Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City or How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life

Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer

Author: Wendell E Pritchett

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

Publishers Weekly

Weaver (1907-1997), the first black cabinet secretary (Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1966-1968) has become "a marginal figure in our public discussion today," but "for almost half of the century," Pritchett asserts, Weaver "shaped the development of American racial and urban policy." Pritchett follows Weaver from the Roosevelt to the Johnson administrations, guiding the reader safely through the mine field of acronymic government agencies, various foundations and academic institutions (he was the first president of Baruch College) in which Weaver played a role. Weaver's targets were racially restrictive covenants and the entrenchment of segregation in both public housing policy and government supported loans; compromises involving the latter made him a controversial figure as the civil rights movement burgeoned. Pritchett's biography is an exhaustive but well-paced account of a life more absorbed by political process and research than by social or political drama. Yet, as Pritchett shows, Weaver "was instrumental in the implementation of every major urban initiative, including public housing, urban renewal, affirmative action, rent control, and fair housing." (Oct.)

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Table of Contents:

Introduction 1

1 Preparing the Talented Tenth: The Weaver Family and the Black Elite 8

2 Fighting for a Better Deal 31

3 A Liberal Experiment: Race and Housing in the New Deal 53

4 Creating a New Order: Black Politics in the New Deal Era 66

5 World War II and Black Labor 88

6 Chicago and the Science of Race Relations 116

7 Searching for a Place to Call Home 135

8 New York City and the Institutions of Liberal Reform 151

9 The First Cabinet Job 171

10 The Path to Power 193

11 The Kennedy Years: A Reluctant New Frontier 211

12 Fighting for Civil Rights from the Inside 233

13 The Great Society and the City 246

14 HUD, Robert Weaver, and the Ambiguities of Race 262

15 Power and Its Limitations 279

16 The Great Society, High and Low 301

17 An Elder Statesman in a Period of Turmoil 325

Abbreviations Used in Notes 353

Figure Credits 419

Index 421

Illustrations follow page 210

New interesting textbook: Hes Not Autistic but or Food Allergy

How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life

Author: Peter Robinson

As a young speechwriter in the Reagan White House, Peter Robinson was responsible for the celebrated "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" speech. He was also one of a core group of writers who became informal experts on Reagan -- watching his every move, absorbing not just his political positions, but his personality, manner, and the way he carried himself. In How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life, Robinson draws on journal entries from his days at the White House, as well as interviews with those who knew the president best, to reveal ten life lessons he learned from the fortieth president -- a great yet ordinary man who touched the individuals around him as surely as he did his millions of admirers around the world.

Publishers Weekly

Conservatives, exult! Robinson's self-help/memoir/Reagan hagiography is an All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten for right-wingers. The former White House speechwriter and author of It's My Party: A Republican's Messy Love Affair with the GOP and Snapshots from Hell: The Making of an MBA illuminates 10 life lessons in a love letter to the Gipper ("How," Robinson asks, "did such a nice guy get to be President?"). By looking at both the historical (supply-side economics, the Cold War, Iran-contra) and the personal (Reagan's beliefs, his relationship with his family), Robinson unearths maxims such as "Do your work" and "Say your prayers." The stories are engaging, and he tosses in dashes of philosophy, such as the nature of good and evil, based on Reagan's ideas. The writing style, though, is repetitive, and occasionally Robinson makes leaps in his assumptions of Reagan's motivations; none of this, however, dilutes the message. Each lesson is related to Robinson's own life either in contrast or to show how he's made Reagan's lessons "scalable" for his own use. Interviews with and stories about many of the major players of the Reagan administration, like Ed Meese and Colin Powell, lend an insider's feel. Behind-the-scenes details, such as how the famous "Tear Down the Wall" speech was composed, give a fresh perspective. And while Robinson's respect for the former president verges on deification, especially as he glosses over Reagan's shortcomings ("Now, I myself was never able to get worked up over the deficits," Robinson says), this book provides solid, if somewhat obvious, lessons that will appeal to the legions of Reagan fans. (Aug. 5) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Robinson (It's My Party: A Republican's Messy Love Affair with the GOP) began as a speechwriter for the Regan administration in 1982, when he was an impressionable 25 year old just home from Oxford. He relies on journal entries from those years to summarize his observations of the President's character, work style, interpersonal relations, and personal commitment to marriage and to show how he was influenced by the President. The book is anecdotally rich and enhanced by interviews with family members and Reagan administration figures. Robinson wrote the famous "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" speech, and his description of the speech's evolution is fascinating and entertaining. The author admires Reagan and makes no effort to discredit him or his administration, but he admits that a few events, such as the Iran-Contra scandal, tarnished the nearly perfect polish on Reagan's White House. Peggy Noonan's When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan is a more comprehensive memoir and tribute to Reagan's influence and character, but readers who admire the former President will find Robinson's book inspiring. For larger public libraries.-Jill Ortner, SUNY at Buffalo Libs. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.