Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 88

Numerous welfare rights organizations emerged in the 1960s and 1970s to challenge local, state, and national apathy toward programs to serve the needs of welfare recipients. Some of the groups had strong, assertive leaders who empowered welfare members to plan job training programs. Johnnie Tillmon, an African American and a resident of the Watts section of Los Angeles, was one such leader.

On the East Coast, the Brooklyn Welfare Action Council gained the attention of politicians as they sought endorsements from welfare groups. They also supported welfare rights activists. The National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), established in 1967, coordinated the efforts of these groups nationwide through a tightly organized structure. That organization emerged at the time when President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed the stark contradiction of poverty in affluent America. He developed a national antipoverty program to address the nation’s seeming inability to combat poverty. To sustain itself, the NWRO was successful in obtaining funding from middle-class churches as well as the federal poverty program.

During the movement, welfare rights activists applied direct-action tactics by leading sit-ins at welfare departments and engaging in other protest activities. After that, welfare rolls swelled as many poor people learned more about their rights to benefits and insisted on relief. This forced many welfare agencies to change their demoralizing practices. Although a powerful anti-welfare backlash arose in the 1970s and caused the NWRO to lose financial support and file for bankruptcy, the organization had been successful in bringing together welfare rights and civil rights in a common struggle.

Jessie Carney Smith

In addition to New Orleans race riots in 1874 and 1900, the earlier July 1866 riot caused great controversy, as this political cartoon by Thomas Nast, which is critical of President Andrew Johnson, shows (Library of Congress).