, March 19, 1970, Wiley Papers, box 17, folder 3.

87

in other domestic work. Those friends who were raised in poor or working class families
were careful to indicate that they never received any welfare assistance and that their
fathers had always worked.

One white ﬁiend was brought up in a middle class household, and another in an
upper middle class household. Patricia, from a middle class background, had a father who
was an accountant. She said that although she came from a solid middle class family, the
presence of a disabled family member inﬂuenced her desire to help others who were less
fortunate. Martha, from an upper middle class background, had a father who was an
executive. She talked about the need to help others, and spoke of that need coming from
the fact that she had been granted much privilege in her own life.

Recipients in this study were raised in working class or poor families. Their fathers’
jobs ranged ﬁom coal miner to cab driver to carpenter to truck driver and night
watchman. Vivian indicated growing up in the rural South as a poor black farmer’s
daughter. Their mothers occasionally engaged in jobs such as notary public or nurse’s
aid. The recipients did not typically talk about whether their family had ever received
welfare assistance, and did not emphasize that their fathers had always worked. This was
something that only the ﬁiends who indicated being raised in either a poor or working
class family felt the need to highlight. Friends frequently told me that their families did
not have much, but they were never lacking and never received any type of welfare.

Both Patricia and Martha, who were raised in a middle class and an upper middle
class family, acknowledged their own class privileged upbringing, and tried to link this
understanding to their desire to participate in the welfare rights movement. Family of

origin class status was visible as a motivating feature only for Patricia and Martha, who

88

both admitted their class privilege growing up, and talked about how this awareness was
linked to their dedication to working for those less privileged. Although all of the
participants’ early lives were structured by the intersection of their race, as well as class
status and gender, only Martha talked about how race, class, and gender intersected in her
experiences growing up.
“I HAD been always interested in Civil Rights, since I learned that a woman my
grandmother’s age couldn’t read or write - she was black — one of our servants in
- - not mine, but my parents’. My parent’s servant. And so I used to...
teach her her ABCs and numbers, when I was about eight And so when I was a child,
I realized there was ‘something wrong in Denmark,’ (chuckles) with somebody my
grandmother’s age that couldn’t read or write. So I always had an interest in working
with blacks. And the NAACP used to have big meetings, the early meetings, in [my
hometown], and I would read about them in the paper. And I'd sort of want to go
there, but of course, it was in the, in the Negro section, so you didn’t dare go
there....and... so it wasn’t until I came out here that I joined the branch of
the NAACP. And I've been a board member ever since.” (Martha, w, umc, p. 2).
Martha’s story highlights her childhood discovery of her own privilege. Her awareness as
a young child that unequal opportrmities existed based on race, class and gender,
impacted her desire to work with civil rights groups later in her life.
Race as Diﬂerence/ Race as Sameness
In the interviews, race could be talked about in a way that emphasized difference.
It was most often brought up by the ﬁiends rather than the recipients, and the African
American ﬁiends speciﬁcally talked about race as a form of solidarity with recipients
rather than difference. The Aﬁican American friends illustrated a strong race based
standpoint that emphasized their shared experiences of racial discrimination, allowing
them to form linkages with recipients. June, the only working class ﬁiend, claimed an
insider status when working with the recipients:

“Sort of, a insider, Cause most of a lot of pe0ples I had known down through the

89

years. And. . .and. . .either known them through the years or either worked in some

sorta organization with them. They, some of ‘em looked at it as, one of

them. . .(chuckles) that had got a job with the County.” (June, b, we, p. 15-16).
However, this race based standpoint was also informed by their experiences as women,
mothers, working class and middle class. Although June shared a historical legacy of
discrimination that seemed to grant her insider status with recipients, she also
remembered that when she drove recipients to their meetings they made her stay outside
in the car, since she was not on welfare. The non-recipient status she occupied acted as a
barrier on one dimension of participation, while a shared racial status simultaneously
acted as a connection on another level.

Evelyn, the only Aﬁican American middle class ﬁiend in the sample, talked about
the importance of the Civil Rights Movement and how that related to her work with
welfare rights:

“It was just, we had been you know involved. . .very, very strongly involved in the
Civil Rights Movement.....l think it was, was really...I want to say an, an out-,
outreach or an out-branch of. . .the Civil Rights thing.” (Evelyn, b, me, p. 17).

Throughout her discussions of her past social action work, Evelyn indicated a
critical knowledge that she had achieved, based on her experiences and struggles as a
black woman engaged in social movement work. Although she emphasized a strong race-
based standpoint, class, as well as gender also intersected in her participation in
interesting ways. She became very distraught when the recipient members planned and
carried out a baby shower for her:

“When I found it out, and I said, well, you can’t do that, you know? You don’t have
enough money. And one of the mothers, and I don’t, I didn’t think I’d ever forget
which one- but one of the mothers said, ‘You don’t have a choice. We’re doing this.’
And I had stuff for this kid, like I was working, and my husband was working,

and. . .you know, we were not missing a, a minute of anything, not missing a penny.
We both had family that was supportive, you know?” (Evelyn, b, me, p. 16).

While it may be assumed that race and gender can converge in a shared standpoint, it
may not be enough to connect women from differing class positions. June Jordan (2001)
wrote about this phenomenon in an essay about her vacation to the Bahamas. She
described her feeling of separateness from the everyday life of the black maid who
cleaned her room. While they shared the sameness of race, their different class status
made them seem as if they were each from different worlds (Jordan, 2001). The Aﬁican
American friends in this study did view their race-based standpoint as a source of
connection with recipients, but they were unable to cross the social class chasm that made
their lived experiences different. Particularly for Evelyn, the unseen ways that class
intersected with gender and race in her participation acted as a barrier to connections with
recipients.

While race was perceived as a dimension of solidarity with recipients for the black
friend members, the white friends identiﬁed more division around race. While both the
white and African American friends located their participation in the Civil Rights
Movement as critical to their involvement in the welfare rights movement, white
members emphasized how race was intersected in the different tactics used within the
welfare rights movement. They claimed that the African American women in the
movement were more militant and had a stronger sense of self than the white women.
When asked how race intersected within the movement, Patricia claimed:

“Well. . .as I say, the real militants were, the REAL militants were the black people in
Detroit.” (Patricia, w, me, p. 17).

Anna, comparing the Detroit recipients to those from the suburbs, talked about the way

blacks and whites internalized the shame of welfare. She claimed:

91

“Whereas in Detroit, so many people were poor, and they were healthier in a way.
These women were healthier, because they didn’t so much think it was their fault. Out
here, you were sure if you were poor, it was your fault.” (Anna, w, are, p. 13).
This image of the typical African American welfare rights member indicates a speciﬁc
“raced” and “classed” view of the women’s tactics within the movement. While no one
disagrees with the fact that welfare rights members did use militant tactics, many of the
friends in this study tended to talk about the different tactics that were used by recipients
as opposed to friends, in raced and classed terms, making assumptions about recipients
that conjured up stereotypical images of a strong black militant welfare recipient. This
image contrasts starkly with the following comment made by Gladys, indicating that
recipients’ lives were much more complex than the stereotypical assumptions:
“1 have always been. . .my feelin’s has always been easily hurt. You know? And I had
got tired of be’in treated like a second class citizen. I wanted to be...just independent
and be, and look just like everybody else. You know? I wanted to wear decent clothes.
I wanted a nice place to stay. (Gladys, b, pc, p. 11).
later in the interview Gladys continued, summing up her past experiences,
“When I look back on my life, and think about. . .(pause). . .oh, it hurts.. .you wonder
how can people be so cruel? Everybody didn’t have the opportunity to go to school
and get a decent job. No. So. . .they had to make do. They didn’t have no way to
protect themselves” [ﬁ-om hurtful treatment].” (Gladys, b, pc, p. 18).

All of the recipients in this study talked about the stigma associated with being on
welfare and the poor treatment they received from welfare workers and the general public
as being major motivations for their continued involvement in welfare rights. Occupying
leadership roles in the welfare rights movement and helping other poor women allowed

them to combat some of the negative treatment they had received, but they still

remembered this poor treatment for the way it felt.

92

Victoria, the only white recipient in this sample, also provides a contradiction to
the ﬁiends’ view of the racial division in types of tactics and level of militancy. She
offers a very class conscious and militant view of her own involvement in the movement.
Here she talked about when she ﬁrst applied for welfare and how she soon became active
with welfare rights:

“So I went in and applied for ADC. And I... for a while there, I did not...you know, I
didn’t work at all. And I was very politically active (chuckles) during that time. I guess
they created a monster.” (Victoria, w, pc, p. 23).

This participant, although she was white, immediately felt a “right” to welfare and
actively rebelled against the assumptions and stereotypes of caseworkers. These
examples show that the reality of how recipients experienced welfare rights activism was
much more complex than the essentialized raced and classed images that were sometimes
assumed. The image of extreme racialized “difference” was frequently emphasized by the
white middle class ﬁiends in this sample, in a way that created more division between
recipients and non-recipients, and increasingly led to a separation in duties and roles
within the movement. It was this kind of dichotomous thinking, division, and increasing
divisiveness within the welfare rights movement overall that tended to make it weaker in
the long rtm. At the national level, when inﬁghting and conﬂict increased within the
NWRO, membership levels and overall momentum declined (West, 1981).

Race could also be emphasized separately and divisively within the documents that
responded to welfare policy changes. When FAP or work requirements were fought
against, many times the issue was framed in strong race-based language. In a NWRO

publication to protest FAP, the plan is called “anti-black” and a form of “institutional

93

racism”.49 In a document created by the Detroit area Citizens for Welfare Reform titled
Work Requirements, forced work requirements are deﬁned as a “. . .way that the
government is advocating slavery and supporting slave wage industries”.so George Wiley
would commonly use race in documents aimed at a black audience. In a letter to
Congressman Charles Diggs and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Wiley
asked for their help in defeating FAP, calling it racist and claiming that it represented the
“brutal repression against ﬁve million black welfare mothers and children”.5 ‘

Although race was sometimes used strategically when targeting speciﬁc policy
changes that the movement felt were egregious, it was also emphasized by African
American participants in the movement in a way that indicated a strong racialized
standpoint, but also indicated the intersection of class. In a 1969 newsletter to all
Michigan welfare rights groups, the Co-Chair for one of the Detroit groups made the
following statement as a response to threats to decrease monies allotted for welfare
recipients:

“We had nothing to say about being brought back to this country. By this, I mean, we,
the Black people, but the poor whites have it had also. We that are Black are the best
that Africa had to offer. We had to be the best, to survive the trip over, under horrible
conditions, and have survived the agonies and hardships of the last 300 years.”(p. 3).52

Within the sample used for this study, white middle class and upper middle class
ﬁ'iends focused on race as difference, and as a form of division when speaking about the
differences in roles and responsibilities of those participating in the movement. Their

own privileged race and class statuses converged within their experiences as women and

 

’9 NWRO, “The Nixon Plan is Inadequate”, press release, n.d., Wiley Papers, box 17, folder 3.

5° Detroit Area Citizens for Welfare Reform Steering Committee, “Work Requirements”, minutes, April 2,
1971, DCCR Collection, box 82, folder l4.

5' George Wiley, “Welfare Reform”, letter to Congressman Charles Diggs and members of the
Congressional Black Caucus, May 27, 1971, Wiley Papers, box 16, folder 3.

’2 Mrs. Dawn Williams, Jeffries Welfare Rights Organimion Co—Chair, Mother Power: Michigan Welfare
Rights Organization newsletter, June 1969, George A. Wiley Papers, box 25, folder 5.

94

mothers, allowing for an emphasis to be placed on race in the difference in tactics, while
their own higher level of access to power and resources was obscured. Race was
emphasized as a form of solidarity for African American friends and recipients. When
recipients (both black and white) spoke of race they seemed to indicate an understanding
of the convergence of class as well as gender. This illustrates a form of shared poverty-
class standpoint.
Other Social Movement Activity

Historian Sara Evan’s (1979) research on the development of the Second Wave
Women’s Movement, identiﬁed women’s work in the Civil Rights Movement and New
Left movements as key connections to the subsequent establishment of second wave
feminism. The conceptual framework for this dissertation also identiﬁes possible
connections between participants’ past social movement activity and their involvement in
the welfare rights movement. All of those interviewed in this study were asked questions
about their previous social movement activity. All of the friends indicated involvement in
other social movement work prior to becoming involved with welfare rights. Only two of
the recipients indicated involvement in previous social movement activity. Race was a
stated major focus of participants’ involvement in other social movement activity.

Friends indicated their participation in a variety of civil rights groups prior to their
involvement in welfare rights. All eight had been active in groups focused on racial
equality, including the nationally focused C.O.R.E., the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the migrant farm workers movement, and

smaller local groups focused on the open housing movement and integration of Detroit’s

95

suburbs, church based civil rights groups, and groups they had formed themselves in
order to combat housing discrimination, police brutality, and school segregation.

Two of the recipients, one African American (Delores) and one white (Victoria),
indicated that they were also involved in the Civil Rights Movement prior to becoming
involved in welfare rights. Delores spoke of heavy involvement in southem based civil
rights activities as well as later involvement in Detroit activities. Victoria talked about her
involvement in a local civil rights group as well as the NAACP.

When speaking about their motivation to become involved in civil rights activities,
two of the ﬁiends indicated that their race motivated them, but in differing ways. Evelyn
spoke of the segregation in her hometown that her parents and grandparents had endured:

“Part of it was just that the things that were going on were unfair. And I remember
hearing stories from my parents and grandparents, about some of the things that had
happened during their lifetime, which sounded, you know, just totally insane. Like my
mother had told me that they lived in for a number of years. But I
remember her telling me at one time, we were riding somewhere, and she said, “Well
you know we weren’t able to. . .black people didn’t live past this street.” And I was
growing up there, and people lived wherever they wanted to. When they ﬁrst came
there, they moved from Illinois to Ohio, she said that you just didn’t live past here, but
you didn’t say anything to anybody. You just, wherever you were supposed to be,
that’s where you were!” (Evelyn, b, me, p.7-8 ).

 

She continued:

“We had heard stories ofdifferent things that had happened to families and black
people, so we were aware of the discrimination that went on. And although the times
were a little different, there was still discrimination. And when you hear your parents
talk about it, and talk about [how] they couldn’t live this place, or they couldn’t work
that place...and when you grow up knowing that, when it comes up like the focus
came up on it.. .My, my brothers were involved [in the Civil Rights Movement], and
you know, that’s just a part of your life, because you can’t keep saying, ‘well it’s okay
this doesn’t eﬁ‘ect me.’ It effects everybody.” (Evelyn, b, me, p. 8).

96

Evelyn talked about how stories from her childhood as well as current discrimination and

racism politicized her and gave her no choice but to become involved in the Civil Rights

Movement.

Anna, a white middle class ﬁiend, talked about her involvement in church based
groups that critically examined racism in the community, and how this helped her and
other non-recipients become politicized:

“There was a movement at the time, called the Christian Family Movement. And we
had study guides. And we looked at race. And they changed the subject every couple
years, but we looked at race for a couple years, and there must’ve been about 25
groups in that parish that would meet every couple of weeks. And it was an observe-
judge-act approach. In other words, there would be some questions to look at in your
community, or your state or whatever, on a question of race, and segregation, and then
people would take assignments, and they would come back, and we would talk about
what they had found out, and then we would talk about what we can do. It politicized
thousands and thousands of Catholics, I can tell you that.” (Anna, w, me, p. 4).

The two recipients who spoke about race as a motivating factor in their civil rights
work were both very active in this movement. Similar to how Evelyn spoke of her
involvement; Delores, the Aﬁican American recipient who was very involved, spoke
about her family’s profound experiences with racism in the segregated south, recalling:

“We had to be in it, ‘cause we were by default. ‘Cause we ended up in Texas ‘cause
my grandfather got sick and tired of his little boss (who was young enough to be his
grandson) takin’ advantage of him. And he slapped Dad [her grandfather] for the third
time, and Dad stabbed him. He said, “Three times, you’re out.” And so we had to get
Dad out of Louisiana.” (Delores, b, pc, p. 2-3).

She continued with a story about her favorite teacher:

“In Dallas, Supervisor head of the school board, had forbid any black
teachers from movin’ into Heights. . .which was an all-white area that was
beginning to change...And what happened during that period of time .my teacher and
her husband moved into the subdivision. She was the teacher for the Dallas public
school system. An art teacher an EXCELLENT art teacher. And he I think was a
salesperson for women’s girdles and stuff like that. . .And they moved in, and she lost
her job.” (Delores, b, pc, p. 3-4).

 

97

She also felt her family encouraged her to be involved:

“My grandfather, my mother’s father, said, “Look. I had to act like an Uncle Tom in
order to survive. You don’t. Stay involved.” (Delores, b, pc, p.8 ).

Victoria, the white recipient who was also involved in civil rights activities, talked
about her motivation coming from learning ﬁ'om others about the kinds of discrimination
they faced on a daily basis, and then realizing that action needed to be taken:

“The point of [a local civil rights group] was to let US understand what they
were. . .about! What their problems were. And it.. .it did a lot of good. Of that group,
that was the goal... “This is what’s, what we are faced with.” And... “What we can’t
really. . .overcome, just from the black point of view.” That was the pm‘pose of

. It’s just that, once it got started, and you started seeing all the

problems. . .then it was felt, “We need to do something about the problems.” It’s just
not enough to say, ‘oh they don’t pay any attention to you when you go into Welfare
and tell them something, because, you feel it’s because you’re black.’ You know? And
then to say, ‘Well, gee that’s really a problem. Now I tmderstand.’ Because now I
understand, we’ve got to do something about it.” (Victoria, w, pc, p. 45).

 

Overall, participants in this study most frequently cited the Civil Rights Movement
as the social movement they were involved in prior to welfare rights work, with all the
ﬁiends and two recipients indicating involvement. Race, as lived experience, seemed to
be a strong motivational factor for both the African American ﬁiend and the Aﬁ'ican
American recipient, as they talked about their family’s experiences of discrimination and
its strong impact on them. When the white ﬁiends and the white recipient who were
active in the Civil Rights Movement spoke about their own motivation, they, too, spoke
of race. They talked about the experiences of hearing about or seeing racism within their
commrmities, rather than any experience of racism. The middle and upper middle class
white friends, as well as the white poverty class recipient spoke of their motivation in the

same way. They emphasized the importance of learning about discrimination and

98

witnessing discrimination within their own community in their burgeoning sense that
they needed to become involved in civil rights work.

Gender simultaneously intersected with both race and class within civil rights
work, although all of these dimensions may not have been visible at all times. In speaking
about their participation in the Civil Rights Movement, one friend and one recipient
talked about the impact of gender. Ruth indicated that there were problems with men in
the movement trying to control the women, and make all of the decisions:

“We were having. . .very bad feelings between the men and the women, in

C.O.R.E. . ..It, it really wasn’t racial it was female. . .I think it was some personalities,
you know? Some of these men. . .who really felt they should tell us what to do. They
were outrageous.” (Ruth, w, me, p. 6).

Delores also spoke of the impact of gender in her own participation in the Civil Rights
Movement. When asked what roles the women in the movement fulﬁlled, she claimed
that the women did much of the work:

[women’s roles were] “same as a lot of the men. You know. . .they mighta’ had a lot of
the men over the projects. . .but, when it got really down to doin’ the work, and stuﬁ‘
like that, you know, the women did a lot of that work. But I would be in the ofﬁce a
lot. That’s when I ﬁrst started learning how to deal with mimeograph machines,

and. . .So we, we did a lot of. . .clerical work, but we was out in the ﬁeld too. And we
did a lot of the testing, and you know, runnin’ the campaigns, and stuff like that.”

(Delores, b, pc, p.13 ).

She later told a story about how the male leadership tried to give her and her female
friend a less risky assigmnent:

“And then all of a sudden they gave us our assignments. And we called a meeting, to
boycott. We get in there in the morning, we all sit at the table with one another, and
refuse to talk. Leadership was was startin’ to say, “Oh SHIT, what done happened?”
And they called us into the room. And we began to tell ‘em, “We’re not gonna accept
the assignments. Check this- we’ll go back. NOW what you gonna do?” One told me,
I’ll never forget, [he said] “I’m gonna call your husband.” I said, “Call his mama too,
hear? ‘Cause ain’t no husband, no brother, no daddy, or none of ‘em controls me.”
And then I said, “By the way, [my husband] sittin’ right here by me, ‘cause

he knows where his bread is buttered at.” So, you know, we broke ‘em, and we got re-

assigned.” (Delores, b, pc, p. 19 ).
It is interesting to note that only Ruth and Delores mentioned the intersection of gender in
their civil rights work. They spoke of their own dissatisfaction at times with women’s
roles in their past social movement work for civil rights.

While race seemed to be an important motivator for involvement in other social
movement activity, the Aﬁican American participants framed this motivation from within
their own lived experiences of racism, while the white participants spoke of being
motivated through witnessing racism and discrimination against others within their
communities. This illustrates the ways in which race converged with gender to structure
the earlier social movement work that women engaged in. While African American and
white women in the welfare rights movement, as well as middle class and poverty class
women, indicated participating in the Civil Rights Movement, the ways in which they
experienced their participation and motivation to become involved was clearly different
based on the varying ways that their own race intersected with their gender.

Use of Dtﬂerence

An overarching question of this study was how difference was manifested and used
in past mobilization efforts of women in the welfare rights movement. A major ﬁnding is
that difference was most often emphasized around class, with a dichotomy of welfare
recipient and non-recipient created by both ﬁ'iends and recipients. Race was emphasized
as difference most often in discussions of leadership or control of the movement with
white ﬁiends mentioning racial differences most ﬁequently. The two Aﬁican American
friends focused on race as a way of reaching solidarity with recipients. The points at

which difference was used by both friends and recipients most frequently revolved

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around identity and experiences of living on welfare as well as beliefs about the proper
roles for friends vs. recipients. When we analyze the ways that race, class, and gender
formed interlocking categories which structured women’s lives, we can see that even
categories left unsaid or unmentioned served to shape how difference was emphasized.
Due to their speciﬁc experiences as poor black women, difference was an important
concept that recipients purposely used in order to legitimize and assert their rights to
control the movement. Within the context of the unequal power relations they struggled
within, the need to maintain control and leadership were understandable features of their
participation impacting how difference was deﬁned. This represents how they responded
to their social location and placement within these unequal power relations, and
illustrates their own agency. Friends purposely used difference to distinguish themselves
as separate from those on welfare. Their privileged race and class positions structured
their assumptions and use of difference as separation.

Documents that responded to changes in welfare policy indicate that difference was
used in a way that encomaged separation of poor women’s issues, noting that policies
targeted certain groups, and thus were only of concern to these groups. If welfare policy
is perceived as only affecting a small group of people, it may make attracting a wider
base of opposition to the policy more difficult. These uses of difference did allow
recipients to claim and emphasize their own standpoint as poor women, and poor black
women particularly, but it also allowed the white middle class friends to keep themselves
separate, thereby viewing their own needs and goals as segregated from those of whom
they were trying to help. In the long term this separation may have led to a less uniﬁed

and possibly weaker welfare rights movement.

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Chapter 7
Focusing on Similarities
“But a lot of the people that did support it, and worked with the Metro Coalition and
the Friends of Welfare Rights, these were mothers. And they were very sensitive, very
sensitive to that. Much more so, probably, than me, who did not have children, not a
mOthef- -Robert, member of a non-recipient welfare rights group in Detroit53

The idea of similarities or sameness presented in this chapter is meant as a way of
examining race, class, and gender not only as individual categories of analysis, but as
possible categories of connection in women’s social movement work (Collins, 1993). In
this chapter places where similarities were emphasized are analyzed within the sample
and the documents. However, it is important to note that an individual’s lack of emphasis
on one or more categories does not negate the inﬂuence of those categories in shaping
their experiences and ordering their lives.

Friends emphasized the similarities among all movement participants more often
than recipients, focusing on shared gender. Although matemalism was present in both
friends’ and recipients’ participation, how each group viewed, experienced, and
constructed matemalsirn was different. Gender intersected with class and race within the
differing constructs of motherhood presented by friends and recipients.

Gender
Although there is no woman’s standpoint that can refer to all women’s
experiences, Jaggar (2004) posits that as women begin to deconstruct and re-evaluate the

world and its assumptions based on gender, they will logically need to include the

standpoints and experiences of all women. By examining how gender was lived and

 

’3 Robert, white, middle class member ofa welfare rights group in Southeast Michigan, personal interview,
Oct. 12, 2005, Detroit

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experienced for both the recipients and the friends of welfare rights, and how race and
class intersected gender, we can begin to work towards understanding women’s
standpoints in a way that allows variation. In this study, gender was most ﬁequently
noted as a motivating factor for the friends’ involvement in welfare rights. This was

illustrated by Anna:

“So it was a, you know. . .it was a short move to see that women were being
manipulated around their economic security. In other words, women were in bad
marriages because they had no economic options. Women were in abusive marriages
because they had no economic options. And then when they moved, to take the only
option open to them, which was state support, some kind of state support. . . [they were
stigmatized]” (Anna, w, mc, p. 5).

Although friends indicated that gender and their shared experiences as women
were important motivations for their involvement, gender was speciﬁcally intersected
with race and sexuality in friends’ spoken beliefs about women’s behavior. While those
ﬁiends who mentioned gender indicated that recipients (as well as all women) should
have the right to control their own sexuality, they also evidenced conﬂicted beliefs and
assumptions about women on welfare. When pointing out stereotypes about welfare
mothers’ sexuality, they also indicated their own assumptions. Here, Anna also talked

about the abolishment of the “man in the house” rule and the intersection of sexuality:

“I remember when there was litigation around that. I think it is subtle, but it has
always been there. Like, you know the very people that would rage against
contraception. . .would say, ‘Why are you havin’ these kids anyway?’ Or there was a
certain view that you were dealing with promiscuous women. I also think that
women. . .worked the streets a little bit, because they didn’t have food for their kids.
And I don’t just believe that because, you know, it’s sort of. . .what? Dramatic or
something. I believe that it happened. Exactly how is it, if you have no car, and no
skills, you’re supposed to survive? You either attach yourselfto some male who

can, you know, help you, or you are on the streets essentially. So, I think that sexuality
has ALWAYS been in here. I think that it has been a way of controlling women. I
think that our really. . .diﬂicult and impressive assistance systems, indeed have been a

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way to control women and their sexuality, which is a threat to a lotta people.” (Anna,
w, me, p. 18).

Martha illustrated the importance of gender intersected with sexuality in her motivation
for involvement when she emphasized her view that poor women were having so many

unwanted children:

“Because I saw so MANY poor women just dragged down by having these
GIGANTIC families to take care of. . .I became a BIG advocate for abortion

rights...” (Martha, w, umc, p. 22).
She continued, emphasizing her strong stance on abortion rights:

I just can’t see a poor mother being forced to have another BABY just because her
husband is amorous or something. You know? I just. . .I just think it’s wrong. . ..”

(Martha, w, umc, p. 26).
An Aﬁican American middle class ﬁiend, Evelyn, talked about gender and sexuality
within the movement, indicating her own ambivalence about black women on welfare.
Although she claimed being opposed to the common stereotypes that even she herself had
to battle to some extent based on her social location as an Aﬁican American woman, she
was conﬂicted:

“And then there were some people, just because of the bias or the stupidity. . .that
thought they had. . .you know, ‘They all have boyfriends.’ And I told somebody, I said
“You know, if they do have ﬁiends. . .then they aren’t the ones that are in the group.”
And that’s the truth. The ones that came to the welfare movement, the ones that were
working with us you know, there weren’t boyfriends waitin’ in the car to take them
someplace. There weren’t, you know, boyfriends at the homes when we called. You
know, I said, “There are people on welfare that have boyﬁiends, because the system

won’t let ‘em be together and still get support for their children...but the ones that
were doin that, weren’t coming to the group.” (Evelyn, b, me, p. 20).

These examples of how gender intersected with sexuality, class, and race within the

beliefs held by some of the friends provide a backdrop for the following story. Gladys

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spoke about her difﬁculty ﬁnding and secluing birth control and her subsequent
involuntary sterilization:
“And the minute I got here. ...The stuff that I was usin’ in the South to keep me from
getting’ pregnant, when I got here, I couldn’t ﬁnd it! So I got pregnant! But after I
had my child, the doctor came in, and he said...(I had a C-section, ‘cause I had a
hernia). . . the doctor said I was too weak to have the baby, because they gonna do a
Cesarean and correct the hernia...So...he came in that evenin’, after he did the
surgery. And he asked me, you know, how many children I had. I said, “Well I got
three now.” He said, ‘You want any more?’ I said, “No, I didn’t want the last one.”
And he said...[she stops and says retrospectively]...But it was, I guess the Lord’s will
for me to get her, cause I always wanted a girl you know? So, he said, ‘Well, I’m
gonna tell you somethin’, I let myself be allowed to- you can sue me- I tied your
tubes.’ He said, ‘Because if you have another child its gonna kill you.’ I said, “You
know what? If I could I would get up and hug your neck. Cause that was the best thing
in the world you EVER could’ve done to me was tie my tubes.” (Gladys, b, pc, p.17-
18 ).
Although Gladys relayed this experience as having a positive outcome, the reality is that
her consent for the sterilization was never obtained. The fact that she struggled to ﬁnd
access to birth control on a regular basis before she became pregnant with her third child,
and that the sterilization was done without her knowledge or consent, illustrates the ways
that her own race and class status intersected with gender in her access to birth control
and power over her own sexuality.

This example illustrates that while the white friends in this study were motivated to
get involved in welfare rights through their shared standpoint arolmd gender and that they
were concerned about women’s control over their own sexuality; their privileged race and
class status converged to produce lived experiences that were different ﬁom those of the
recipients. Their privileged class and race allowed them to view gender and motherhood
in a more idealized way. They indicated a strong gender based standpoint that was

producedthroughtheirownawarenessofbeingawomanandamotherandthelmequal

105

power relations that this represented compared to men. However, their own privileged
race and class intersected with their experiences as women, allowing them to obscure the
importance of race and class within their own lives and to emphasize a shared
“sameness” of gender, in their participation in the movement.

Recipients experienced their gender status through lives intersected by racial and
class based discrimination. This discrimination represented the “everyday lives” of
recipients. In contrast to friends, recipients emphasized a strong poverty class standpoint.
This was informed by their struggles and experiences of discrimination as poor, and in
most cases black, women on welfare. They illustrated a standpoint that emphasized their
class status, but their lives were also structured by the convergence of race and gender.

The different perspectives that white middle class and upper middle class women
held compared to those of poor black women supports Polatinick’s (1996) research on
white and black women’s liberation groups of the 1960s which found that poverty and
working class black women talked about access to birth control and decisions about the
number of children to have as critical women’s issues (Polatnick, 1996), rather than
decisions about whether to have children at all. The different perspectives discovered in
this dissertation also support Blurnberg’s (1980) study of white women civil rights
activists, and the ﬁnding that those studied were motivated through matemalism. The
white friends in this dissertation were motivated to participate in the welfare rights
movement through a shared gender and motherhood status, and also a use of matemalism
that reﬂects what Blumberg found.

The white friends in this study viewed women and motherhood through the lens of

a privileged social location based on race and class. Due to these statuses they were

106

allowed more choices around sexuality than recipients were allowed. While the friends
did share the socially constructed category of woman, due to the intersection of race and
class in recipients’ as well as friends’ lives they did not experience gender in the same
way. While issues of birth control and access were something that all women confronted
during this time period, recipients experienced ﬁlrther lack of access based on being poor
and being black.

Gender and gendered images of mothers and their children were often used in
attempts to combat the negative changes to welfare policy that occru'red during the War
on Poverty. Documents that responded to changes in welfare policy frequently
emphasized gender. Gender was used to portray changes in welfare policy as harmful to
poor mothers. Images of a stay at home mother needing to care for her children were used
to defeat the Family Assistance Plan and the Work Incentive program. The 1969
testimony of Beulah Sanders, George Wiley, and Carl Rachlin before the House Ways
and Means Committee made the claim that Nixon’s FAP would force mothers out of their
homes, leaving their children in “government nm centers”.54 Yet, this same testimony
also included a request for adequate jobs for all women who choose to work “. . .in
addition to their primary job as mother and homemaker”.55 This illustrates ambivalence
about the use of gender within the welfare rights movement. A NWRO document initially
called for the elimination of WIN because it forced mothers to work when they were

needed full time to care for their children, then stated that WIN had helped some women

 

5’ Beulah Sanders, George Wiley, and Carl Rachlin, “Statement to the House Ways and Means
Committee”, testimony, October 27, 1969, Wiley Papers, box 17, folder 3.

s’Beulah Sanders, George Wiley, and Carl Rachlin, “Statement to the House Ways and Means Committee”,
May, Octoberl7, 1969, Wiley Papers, box 17, folder 3.

107

get an education and training to ﬁnd jobs.56 In a 1969 recipient newsletter, WIN is
discussed as an opportunity for members to sign their children up to receive free college
educations, since this could be counted as the training component of WIN.57 Although the
author was not wholeheartedly endorsing the program, there seemed to be an attempt to
ﬁnd positive aspects of the policy for poor women and their children. The gendered
responses to social welfare policies attempted to ﬁt cohesively with the idealized image
of woman and motherhood, but the realities of the class and race differences of welfare
recipients resulted in a conﬂicted portrayal of gender. The message was that welfare
mothers should be able to stay home and care for their children just as white middle class
women had been encouraged to do for decades and they should also be able to work
outside the home as long as it didn’t conﬂict with their child-rearing duties and was
voluntary. Matemalism was used simultaneously to demand that mothers be given
enough funding to stay home and care for their children, and that poor black mothers not
be left out of the opportunity structure of education, training, and better work
opportunities, as they had been historically.
Practical Matemalism
Overall, the friends most frequently focused on motherhood as an important

motivating factor in their involvement. This could be seen in Anita’s statement:

“Because they had small children at the time, I had small children, and it was just

something that I, I decided would be more of interest to me than to study. Which, the
League of Women Voters studies issues. They don’t take action.” (Anita, w, me, p. I).

 

5’ NWRO, “Help Fight Workfare”, newsletter, September, 1969, Welfare Fighter.
5“ImportantforMember'swithChildrenGraduatingfromI-Iigh Schoolinere”,MotherPower: Michigan
Welfare Rights Organization Newsletter, April, 1969, Wiley Papers, box 25, folder 5.

108

The ﬁiends tended to emphasize matemalism in their participation in the
movement, the importance of motherhood, and the sense that it was a shared experience.
Evelyn described motherhood in the movement:

“We didn’t we weren’t doing workshops on motherhood, but you know, people
were. . .would share experiences.” (Evelyn, b, mc, P. 15).
In response to the question of whether women worked outside the home during that time
period, another ﬁiend, Patricia, also described the importance of motherhood:

“Mothering was considered something you should do. That was yom' ﬁrst job.”
(Patricia, w, me, p. 26).

Friends’ use of matemalism represented an idealistic view of motherhood and
childrearing that presented a strong motivation for their involvement in welfare rights
organizing. Some scholars have identiﬁed this idealistic view of motherhood as related to
the “family ethic” which historically constructed the idealized image of a female
caregiver and a male breadwinner as standards for all families to strive towards
(Abramovitz, 1996). In contrast, recipients took a more everyday practical approach to
motherhood because the intersection of their parenting experiences with class and race
was more clearly visible to them. While matemalism may have been used to garner white
middle class support for the movement, welfare recipients viewed motherhood
differently, and thus indicated what 1 refer to as practical matemalism 5‘ This type of
matemalism was inﬂuenced by recipients’ daily struggles as poor welfare mothers, and
was shaped by their race, class, gender, and motherhood status. Although race, class, and

gender also intersected within friends’ use of matemalism, the different social locations

 

5' The concept of a practical matemalism was only made visible through the use of an intersectional
analysis which allowed the researcher to see the ways in which race, class, and gender formed interlocking
categories shaping the lens through which recipients viewed motherhood and inﬂuencing the type of
matemalism that emerged from their experiences.

109

they occupied meant that different types of matemalism developed for ﬁiends and
recipients.
Recipients’ use of a practical matemalism can be seen in contrast to the type of
matemalism emphasized by ﬁiends, as it represented a practical, pragmatic approach to
motherhood as well as a way of emphasizing a desire to help other poor women and
children. Practical matemalism was a way of viewing their social movement work
through the lens of their experiences of discrimination and stigrnatization as poor black
women, while simultaneously being driven by the critical needs of their children. Gladys
talked about the problems of a welfare mother:
“Wasn’t too many people help’in us out, ‘cause they, too, thought it was a disgrace.
You know, ‘Got all those babies, and then you have to take care of ‘em.’ They really
don’t know how bad it made you feel.” (Gladys, b, pc, p. 16).

She continued:
“I feel like, you know, back in those days, you know. . .it wasn’t too much. . .women
didn’t know how to protect themselves too much [referring to birth control]. And there

really wasn’t too much for, and they were gettin’ those children and, and no way to
take care of ‘em, and the kids suffered along with the, with the mother.” (Gladys, b,

pc, p- 16)-
Vivian, another African American recipient, illustrated some of the daily difficulties of
being a mother on welfare:
“And the hardest thing was, really, try’ in to get a place to stay. I would call...and I
would-, [the landlord would ask] ‘How many kids?’- “I got ﬁve.” That was the end of
the conversation.” (Vivian, b, pc, p. 14).
Victoria, the only white recipient in the sample also gives an example of the very
pragmatic view of motherhood that the recipients held, indicating that although her

privileged racial status offered her some protection from discrimination, her gender,

class, and motherhood status intersected with her racial status, motivating her to ﬁght for

110

her children’s needs. In response to my question about whether they ever talked about
motherhood, she stated:
“Your children, but not motherhood. I mean. . .(pause). . .you don’t
have to talk about what you ARE. You only have to talk about what you aspire to, or
what you’re trying not to be. Everybody understood that our children. . .needed things
they weren’t getting, you know?” (Victoria, w, pc, p. 40).

The realities of the poor, primarily Aﬁican American, welfare recipients’ daily
lives left them with a less idealistic view of motherhood than that of the friends. The
ﬁiends were more likely to speak about being inspired to get involved in the movement
through their status as women or mothers alone. This illustrates the intersection of race
and class as well as gender within the matemalism developed and utilized by the friends
in contrast to that developed by the recipients. In most cases race and class privilege
intersected with friends’ constructions of motherhood and within their use of matemalism
in ways which allowed them to emphasize their own similarities in motherhood status
even as their privileged race and class statuses were obscured. This emphasis led to the
idealized view of motherhood they constructed and its importance to their participation.

In contrast, the recipients were more likely to speak about the things they needed
for their children as part of their drive and inspiration for involvement. For example, as
Vivian indicated in her story about ﬁnding a place to rent, the issue of housing for
welfare recipients, and particularly those with large numbers of children, was a critical
one in Detroit at the time. An article in NOW, the national welfare leaders’ newsletter,
discussed a recent sit-in by a Detroit based welfare rights group demanding more housing

for large families, and criticized the Detroit Housing Commission and the city welfare

department for not giving mother’s with large families money up front in order to secure

1]]

housing, claiming that by the time they got the money from the welfare department the
place was already rented.59

For welfare recipients, the fact that their children were suffering meant that they
themselves needed to become activists in order to ﬁght for assistance for their children.
Recipients employed what I see as a practical matemalism to achieve their goals. This
was developed through the differing ways that race, class, and gender intersected within
their own lives. While they may have been ﬁghting and protesting in order to gain a
better standard of living for themselves and their children, as well as for all children
whose mothers received welfare, they spoke about their motivation as a result of their
negative experiences and hardships as poor, primarily black, women on welfare. This is
similar to, but also different from, what Sachs (2001) discovered in her examination of
the intersection of race, class, consumerism, and matemalism in the welfare rights
movement. Sachs examined the welfare rights movement as a whole, exploring the
rhetoric of motherhood used by the NWRO and the white middle class groups who
supported them. She concluded that the matemalist discourse used by the NWRO
represented an attempt to educate white middle class feminists. The results of this study
indicate that a practical matemalism was more important to recipients’ continued
involvement as well as in attracting other poor mothers to the welfare rights movement.

White, middle class friends became mobilized to participate in the welfare rights
movement though their more privileged race and class statuses intersected with their
gender and motherhood. Recipients did not use matemalism in the same way. They used

a practical matemalism, developed through the lens of their own struggles living in

 

’9 “Sit-in by Mothers Spurs Search for Housing”, article in the National Welfare Leaders’ newsletter, titled
NOW, November, 17, 1967, NOW-NWLN.

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poverty, within their continued involvement in the movement as a way to reach other
poor mothers, rather than as a conscious attempt to educate white middle class women.
Delores, who had been involved with welfare rights prior to having to go on welfare,
talked about how she saw things differently once she actually went on AFDC:

“And [because of] the baby... I had to ﬁnally go apply for aid. And... and it was
interesting. 'Cause now the shoe was on the other foot, right? And you know, before I
was ﬁghtin’ for others-now I got to ﬁght for myself. And I walked into that welfare
office... place was PACKED. And I'm sittin’ up there four months pregnant, and I'm
sayin’ to myself, “I ain’t gonna sit in here too long — I'm gonna get some services.”
And ﬁfteen minutes after I been there, I walked up to the desk, and I said, “You know,
I got — I need an application, I need to be seen,” “And I can’t be sittin’ up

in here too long.” The lady said, “Well, you gonna have to sit over there like
anybody.” I say, “I want to see your supervisor.” Which shocked her.” (Delores, b,

pc, p. 31).
While matemalism and a sense of shared motherhood or a duty to assist other mothers
was a strong motivator for friends, recipients viewed their participation in the movement
strongly through the prism of being poor, black, and on welfare.

These differences in matemalism are further illustrated in the ways in which
participants of the welfare rights movement indicated involvement of their children.
While all participants talked about their children, there were differences in whether they
admitted to bringing their children with them to the protests, marches, and meetings. The
ﬁiends ﬁequently brought their children to events so that they could understand poverty
and be exposed to new situations. Here, Patricia explained:

“Oh they went to all the rallies in Lansing. They laugh about (chuckles). .they read
about some of those now, and I used to take the younger kids there....and they said
‘Oh God’, they grew UP on this stuff. Well, my yormgest daughter’s a social worker,
and. . .she thinks that’s why. She always knew a lot of these people, you know?”

(Patricia, w, me, p. 8).

Another ﬁiend, Ruth, also talked about the involvement of her children:

113

“[my] baby, yeah, I started before she was born. . .and then. . .you know, continued.
She slept on many a ﬂoor, going with her mother to meetings. Yeah, whenever we had
big demonstrations, all of my kids came. They’ve slept on many a bus, going to

the overnight trip to Washington.” (Ruth, w, mc, p.18-19).

It is interesting to note that none of the recipients indicated that they regularly brought
their children to these events, although many of the friends did so. Again, this speaks to
the practical matemalism that was a part of the recipients’ lives. Race and class
intersected with gender and mothering experiences in interesting ways. The only friend
who indicated that she did not involve her children provides an example of how race and
class were speciﬁcally intersected within women’s childrearing experiences. Evelyn, an
African American middle class friend, talked about the need to protect children from a
potentially volatile situation:

“And one of the things that was always in the back of our mind was, if we. . .you

know, if we got picked up because they. . .the system didn’t agree with what we were

doing. . .there was always the possibility that they would. . . take the children. And you
know, take the children and say, ‘You’re not a ﬁt parent’. And if they were in some, in

any kind of conﬂict, so. . .we were careful to keep the kids out of the spotlight.”
(Evelyn, b, me, p. 10).

Ruth also indicated the risk, which recipient activists faced, of having children removed.
In a discussion about one of their largest protests in Detroit, she explained how they had
to be careful about the children involved:

“And we knew they [the women who had occupied the welfare ofﬁce]were gonna be
arrested that day, so I said to people, ‘You know, we’ve had people arrested all week.
You can’t have any kind of an outstanding ticket, even for a garbage can. Nothing at
all. Now your kids’- this was the ﬁrst one-‘You have to be able to say your kids are
okay. Because if they go pick them up and say you abandoned your kids to come
down here, it’s gonna work against it.’ You can’t believe how many people we would
not allow to be arrested.” (Ruth, w, me, p. 9-10).

Evelyn talked about her cautiousness in involving recipients’ children:

“It was like, a lot of the, a lot of the mothers were, you know, single parents. A lot of
them had their children by themselves. So, we didn’t, they didn’t involve children in

114

the protests or the sit-ins or anything that they were doing, because of that. You know,
they would, that’s the ﬁrst thing- if they were on assistance- they would say that they
weren’t a ﬁt parent.” (Evelyn, b, me, p. 10).
Appwently, the fears about welfare recipients’ children were warranted, as illustrated in
this quote from Ruth, who explained how the police gave protestors time to remove their
children from the vicinity:
“Well, with the kids, the police went in and said, ‘Look. We’re going to arrest
all of you. If we arrest the children, the only place we can put ‘em is in Juvenile
Detention. You don’t want yom' kids to go there. Try to send your kids home.’ So, you
know, they gave us time, we scrambled and I think we kept one ﬁfteen year old boy,
but all the rest of the kids went home.” (Ruth, w, me, p. 9).

These examples indicate how race and class intersected with gender within
participants’ involvement of their children. The ways in which the white ﬁiends tended to
involve their children and the purposes for their involvement were very different and less
risky than the ways that recipients’ children could be involved. Friends who were
privileged by race and class had more freedom to involve their children in their social
movement activity without fear of removal by the state. Recipients, as well as the black
middle class and working class friends, were at a greater risk of having children removed
due to race and class based discrimination and the heavier surveillance that women on
welfare were subjected to.

All of these examples illustrate the ways in which varying social locations
intersected within all participants’ experiences as women and mothers, and how differing
types of matemalism developed based on these intersections.

Women ’s Roles in Welfare Rights

Within the national welfare rights movement there were distinctions between the

roles of the ﬁiends and those of the recipients. Although they occupied a shared gender

115

location, there were strong divisions between their roles, based on recipient or non-
recipient status. As the national movement progressed, tensions around these different
roles began to increase (West, 1981). All of the recipients and half (4) of the friends in
this study talked speciﬁcally about the kinds of roles that women occupied within the
welfare rights groups that they participated in. Recipients were very careful to point out
that they engaged in both leadership and decision making roles as well as participated in
actions and protests while taking care of the daily needs of other welfare recipients.
Gladys recounted the kinds of roles they ﬁlled:

“When we’d have a meeting, we would decide what we were gonna do, whether we

were gonna picket or what. And if somebody was havin’ trouble with a social worker,

or havin’ trouble gettin’ their gas and lights turned on, you know? That’s where we

would come in. Each one of the oﬂicers of the welfare mothers group would take the

case of whoever come in for help.” (Gladys, b, pc, p. 26).
Of the four ﬁiends who talked about women’s roles, all but one indicated that ﬁiends
fulﬁlled strong supportive roles and that recipients held decision making roles within the
movement. They talked about engaging in activities such as fundraising and providing
child care for the children of recipients during meetings as well as providing
transportation for recipients. Anita recalled:

“We often would go to their meetings and baby-sit for their kids while they had their

meetings. We would provide refreshments for them, we would drive them to their

meetings.” (Anita, w, me, p. 3).

When asked speciﬁcally about the kinds of roles that women in the movement

held, both friends and recipients tended to dichotomize their roles. Although they all

claimed that women, not men, took on all of the most signiﬁcant positions and did most

of the work within the movement, they made clear distinctions as to the types of activities

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recipients and ﬁiends engaged in, distinguishing what each member did based on
recipient status.
Use of Sameness

The questions that were examined in this dissertation included how difference was
manifested within the welfare rights movement and whether there was a shared
standpoint of women within the movement. Results indicated that ﬁiends emphasized
similarities or sameness based on gender more frequently than did recipients. White
friends focused on their shared gender and motherhood status with recipients, as a form
of motivation for their early participation in the welfare rights movement as well as
providing them a unique perspective based on their status as women. Gender was most
often the shared standpoint they emphasized in their decisions to participate in the
movement, and matemalism was frequently used as a motivating factor in their early
involvement. However, although gender was a motivating factor for these friends, they
simultaneously occupied privileged class and race locations, and at times these statuses
served to distance them ﬁom recipients. While they emphasized their shared gender and
motherhood statuses as providing them with a critical perspective and as a strong
mobilizing factor, they also emphasized differences in class and race in ways that ignored
the intersectional nature of these categories, but instead served to create a boundary of
separation ﬁom recipients.

Class and race also intersected within ﬁiends’ and recipients’ differing constructs
and uses of matemalism. White middle and upper middle class ﬁiends most often
emphasized a form of matemalism and a view of motherhood that was different from that

of recipients. Recipients viewed motherhood and the drive to ﬁght for the needs of their

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own children through the lens of racial and class based discrimination that they
experienced on a daily basis. Thus, they developed a practical matemalism. Gender and
the use of matemalism could also be seen in the documents that responded to changes in
welfare policy, while the idealized image of a mother needing to stay home and care for
her children was used when critiquing WIN and F AP, it was often contradicted by
inclusions of statements demanding support for poor women to gain education and
training in order to increase their work opportunities. Although gender could be used
within the documents as a shared standpoint to recruit non-recipient women to support
poor welfare mothers, it is clear that gender also intersected with the realities and needs
of poor, primarily black, women on welfare. In responding to welfare policy changes, a
sense of a shared and idealized image of woman or mother was used; however, it was
intersected with the realities of needing to provide opportunity to poor women,
particularly poor African American women.

Although gender was a strong standpoint for white ﬁiends, race was an equally
strong standpoint for black friends’ participation in the movement. When the two Aﬁican
American friends in this sample talked about sameness, it revolved around their own
critical insights developed from struggles inherent in their existence within a shared racial
category with recipients, and the historical legacy of discrimination and racism that this
category represented. This standpoint provided a sense of solidarity with recipients and
spurred their own involvement in the movement. Therefore, while gender was important
as an organizing feature of the welfare rights movement in the Detroit area, it intersected

with race as well as class in critical ways.

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Shifting Standpoints

Although sameness or a shared gender standpoint were frequently mentioned in
friends’ initial attraction to welfare rights work, for recipients, gender as sameness was
only emphasized in their continued involvement in the welfare rights movement as they
described how it felt to be able to help other women on welfare. It is interesting to note
that recipients incorporated gender and their awareness of how class intersected with
gender within their standpoint as their participation in the movement increased. This
represents recipients’ shifting standpoints from initial class based awareness to a focus on
gender as well. While they were not initially motivated to join the movement based on a
shared standpoint of woman, they did emphasize gender and class as important to their
continued participation in welfare rights, and presented the important insights that this
gave them within their later participation. Therefore, through their participation and
experience in the movement itself they began to develop a shifting standpoint
emphasizing the convergence of gender with class. This is similar to what Naples (2003)
refers to in her multidimensional feminist standpoint approach as standpoints that may
shift through the interaction with community and through the relationship with other
“knowers”. This indicates that while one dimension of a standpoint may be emphasized
in the initial drive to participate in social movement work that focus may shiﬁ through
the relational processes of participation in a community or through developing
relationships to others. This highlights the importance of relationality within women’s
everyday lives (Smith, 2004). Understanding how standpoints are expressed by various
participants may be a useful mobilizing tool within social movement work, but it is also

critical to understand that participation in the movement itself may provide opportunity

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for these standpoints to shift through the relational processes of women’s social

movement activity.

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Part IV: Signiﬁcance of Boundaries
Chapter 8
Crossing Boundaries
“Well, I think we had about the biggest group. There were more, other,
groups in the city, but we had the biggest group. And. . .I think we got more done.
More, better, service than the rest of ‘em, because. . .we had [a non-recipient member]
and [another non-recipient member] to back us up.”
-Gladys, recipient member of a Detroit based welfare rights group, p. 2460

The research questions examined in this study included how women in the welfare
rights movement mobilized across differences in race and class as well as how they
organized around a similar gender based social location. A main goal of this dissertation
was also to locate how “difference” or “boundaries” were crossed by movement
participants.

While boundaries of race and class can never really be crossed in the sense that one
individual could actually experience racism and class discrimination in the same way as
another individual, there were examples where participants privileged by race and class
were able to achieve empathy with those ﬁom marginalized social locations. “Boundaries
crossed”, in this sense means that some participants who had an outsider status, based on
their privileged race and class, were able to achieve a simultaneous insider status in
recipients’ view, despite this “boundary”. Where boundaries of race or class were crossed
it was because of the strength of one standpoint, gender, race, or class. Few friends were
able to cross the boundary of class. Race was occasionally crossed by friends and
recipients, and gender was frequently used as a common standpoint.

An example of how the boundary of race was crossed through the use of a shared

poverty-class standpoint was the recipients’ focus on helping other women on welfare,

 

6" Gladys, a member ofa Detroit welfare rights group, personal interview, Oct. 25,2005, Detroit, Michigan.

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regardless of race. This can be seen in the story Ruth relayed. She told of an incident
where recipients from Detroit (who were all Aﬁican American) organized a protest in a
poor white community on the west side of the state. They were protesting the fact that the
county did not give out food stamps, but made recipients come to a local store for free
food distribution. Because she indicated that this community was known for its’ racist
leanings and hate groups, I asked her whether the Detroit based recipients really wanted
to travel there to be supportive. She replied:

“Oh! If they ﬁlled a bus! And they knew they were going to a hostile territory.” (Ruth,
w, me, p. 25-26).

Many of the recipients talked about their experiences helping other poor women on
welfare, and how it sustained them in the movement. Some recipients mentioned the fact
that they had also helped poor white women on welfare. One recipient stated:

“All the groups had [some]whites in. They were all. . .[on welfare]. We were all bein’
treated the same way, so. . .you know ” (Gladys, b, pc, p. 26-27).

The fact that they were all on welfare was important to the recipients. They also spoke
about the experience of encountering rural white poverty for the ﬁrst time.
Helen said:

“And we folmd out that, in traveling around— There were more Caucasians, because

they lived in the. . .what do they call it?...the ‘back’ areas or something? And
they. . .not only didn’t have anything, there was no place for them to go GET

anything!” (Helen, b, pc, p. 33).
Victoria spoke of the importance placed on being on welfare, regardless of racial
differences:

“We were, we were NOT segregated [racially] (chuckles). There was a wide base.

Whoever, whoever it was, there we were, and there were, there were, white, black and
brown.” (Victoria, w, pc, p. 42).

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However, in order to indicate that cross-racial relationships were not always blissful,
Victoria also stated:
“[Race] didn’t really make much difference there [within the recipient groups]. I
think the important thing is, we were all activists, we all. ..knew what was necessary,
and. . .yeah. Which didn’t mean there was never any racial tension, because there
frequently was.” (Victoria, w, pc, p. 44-45).
Recipients talked about the importance of being an activist and of being on welfare, but
they also did not want to leave the perception that there were never any differences or
conﬂict between recipient members. However, in spite of occasional conﬂict, the
solidarity achieved from a shared class standpoint and the insider status that this
represented was something that they were aware of and emphasized frequently.

Two ﬁiends also provided examples of “boundaries crossed”. Although most
ﬁiends did not cross boundaries, the two women who did so offer interesting insights into
how race, class, and gender standpoints were formed. In these exceptional cases the
participants seemed to achieve empathy rather than sympathy for the recipients.

In almost all references to her, one white middle class “ﬁiend”, Ruth, seemed to be
considered a “member” or an “insider” rather than an “outsider” within the movement.
One of the things she seemed to understand and be conscious of were the ways in which
her own race and class intersected with gender in her participation in the movement. In
recalling her early involvement in the welfare rights movement, Ruth described her
experience organizing poor women on welfare in a predominantly Aﬁican American
commrmity. She felt that her privileged status as white and middle class, as well as her

geographical location as a suburbanite, made it important for her to work with someone

from within the commrmity, an insider. Her ﬁrst contact should be with someone who

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would be willing to speak to an outsider such as herself. Although she understood her
own outsider status, throughout her work in the welfare rights movement she was willing
to engage in the same, sometimes dangerous, activities that recipients engaged in. Ruth
talked about a march in a small town in Michigan that was known for its’ racism:

“But I told everybody that, ‘If we’re gonna run into trouble, I would think it would be
here.’ So we walked sort of single ﬁle, ‘cause it was not a wide sidewalk, through the
heart of town. And then I could see up ahead, some people across the street with signs.
AndIknewitwasn’tgonnabenice. Andlwenttotheheadofthe 1ine,justranupand
down and said, ‘1 don’t care what they say, we keep singing and walking. Don’t even
look at ‘em! Don’t even look at ‘em!’ And it was something like, something about, “I
wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, who are you?” “Something like that. It
was. . .they weren’t vulgar, but they were mean. And they may have even called out
something" .but anyway, the ones at the head of the line were singing.” (Ruth, w, me,

p. 27).
She also described a long march to the state capitol where they stopped in a different
“dangerous” town on the way, staying overnight in a small church,

“We had maybe four vehicles. And they said, “Don’t leave ‘em here at the church”,
and they hid ‘em. So, you know. . .the Ku Klux type couldn’t see it. And they said,
“Turn off the lights. And if you hear any shooting, get down.” I mean, some people

couldn’t sleep. I was exhausted, I slept (chuckles).” (Ruth, w, me, p. 29).

She gave some examples of the negative reactions she received from racist whites:

“Oh I would occasionally get hate mail. Really terrible stuff. And occasionally get
phone callsthatwere...as nasty ascould be. And I rememberonce, whenlwas
working with C.O.R.E. and on a picket line, a white man dressed in a business suit,
really looking prosperous. . .carne right up to me, and I thought he was gonna ask me a
question. And he spit in my face. So. ..I’ve had the, gamut (chuckles).” (Ruth, w, me,
p. 31-32).

She also remembered getting arrested with recipients, as the following lengthy story
illustrated:
“I remember the last day of that week... we... walked into the building... carrying

signs, and singing - what were we singing? Doggone it — a hymn. At the top of our
voices. And we walked in — and all we did — because it was a big building, 640

124

Temple, an ENORMOUS waiting room, just horrible looking. And what we did is, we
walked in there... and... this gal leading it had a real good voice - she sings in a church
choir. And we’re singing, “When the Saints Go Marching In”! So we walked through,
singing at the top of our lungs... and we just walk through — slowly, though — and
come out. 'Cause I didn’t want people to be arrested. You’re not allowed to carry
something like a picket sign inside a public building. And we’d been warned ahead of
time. But if no cop sees us, what can happen? So then you know. . . I wanted them to
walk quickly! So we walked quickly, and... I'm having trouble singing, I'm laughing
so hard, you know (chuckles)? And we walk through, and come back out, and JUST
as we get out - I think I hadn’t made the full picket line circle — the cops arrived. And
the director was somebody — a guy named Mr. , who really meant well...and he
came down. And he said “Well you know, I had to call the police!” And I said,
“Look. We didn’t so much as break the lead on a pencil. We didn’t do one thing
except make your workers feel guilty.” They [the workers] were... lowering their stuff
out the window, leaving, — running out the back door...they refused to work! They
had to close the office for the rest ofthe day. And when the 22 ofus were arrested,
they put all ofus in— I think you would call it aholding pen... we were all together,
and there was a phone in there...and [another friend] takes over. And
she’s calling the UAW, “Get us out of jail.” She’s calling the national office,
“They’ve arrested all of us.” I mean, she’s calling the newspapers (laughs), and...then
we ran out of dimes! You know (laughs), in those days, it was a dime. Anyways...

[a legal aid attorney] was still a pretty young, inexperienced attorney. And it
frightened him. 'Cause of the picket line, we left a picket line. And we said to those
[who stayed behind], “But the rest of you, you’re not being arrested, you keep the
picket line going.” Well, [the legal aid attorney] got scared... in fact, they bid
as from him. He couldn’t ——- he couldn’t ﬁnd us for hours! “Who’s holding ‘em?” You
know, “which was it- the Sheriffthat arrested them? Was it the City Police?” He
hadn’t BEEN there, which he should’ve been. Now I, I know better. And I would have
made sure—Iwouldhave toldHIM,but youknow-whatdolknow
(chuckles)?Anyway...I think we knew — that as soon as he got to represent us, they
were gonna release us. So anyway, he went and told them, “Stop the picket line.
Otherwise they’re gonna keep these people in jail. You’ve gotta stop.” So when we
ﬁnally get out... I'm gonna guess it’s 5:00, 6:00 o'clock in the evening... and we go
there, and there’s nobody there - or, there were some people there, not picketing, but
they didn’t want to go home! They said, “Well, [the legal aid attorney] told us
to go home — otherwise, you wouldn’t get outta jail.” And we said “OH, that’s
terrible!” And I remember scolding him. You know -— anyway, it didn’t matter,
because they closed the ofﬁce [the welfare office], that was on a F riday...they closed
the oﬂice the following Monday and Tuesday.” (Ruth, w, me, p. 10-13).

 

Ruth’s participation, as a white middle class friend, in the everyday activities and actions
of the recipients and her willingness to acknowledge the ways in which race, class and

gender converged within her own experiences positioning her as an “outsider”,

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contributed to her ability to cross boundaries of race and class. By working alongside the
women who were recipients and engaging in shared action, she became a member of the
group. While she was careful to point out that all the officers and ofﬁcial leaders in her
group were recipients, she seemed to have assumed an unofficial leadership role. When
recipients mentioned her, they talked about her as a member and an insider. Although she
was middle class and white, by acknowledging this privileged status and then engaging in
the same kinds of roles that recipients engaged in, she was able to cross the bormdary
between recipient and non-recipient. Others within the movement viewed her as an
insider, although her privileged race and class status intersected with her shared gender
status, making her simultaneously an outsider.

Ruth’s gender and motherhood status were important factors that actually
contributed to the development of her standpoint in her early encormters with women on
welfare. She indicated an awareness of the differential social relations inherent in her
own status as a woman and her own struggled for knowledge. As illustrated earlier, this
was evident in her awareness of the way that she was heated diﬂemnﬂy in her civil rights
work based on her gender. Ruth also emphasized gender in her early motivation to
become involved in the welfare rights movement, as she relayed a story about her ﬁrst
meeting with a poor mother on welfare. She had brought her baby with her to the
woman’s home, and not thinking she would be there long had not brought an exha
diaper. She stayed so long, listening to all of the things that the other mother had endured
during a life of poverty, that her baby soaked her diaper. She laughingly recalled how the

woman had then given her a towel to put on the child. This story illustrates the personal

126

connection she felt in hearing about and wihlessing another woman’s plight due to
poverty.

Although gender was an important standpoint for Ruth, it took more for her to
cross boundaries within the movement. She seemed aware of the intersection of her race,
class, and gender within her own experiences, and was also able to achieve an “insider”
status within the movement by engaging in the same activities and actions as recipients.
Most importantly she did this side by side with other recipients in the movement. This
was the critical factor.

Another non-recipient in this study had success in crossing boundaries as well.
Evelyn, as an African American middle class supporter, emphasized a shong standpoint
informed through her awareness of being a black woman, and a mother, in a way that
gave her the ability to be seen as an insider. Due to the convergence of her social
location, as a black middle class woman, she maintained a simultaneous insider and
outsider status. When she spoke about her involvement in welfare rights she saw herself
motivated by a need to help the Black community, and to assist poor mothers. She linked
her work in welfare rights to her previous Civil Rights Movement work. She too engaged
in the same kinds of activities and dangerous actions that recipients engaged in, and she
did this alongside them. But she did not cross the boundary of class difference. Her
middle class status was used to separate herself from recipients. She placed particular
importance on a baby shower that recipients had given her. She recounted how upset she
was that they had bought presents for her new baby. She repeatedly told them that they
shouldn’t be doing it and emphasized that she didn’t need gifts since she had a husband

and family and enough income so that she wasn’t lacking for anything. The fact that the

127

recipients were adamant about doing something for her and her baby made her
uncomfortable:
“They had been running back and forth to the store, they bought stuff for the baby, they
you know, set up the refreshments, and...they were having the mostest fun, and I was the
most uncomfortable thing you have ever heard! And the, the lady said to me, she said,
“You don’t have a choice!” Like, I had been running it, right? I was telling people what
to do. And they had done this whole shower thing... and then they invited all the mothers
that was in that group.” (Evelyn, b, me, p. 16).
Although she understood and embraced the fact that her own race and gender gave her
insider status within the movement, she also emphasized that her class status made her
different from recipients. The strong standpoint she held around her race and gender
helped mobilize her to action and allowed her to cross boundaries, but her class status
served to reinforce difference. This reinforcement of class boundaries was something that
she herself maintained, rather than a way that recipients viewed her as different. The
socially stratiﬁed location as an Aﬁican American woman that she shared with recipients
shongly inﬂuenced her agency and how she saw the world, and her experience of middle
class life simultaneously intersected with race and gender, shaping her views of welfare
and poverty. She was able to maintain a distance between herself and recipients based on
her more privileged class status. The fact that she was unable or unwilling to
acknowledge the importance of class as it intersected with race and gender within her
own life meant that this boundary remained “uncrossed”.
The Meaning of Crossing Boundaries

These examples demonstrate that boundaries could be crossed if outsiders were
able to work successfully alongside recipients. A key component of these examples of
“crossing boundaries” is working alongside recipients in the same kinds of activities that

they were engaged in. For the majority of ﬁiends who were not able to cross boundaries,

128

their emphasis on different roles and activities seemed to foster separation. When white
middle class supporters talked about their roles as different ﬁom recipients, and described
their movement work as different, this shengthened and reinforced divisions based on
race and class. While ﬁiends were typically careful to claim that the recipients
maintained leadership and conhol of the movement, they also described their own roles
as more sh'uctural, emphasizing the policy and fundraising work they took on.

In the unique cases where non-recipients were able to decrease divisions between
themselves and recipients and “cross boundaries”, they also saw their responsibilities as
equal. It is important to recognize that they maintained minimal “claims” to leadership,
always pointing out how recipients were the ofﬁcial leaders. Ruth, the white middle class
ﬁiend who crossed boundaries was not listed as someone occupying a leadership role,
although she clearly engaged in decision-making within the movement.

Crossing boundaries only occru'red when there was a conscious effort to parhler
with and work alongside women who were different. Ruth, who was most successful in
crossing boundaries, also seemed to acknowledge her own privileged status, and
consciously acted within this knowledge. Evelyn, the black middle class friend who was
successful in crossing boundaries maintained a distance between herself and the
recipients based on class. Although recipients were willing to allow her to cross this
boundary of class she seemed unable to do so.

The concept of crossing boundaries of difference in social movement work or
community organizing is an important one for social workers to understand. If cross-race
or cross-class organizing is to occur, understanding why some organizers are successful

is critical. Examples of “boundary crossing” also offer important insights about how

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women’s standpoints may be shaped and informed by their work with different types of
women. The women in this study who were able to cross boundaries worked with women
different from themselves. An important component of their “crossing” was not only how

others perceived them, but also how they perceived themselves and their own work.

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Chapter 9
Limitations and Strengths of the Study: The Dance Between Disciplines

Since the sample size in this study was small and focused on a limited geographical
area, its ﬁndings can only be generalized in a very limited manner, representing an
inherent limitation in the study.

The use of oral history interviews also limited the ability to make certain “truth
claims” based on participants’ remembrances of past events. This is not necessarily
problematic since I was interested primarily in how women perceived events and
activities in their lives. The use of documents may have also been problematic since their
depictions of events may have been inaccurate (Marshall & Rossman, 1999). Whenever
possible I hied to ascertain their accuracy and looked at their consistency.

The use of multiple methods can be both helpful as well as problematic depending
on the impetus for their use. The two research methods used in this study, oral history
interviews and document analysis, were both qualitative, and as such did not represent an
attempt to increase validity. Instead, their use was important from an epistemological
standpoint. The use of multiple methods here was not from a positivistic approach, which
seeks to better achieve the “one huth” that exists. Rather, the framework was
conshuctivist, in that there was an understanding of multiple social consh'uctions of
reality (Scale, 1999). This research began without the expectation that one of the methods
used would produce an absolute true and accruate historical record, and thus be
privileged over other interpretations. I assumed that each method would reveal different
layers of “ham”. For the purposes of this research, there was active opposition to the

more common positivistic approach to using multiple methods as a way to more

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accurately arrive at a ﬁxed location (Scale, 1999). Instead, I was interested in
understanding how women who were involved in the welfare rights movement spoke
about their own race, class and gender positions as well as those of others within the
movement.

The theoretical framework used in this study, a multidimensional feminist
standpoint approach and an intersectional analysis, complemented my research questions
and the methods used. The use of both oral history and document analysis allowed for a
more successful approach to the research questions.

The complexity of attempting an intersectional analysis is a shength and limitation
of this study. In McCall’s (2005) critique of the way that intersectional analyses are
conducted, she saw an overuse of what she calls the intracategorical complexity
approach, whereby social groups are examined for how they interact with other social
locations, and while social categories are acknowledged they are also criticized and
complicated. She advocates using an intercategorical complexity approach to
intersectional research, whereby categories are assumed, and the relationship between
unequal groups is the point of analysis. She claims that this approach allows for a fuller
range of methods to be used, including large-scale quantitative studies, and for more
interdisciplinary analyses to be conducted (McCall, 2005). This study ﬁts somewhere
between the intracategorical and intercategorical complexity approaches in its
intersectional analysis. Since I was interested in examining a speciﬁc social movement
that consisted of individuals who occupied varying social locations, and in understanding
how these individuals experienced and emphasized their varying positionalities as well as

problematizing these locations, the intracategocial approach is most appropriate.

132

However, the problem of interdisciplinarity that McCall claims for this approach to
intersectionality is not problematic here, since social work has not embraced feminist
theories, nor is it familiar with intersectional approaches in general. Thus, while this
study is indeed interdisciplinary in nature, it is also an attempt to broaden the use of
intersectional approaches within the ﬁeld of social work.
Juggling Disciplinary Boundaries

A major shength of this dissertation is the fact that it is interdisciplinary, borrowing
from social work, sociology, history, and women’s studies. Although the interdisciplinary
nature of the study allows for a broader understanding of women’s participation in the
welfare rights movement, it also inhoduces a degree of complexity and difficulty.
Disciplinary boundaries can be ﬁmrly entrenched and difficult to navigate between.
Although social work presents itself as an interdisciplinary profession (Roche, et al.,
1999), there are different and unique knowledge bases among disciplines. This means
that when attempting to do work that maintains a foothold in a variety of disciplines, one
must be able to navigate various ﬁameworks and boundaries. Le’le’ and Norgaard (2005)
write of the difficulty in doing interdisciplinary research between not only the natural and
the social sciences, but especially amongst various disciplines in the social sciences. They
argue that the key to successful collaboration is a willingness to use a variety of
theoretical frameworks and the ability of the researchers to acknowledge the validity of
these frameworks. The research presented in this dissertation relied not only on literature
fiom various disciplines for insight and guidelines, but also approached the problem of
organizing women for social change hour the perspectives of history, sociology, and

social work and from the various ﬁameworks embedded within each.

133

Throughout social work’s history, the profession has embraced social welfare
history and historical methods to varying degrees. In Fisher’s (1999) article on the
founding of the social welfare history group in the 19503, he identiﬁes the conservative
political economy as a key factor prompting its work. In the conservative 19503 there was
a de-emphasis on social action and social change and progressive social work researchers
and historians turned to the past as an opportunity to examine a less reshictive era. Fisher
argued that similar conditions existed at the end of the 20th century, and that social work
might be well served by once again looking to the past for solutions. This dissertation
represents an attempt to do just that. By examining the social movement work and
responses to policy changes that welfare rights participants engaged in during the 19603
and early 19705, my aim was to uncover lessons about cross-racial and cross-class
mobilization that may be used in current community organizing or social movement work
with poor women. These experiences are especially important in the current conservative
political economy.

Another important feature of this study is that it is feminist research, advocating
emancipatory goals for women. Much feminist research is interdisciplinary in nature with
the goal of reaching across or even blurring disciplinary boundaries in order to gain a
sense of connected knowledge (Reinharz, 1992). The desire to reach across boundaries
ﬁts with the feminist goal of producing knowledge that has the ability to be disseminated
widely so as to achieve the greatest level of social change for women (DeVault, 1996).
This research maintains a shong commihnent to social change and social justice goals for
poor women. Therefore, focusing on a variety of disciplines offers the opportunity to

disseminate ﬁndings in a variety of ways rather than just within social work. In order to

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promote social work practice and social work teaching that is truly liberatory and aimed
at advocating human rights and social justice, social work must consistently draw on
other disciplines (Roche, et al., 1999). Although it was difficult to negotiate disciplinary
boundaries, the goals of this study are consistent with the goals of a liberatory social

work.

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Chapter 10
Conclusion: Sisters Together Yet Separate in The Struggle

Returning once again to the overarching questions that were explored in this
dissertation, the ﬁndings illustrate that while shared gender served as an important
motivation for some women who participated in the welfare rights movement, differences
in race and class also complicated this participation. These ﬁndings also illushate the
complexity of women’s standpoints and provide examples of how women’s standpoints
were achieved in part through their shuggle together within a community of social
movement participants. This complexity of standpoints based on social location,
participation in a historically located commrmity, and as a site of inquiry, ﬁts with Naples
(2003) concept of a multidimensional feminist standpoint approach which allows the
complexities in women’s standpoints to be examined within the context of women’s
participation in a “community” of social movement participants.

This analysis provides examples of how gender, race, and class formed
interlocking categories that acted as both mobilizing as well as divisive features of this
historical movement. The results of this study indicate that while gender did ﬁmction as
an organizing force, particularly through common identities as mothers, or through the
use of matemalism as an organizing shategy, a gendered standpoint was simultaneously
complicated by class and race, even though this convergence may have been left
unnoticed or unsaid. Blumberg’s (1980) study of white women civil rights workers found
that participants were motivated to become involved through a sense of matemalism and
a need to ﬁght against racism. Her ﬁndings are similar to what was seen in the

motivations of the white middle and upper middle class ﬁiends in this study. However,

136

the use of matemalism and a gender based standpoint as motivation for social movement
involvement was limited in its use within the welfare rights movement overall, since
having a shared standpoint as woman and mother was more salient to the non-recipient
members of the movement than it was to the recipient members.

The dichotomy of recipient and non-recipient within the welfare rights movement
has been identiﬁed by other scholars (Sachs, 2001; West, 198]). Recipients clearly felt
they differed ﬁom non-recipients because of their experiences on welfare. In testimony
given in Dehoit at a 1972 hearing on federal welfare reform legislation, Jocelyn Hubbard,
then a recipient and leader of a welfare rights group, stated,

“You are paying ﬁom $6,000 to $7,000 a year to a caseworker to help me with a
life that maybe she has read a book about. Also she is to tell me how to live a middle-
class life without the money to pay for it. I didn’t pick our economic system but I have
to live in it, and to do this I need money. I believe that I would spend the money as
wisely as you spend yours and I would buy much the same way as you do. I also think
I know enough to seek expert counseling for my problems and if I have money I will
pay for the service.”61
Her testimony spoke to recipients’ views that caseworkers and others who did not
experience a life on welfare could never h-uly understand the problems of recipients and
could never possess the unique insight that recipients possessed. It is noteworthy that she
countered the stigmatizing assumptions that women on welfare could not properly budget
their money, and indicated that if she had more money she could manage just ﬁne.
Recipients’ in this study indicated a poverty—class standpoint that was initially
central to their participation in the welfare rights movement. As the movement

progressed recipients tended to acknowledge the ways in which gender intersected with

class as a standpoint. The recipients talked about getting involved due to their needs for

 

6‘ Joycelyn Hubbard, “Hearing on Federal Welfare Reform Legislation at the City-County Building
Dehoit,” testimony, January 17, 1972, OC-MWRO Files.

137

help or their desire to combat negative stereotypes and poor heahnent of welfare mothers.
They mentioned that helping and working with other poor women sustained them and
they focused on their own critical knowledge of unequal power relations. This illustrates
the importance that women’s standpoints play in mobilization efforts early within social
movement activity, but it also indicates that women’s standpoints may shift through their
participation in a historically ﬁ'amed “community” (Naples, 2003 ).

In records documenting movement participants’ responses to changes in welfare
policy, the conshuct of gender that was consciously used to resist policy changes seemed
at times to be at odds with the needs of recipients. The documents tended to frame
resistance in terms of haditional views of motherhood and ﬁll] time caring for children,
while simultaneously demanding child-care, education and training for women. In a 1967
letter to Dehoit’s Mayor Cavanaugh the leaders of Detroit’s ADC-Welfare Mother’s
Club and Westside Mothers listed a series of demands under the category of work
policies. They asked for transportation, babysitting, and more and better job haining for
recipients who wanted to work as long as it did not adversely affect their children62 This
may seem at odds with welfare rights participants’ main argument that poor black women
had the right to stay home and care for their children, just as white middle class women
had been doing for years (Nadasen, 2005). This use of gender intersected with race and
class, as welfare rights movement participants sought to ensure that poor women and
poor black women in particular were provided the opportunity to engage in education and
training as well as opportunities for better work. A key message was the need for choices

provided to welfare recipients, not mandates.

 

‘2 Mrs. Marjorie Coklow and Mrs. ldella Yarbough, “Statement of Recipient Concerns with Welfare,” letter
to Director of the Detroit Department of Social Services, March, l967,Cavanaugh Collection, box 368,
folder 21.

138

Although gender acted as an important mobilizing feature for the ﬁiends’
participation in the welfare rights movement, this study found that gender should be
considered cautiously if it will be emphasized by social workers currently doing
community organizing or social movement work, particularly because conshucts of
“woman” or even “mother” may differ based on the ways in which race and class
intersect within women’s lived experiences. For the ﬁiends in this historical study,
matemalism was an important component of their gendered standpoint, but for the
recipients, the practical matemalism they developed meant that they did not view gender
or motherhood status in the same way. The evidence shows that for the Detroit and
Southeast Michigan movement, class was emphasized as a critical standpoint in poor
women’s involvement. Recipients became more aware of the ways that gender
intersected class within their lives as they became more involved in the welfare rights
movement, indicating shifting standpoints.

Although class was an important and unifying standpoint for the poverty-class
recipients in this study, the historical record reveals that class was porhayed in conﬂicted
ways. In spite of documents that emphasized class and privileged a poverty class
standpoint indicating how welfare mothers were being targeted, class was also
complicated. At times policy responses purposively called out to the middle class for
support, and at other times policies deemed egregious were described as harming both the
poor and the “working” poor. The use of class vacillated between presenting shong
solidarity with recipients, and attracting a wider base of middle class supporters. At times
the welfare rights movement made conscious efforts to athact middle class supporters

such as the Friends of Welfare Rights groups. A NWRO document indicated they wanted

139

to appeal to unemployed parents and working class members, and they also wanted to
change their power base from mother power to people power as an attempt to attract
more friends to the movement.63 However, the NWRO always understood that recipient
members were their base. Recipients demanded more control and leadership as the
movement progressed (N adasen, 2002). This represented a dilemma for the movement as
a whole since it had always segregated the roles and responsibilities of recipient and non-
recipient participants (West, 1981). In one sense the movement needed to foster a
poverty-class standpoint as the core identity of the movement highlighting the unique
knowledge that was produced by this standpoint, but in another sense there was a very
real need to athact non-recipients to the movement.

When differences in class and race were emphasized by participants it tended to be
around leadership and decision making. Although ﬁiends emphasized racial differences
when speaking of roles and tactics within the movement, recipients did not emphasize
race as a form of difference. White ﬁiends saw themselves as different and thus engaged
in diﬁ‘erent kinds of roles, and Aﬁican American ﬁiends tended to emphasize race as a
form of solidarity with recipients, demonstrating a strong race-based standpoint in their
work Historical records used race in documents that responded to changes in welfare
policy by purposely using images of racial discrimination in order to emphasize the
negative aspects of particular policies. A race based standpoint was occasionally used to
respond to welfare policy changes emphasizing a unique perspective based on a history
of racial discrimination. While this may have been a strategic attempt to elicit a strong
response from Aﬁ'ican Americans, it may have also unwittingly narrowed the foci of

welfare policy affects, limiting the base of support for the movement.

 

‘3 NWRO, “Mother Power”, call to join Friends of Welfare Rights, n.d., Wiley Papers, box 7, folder I l.

140

Where differences in class and race, or “boundaries” were “crossed” it tended to be
through shared participation and shuggle within the welfare rights movement and the
“community” that it represented. In the cases where a friend was able to cross boundaries,
it was because of an ability to fully engage in the same activities as recipients, while
simultaneously ensuring that recipients maintained overall conhol of the movement.
While boundaries were rarely crossed, there was a hope that the movement would be able
to reach a wider audience, as represented in this statement made by Anna, a white middle
class ﬁiend:

“We had some hope, that if we brought this stuff before the public, and if low income
pe0ple would tell us what it is LIKE to live like that. . .And then you could get some
middle class people, who had much more advantage to say, ‘Yeah. THAT is not a
good idea” (Anna, w, me, p. 12).

Victoria, a white recipient also noted:

“Well, I suppose that I was involved because I was on welfare, and I was sustained by
needing. . .what. . .and needing to let people know.” (Victoria, w, pc, p. 46).

Victoria continued, explaining why she granted an interview to a local newspaper
explaining what it was like to be on welfare, during the time she was active in welfare
rights:

“ Well otherwise, nothing changes. If nobody knows, nothing changes.” (Victoria, w,
pc, p- 47)-

The broad-based goal of the movement was not necessarily to create more opportunities
for non-recipients to “cross boundaries”, but rather to encourage those who were not on
welfare to support large-scale efforts at change. In a document signed by the welfare

rights and ﬁiends of welfare rights groups in Pontiac, Michigan, the authors praised the

local welfare rights and ﬁiends groups, claiming that they were able to successfully work

141

together to inform “suburbanites” and “tax payers” about the problems of poverty.64
While the hope was that recipients and non-recipients would be able to work together to
create social change for women on welfare, the stories of individuals in this study who
were able to “cross boundaries” provide speciﬁc examples of powerful mobilization
efforts by those who were “different”. Cross-racial and cross-class work is critical to
foster effective social change efforts.
Implications for Social Work

This study illustrates that there are deﬁnite lessons to be learned ﬁom the past. In a
critique of Piven and Cloward’s view that mobilization and disruption would win welfare
recipients more gains, Roach and Roach (1980) asserted that the past emphasis on
mobilization versus coalition building resulted in fragmentation of the poor. They argued
that fragmentation sets one group (poor whites) against another group (poor Aﬁican
Americans), and positions both against the working class. It would be helpﬁll for social
workers to understand how to avoid and overcome this type of ﬁagmentation in
organizing efforts and how to “cross boundaries” of difference. My examination of the
ways that multiple social locations of race, class, and gender intersected within the early
welfare rights movement and in responses to welfare policy, offers insight into ways that
social mobilization occurs across diﬁemnce.

The results of this dissertation suggest recommendations for social workers
engaged in community or social movement work A main implication of this study is that
social workers can strategically use participants’ standpoints within their social change

efforts as long as they are conscious of how these standpoints intersect and Shift.

 

6’ Jean Payne and Emily Gibson, leaders of Pontiac area NWRO groups, letter to New Dehoit, Inc., Feb. 3,
1971, OC-MWRO Files.

142

In community organizing or ouheach work, the social worker must understand that
working “alongside” participants, while fostering leadership roles and control over the
direction of the intervention by participants themselves, is a critical component of
“crossing boundaries”. This is a difficult tact to take, and those who were successful were
also able to critically assess their own race and class privilege. Thus, understanding one’s
own social location, including how these locations may allow for privileged and
oppressed statuses in varying contexts, is an important feature of successfully working
with those who are different.

Within the context of current welfare policy, such as TAN F, macro social workers
can explore interventions that bring women together to work for social change. This may
be done using work and haining centers where those receiving cash assistance are
required to participate in various work preparation activities. These locations offer natural
sites for macro social work intervention that social workers could utilize in order to bring
women together “across difference” to work for change.

In social movement work or social movement building with diverse participants, it
is important for social workers to understand that different standpoints may be
emphasized in individuals’ motivations for involvement. In this sample, women
emphasized different standpoints at different times in their social movement work. For
recipients, while a strong class-based standpoint was important throughout their
movement work, this standpoint shifted to emphasize the ways that gender informed class
as their participation progressed. Through their involvement with other poor women, they
began to emphasize a standpoint that emphasized the convergence of gender and class,

even as race, class, and gender simultaneously intersected within their participation. This

143

also represented the shifting nature of women’s standpoints, as these shifis occurred
through participation in a “community” and through the relational processes of women’s
everyday lives.

In policy advocacy or lobbying work, it is also important for social workers to
understand that standpoints may be an important tool in garnering support or opposition
for certain policies. An illushation of differing standpoints could be used with different
populations in order to reach a wider audience and support base. The historical
documents examined revealed there were differing focal points of race, class, or gender
used in responses to various policies over time. Race, class, and gender were used in the
responses to policy changes to indicate a unique or critical knowledge attained, in
attempts to reach a wider audience, or to solidify and shengthen a particular group. It is
important that social workers lobbying for policy changes be conscious of the ways that
race, class, and gender are emphasized or porhayed within any social change effort.
Currently, TANF offers an opportunity to utilize these ﬁndings when responding to
increases in work requirements, or in demands for increased education and haining.
Understanding and acknowledging how race, class, and gender intersect within policy
responses is a critical policy advocacy tool.

Welfare rights participants’ responses to WIN and F AP indicated a simultaneous
need to link to other groups and populations, and to re-enforce solidarity within the
movement While it may have been important within the welfare rights movement to
foster a sense of recipient solidarity and illushate the critical knowledge that only
recipients’ held, this emphasis on speciﬁc groups or populations may have limited

attempts at creating a wider base of support. This relates to the argument about universal

144

or speciﬁc targeted policies which other scholars have discussed within the context of the
welfare rights movement (N adasen, 2002; Patterson, 2000). For social workers concerned
about welfare policy changes, the question may not necessarily be which type of social
policy is best, but rather which type of response to welfare policy will prove most
effective in garnering support for change. The emphasis on race, class, or gender based
standpoints alone may allow for solidiﬁcation of some groups but this may dilute the
notion that welfare policy affects a wider audience. Responding to welfare policy
changes using a more intersectional approach to race, class, and gender, may prevent this
dilution.
Implications for Further Research

This study is important because a unique ﬁamework was used, which led to the
discovery of new information about how women participated in social movement work
across differences in race and class. Prior studies have examined how race or gender
impacted social movement work (Evans, 1979; Robnett, 1997), or have examined the
welfare rights movement as a whole“35 . This dissertation offers important conhibutions to
the literatln'e because of its use of a feminist theoretical ﬁamework in an interdisciplinary
empirical examination of how women in the welfare rights movement in Dehoit and
Southeast Michigan mobilized within differing standpoints, as well as how race, class,
and gender intersected within their mobilization efforts. The lulique fiamework used for
this interdisciplinary study also led to important ﬁndings on how race, class, and gender
were illushated in welfare rights movement participants’ responses to changes in welfare

policy.

 

‘5 See particularly, Kotz & Kotz, 1977; Nadasen, 2005; and West, 1981.

145

While this study offers important insights, it also indicates the need for further
research. First, it would be of interest to more closely examine the lives of the women
who “crossed boundaries”. Perhaps, life history methods would allow for an exploration
of what factors were signiﬁcant throughout their lives and how various experiences
before their involvement in the welfare rights movement may have shaped the ways in
which they were able to “cross boundaries”. Second, it would be valuable to examine the
relationship between the Dehoit area Welfare Employees Union and the welfare rights
movement. In the course of my research I discovered that there were diﬁ‘erences in the
reaction of individual welfare case workers (who were members of the WEU) and the
union’s ofﬁcial position in response to welfare rights groups’ protests. It would be
interesting to use archival methods combined with in-depth interviews to examine the
views of individual union members as well as union ofﬁcials. Lastly, it would be helpful
to build on the ﬁndings in this study by engaging in a large-scale participatory action
research project with current welfare rights members interested in broadening their base
of support. This would offer a unique opportunity to examine the intersection of race,
class, and gender within a participant designed project aimed at bringing supporters
together to work for change. The ﬁamework used for this study could be helpful in
structuring such a project.

The results of this dissertation indicate that while sisterhood or a shared gender
standpoint may be an important feature of women’s social movement participation,
differences in class and race also intersect their lives and represent critical factors that
must not be overlooked by social workers attempting social change. The “sisters” in the

welfare rights movement shuggled together but also remained “separate” in their efforts.

146

Victoria noted:

“We [the welfare rights members and the ﬁiends] were totally separate. We, met
sometimes, but we were totally. . .separate.” (Victoria, w, pc, p. 36).

Martha also stated:

“Well. . .I guess they held meetings, in their homes, and. . .but you know, they would
occasionally tell us what they were doing, but not really a lot.” (Martha, w, umc, p.
19).
Evelyn summed up the role of non-recipients in the movement,
“I think it was people that were not welfare people, but Friends, sometimes church
members, and sometimes community groups that were being supportive. If we had
something going on, we could get people to write letters, or. . .you know, we could get
people to do different things that would be supportive. And it was, it was that kind of
thing. They weren’t. . .you know, on welfare. But they were middle class, and in many
instances church group or community group members that were doing things that were
supportive for the mothers, you know?” (Evelyn, b, me, p. 14).
Although the women involved in the welfare rights movement worked together toward
social change, their shuggles must also be viewed as separate since they occurred at the
intersection of race and class, as well as gender. This illushates the point that while
sisterhood is important within social movement work there are also critical boundaries

that must not be ignored.

147

APPENDICES

148

 

APPENDIX A

149

 

Figure 2. Historical Timeline

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welfare Policy
MF Y
implemented
in New York-
1962 Nixon proposes
(35:0 - 'tiatee‘d FAP - Aug. 1969 U-S- Supreme
s 1m - Court shikes
1964 down “man in
Johnson signs the house” rule- FAP defeated-
Economic April 1970 Oct. 1972
Opportmﬁty
Act- Aug. 1964 “121;ng
WIN rogram- amen en '
IP967 1971
1962 l NWRO lobbies 1972
against FAP-
George Wiley NWRO April 1970
founds founding
- convention-
Poverty/Actlon Aug. 1967 NWRO
"fam- demonshates
pn Walk for NWRO against
adequate conference, Talmadge
welfare- June how to avoid amendments -
1966 WIN program Junel972
is topic of one George Wiley
session - April resigns from
1969 NWRO- Dec.
1972

National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO)

150

APPENDIX B

151

Figure 3. Conceptual Map

Early Life of Participant

 

 

 

 

 

Race Gender
Class

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

v i

Participant Involvement in Other Social Movements

     
   
 
 
    
     

 

   
   

 

 

   

 

 

 

T f
Welfare Policy- £18310
1‘? . n. movements
Adrnrmstratlon
Roles of women
in these
movements ,
Experiences of
participants in
Response movements.
to pollcres
Race Class Gender

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

\

 

 
 
  
  

 

 

 

ii ii if

Involvement in Welfare Rights

 

 

  
     
   
    
 

 

 

 

 

Welfare Factors,
Policy- Nixon motivating early
Adminishation involvement

Roles of women
/ in welfare rights
movement

Response

to policies

152

APPENDIX C

153

Southeast Michigan, Including Detroit and Pontiac

 

US. Census, American Factﬁnder Map, Available at:
http://factﬁnder.census.gov

154

APPENDIX D

155

Interview Schedulefor Oral History Interview“

1 am going to ask you some questions about your involvement in some of the social
movements of the 1960’s, and then I am going to ask you some questions about your
experiences in the Welfare Rights movement in Michigan. Please try to remember as

much detail as possible.

Demographic questions: Where were you born? Can you tell me roughly what year you

were born? Where did you grow up? What year did you become active in welfare rights?

1.

Were you active in other social movements, organizations, or groups, before you
became involved with the welfare rights movement in Michigan? Please tell me
about your participation in these other groups. What do you think motivated you
to join these other groups, or movements?

What kind of roles did women play in the other groups with which you were

involved?

. Tell me a little bit about your class status growing up, did you consider yourself

poor, working class, or middle class? What kind of work did your parents do?
What was their educational level? What was your educational level?

Tell me a little about your marital status before your involvement with welfare
rights (as in single, married, divorced, living with partner, etc.). What kind of
work did your spouse do? If you worked outside the home, what kind of work did

you do?

5. Now tell me about how you came to be involved in the welfare rights movement.

What factors do you think inﬂuenced your decision to become involved with
welfare rights?

What were the main welfare rights groups in the Detroit area during the time you
were involved? What were some of the main “friends of welfare rights” groups
that were around?

What was the relationship like between the Detroit groups and the “out-state”
groups in Michigan?

Some people think that class has a lot to do with what motivates people to join
certain groups. Did you experience anything like that with any of the groups you

were involved in?

156

10. How did being African American/White inﬂuence your involvement in welfare
rights? How do you think others perceived of your race and your involvement
with this movement?

11. How was motherhood or being a single parent talked about in the groups that you

were involved in? How do you think it impacted your experiences in these

groups?
12. Is there anything that we have not discussed that you would like to include?

That concludes our interview, thank-you very much for your time.

*These interview questions were intended and used only as a guide. Actual questions,
probes, and follow-up questions may have varied slightly. The main categories from the
conceptual map for this study were the areas that were focused on, and as such the

interview questions were designed to glean information in these categories.

157

APPENDIX E

158

Examples of Analysis Matrices Used

 

 

 

 

 

Motivation Matrix
Factors Impact of Impact of Class Impact of
Participant Motivating Race Gender
( R, C, ) Involvement
in Welfare
Rights
Movement
Anita, Hearing a Hearing about those They had small
w,mc “friend” speak who had been left w/ children-I had
at a League of nothing. small children.
women voters
meeting, about
welfare rights.
Vivian, Someone told The need to get
b,pc her about the concrete items-
welfare rights fridge and stove- at
group and she ﬁrst, but later
called and they enjoyed helping
invited her to a people.
meeting.
Anna, Through Talked about the Learning how
w,mc involvement importance of anti-family,
with the learning ﬁom her against women,
Catholic children that some of welfare really is.
archdiocese, the children could
worked on a not participate in
project where gym because they
she interviewed could not afford
poor women. tennis shoes.

 

 

 

 

 

159

 

Sameness/Difference Matrix

 

 

 

 

Partici- Focus on diff. Focus on Impact Impact of Impact of Class
pant , between friends sameness of race Gender
(R, C) and recipients between
friends
and
reciLients“r
Anita, Friends came *Friends Race *In early Some were very
w,rnc from diﬂ‘. and recip. was not days we all wealthy./Friends
perspectives./ came an always had were told to just
Friends were together. issue- it meetings raise the
eventually asked was togetherJ money./Friends
to step more *Our kids did separate
back/Friends about played with work/They
began to do own who theirs and wanted to keep
thing/The recips. was in we had message pure.
wanted charge. picnics
separation. together.
Gladys, ‘The The nons. knew
b,pc Separated the non. cohesive- what to do- we
Leaders from the ness of didn’t know
recip. Members. group. what to do./
*We got more
done because of
them (friends).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both of these matrices represent Across-Case- Descriptive- Conceptually Ordered

Displays, and are examples of “Conceptually Clustered Matrices” (Miles, & Hubennan,

1994). The information presented here is a sample of the complete matrices. Information

from each participant was included in each matrix used. I was interested in how

participants perceived the importance of each category in their emphases on sameness

and difference within the movement.

160

 

Document Matrix (Examples are from the Wiley Papers)

 

 

 

 

Document Focus on Race Focus on Class Focus on Subcategory
Description Gender (Policy or
(author, date, Topic focus)

title,
ﬂrblication)

Author: Indicating that Indicates that Deﬁning the Friends of
NWRO NWRO is made NWRO wants NWRO as welfare rights-
Date: n.d. up of black, to attract more made up of states that
Title: Mother white, Chicano, working class mothers on NWRO wants
Power Puerto Ricans members- and welfare. Also to change its
PU: NWRO and Indians. wants to deal goes on to base of power
call to join the more indicate that from Mother
“Friends of effectively w/ NWRO wants Power to
Welfare poverty. to appeal to People Power.
Rights” unemployed
[Box 7, Folder parents.
1 1 ]
Author:George Asks for their States that the Letter from
Wiley opposition to bill will “force Wiley in
Date:May 27, the bill, the breakup of reference to
1971 presents the already HR. 1 (FAP).
Title:Welfare problem in embattled
reform terms of a female-headed
PU:Letter to “brutal families.
Congressman repression
Charles Diggs against 5
and members of million black
the welfare mothers
Congressional and children.
Black Caucus Declares the
[Box 16, Folder bill is racist and
3] asks that the

Black

community be

alerted.

 

 

 

 

 

This matrix was used to organize the documents according to the conceptual framework

and research questions of the study. It allowed for the visual representation of how race,

class, and gender intersected in various documents. The information presented here

represents a sample of the complete matrices used for each archival source.

161

 

Primary Sources
In order to simplify, I have abbreviated the titles of speciﬁc manuscript collections
or papers whose material I use. The particular archives where the cited material may be
found are also listed.

Cavanaugh Collection. The Papers of the Office of lemme P. Cavanagh, 1962-1970
(W.P. Reuther Library Labor History Archives, Wayne State University).

DCCR Collection. Detroit Commission on Community Relations- Human Rights Dept.
Collection: Part 3, 1940-1984 (W .P. Reuther Library Labor History Archives, Wayne
State University).

NOW-NWLN. NOW, the national welfare leaders’ newsletter, vertical ﬁles (Labadie
Collection, The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor).

NOW-PRAC. NOW-Poverty Rights/Action Center newsletter, vertical ﬁles (Labadie
Collection, The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor).

NWRO. Capitalism (U S)- Reform—Welfare-National Welfare Rights Organization,
vertical ﬁles (Labadie Collection, The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor).

NWRO Papers. National Welfare Rights Organization (American Radicalism Collection,
Michigan State University).

OC-MWRO Files. Oakland County-Michigan Welfare Rights Organization,
organizational ﬁles from 1968-1972 (OC-MWRO, Private Collection, Farmington,
Michigan).

Welfare Fighter. Welfare Fighter NWRO newsletter, vertical ﬁles (Labadie Collection,

The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor).

162

WEU Collection. Welfare Employees Union Collection,l960-1979 (W .P. Reuther
Library Labor History Archives, Wayne State University).
Wiley Papers. George A. Wiley Papers ,1949-1975 (State Historical Society of

Wisconsin).

163

References

Abramovitz, M. (1996). Aid to fanrilies with dependant children: Single mothers in the
twentieth century. In Regulating the lives of women: Social welfare policy ﬁ'om
colonial times to the present. Boston: South End Press, 313- 48.

(1996). Part 2: A program just for single mothers. In Under attack,
ﬁghting back: Women and welfare in the United States. New York: Monthly Review
Press, 49-82.

 

Acker, J ., Barry, K., and Esseveld, J. (1996). Objectivity and truth: Problems in doing
feminist research. In Heidi Gottﬁ'ied (Ed.) Feminism and social change: Bridging
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