By Liza Garrity
“Society needs women on welfare as “examples” to let every woman, factory workers and housewife workers alike, know what will happen if she lets up, if she’s laid off, if she tries to go it alone without a man. So these ladies stay on their feet or on their knees all their lives instead of asking why they’re only getting 90-some cents an hour, instead of daring to fight and complain.” – Johnnie Tillmon, chairperson of the National Welfare Rights Organization[1]
American welfare serves as a form of moral policing, especially for single mothers. Welfare was originally intended to help women stay home to raise their children, but Black women were not eligible for aid.[2] In the mid-20th century, state legislatures restricted welfare eligibility to control the labor market and to retaliate against gains in the Civil Rights Movement.[3] Work requirements pushed women into the workforce, signaling a shift in the purpose of welfare.
The welfare rights movement, led by the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and its local affiliates, organized in response. They criticized the racist bias of welfare and its caseworker system. The NWRO demanded higher welfare payments, advocated for the integration of recipients in policymaking, and organized to promote the rights of recipients through legal education, administrative representation, and litigation against the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). The recipient organizers, predominantly poor, Black, single mothers, made their demands as parents, citizens, and consumers in defiance of popular rhetoric that pathologized Black families and poverty itself. Their advocacy also benefited poor white people, who made up the majority of welfare recipients.[4]
The welfare rights movement started in the late 1950s within smaller communities where mothers receiving AFDC payments would meet to discuss case worker issues, welfare policies, and how to stretch their meager monthly payments.[5] Their members were poor people in urban centers that had not benefited from civil rights advocacy.[6] The indignity of poverty and the social stigma of welfare motivated recipients to join welfare rights organizations.[7] When welfare recipients shared their common experiences, they found that the arbitrary treatment that they received was designed to discourage them from applying for benefits or asserting their rights.[8]
In 1966, welfare activists met to lay the foundation for a national campaign, which founder George Wiley and other middle-class activists used to strengthen the local activism already taking place.[9] In August, representatives from 75 local chapters attended the first NWRO meeting to create a national coordinating committee and formulate the goals and strategies of the national movement.[10] While leadership initially wanted to build a movement for all poor people, the NWRO narrowed its focus to public assistance recipients.[11] Movement allies and social scientists Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward advocated for overwhelming welfare rolls with new recipients to prompt a system breakdown, but the NWRO decided to craft its strategy around organizing recipients into permanent, community-based pressure groups.[12] The NWRO campaigned for better treatment from caseworkers, reform of welfare administration, and higher monthly payments and special grants to bring recipients to a decent standard of living.[13] Later, the NWRO advocated for a guaranteed annual income that would function as a federal income floor.[14]
While the NWRO was a national organization, its emphasis was on its local chapters that could respond more immediately to community needs. Membership and voting power were limited to the poor to prevent domination by middle-class supporters.[15] The NWRO was not structured as a direct membership organization, but as a federal alliance of local groups that engaged in simultaneous demonstrations.[16]
Historically, welfare relied on the caseworker model, in which the social worker often faulted the individual instead of considering broader social reform.[17] In 1962, welfare amendments allocated more money for services for recipients; caseworkers were meant to use services to teach recipients about the value of employment and family stability, emphasizing the paternalistic role of the caseworker in “diagnosing” the root cause of that recipient’s poverty.[18] Based on these problematic assumptions, the academic solutions for the war on poverty in the 1960’s focused on individualistic solutions such as workforce development and re-establishing the Black two-parent household.[19] In contrast to the mainstream rhetoric of welfare recipients as lazy and social science perspectives that treated apathy as a characteristic of the poor, the welfare rights movement saw welfare as an intersection of social issues that included housing, education, urban renewal, police brutality, and high cost of living.[20] The welfare rights movement clashed with academic solutions for poverty in advocating for direct support for the poor rather than workforce development and other solutions aimed toward self-sufficiency.[21]
However, the NWRO was in line with contemporary liberal political priorities: including marginalized groups in democratic systems, protecting civil rights, and ensuring equal opportunity.[22] The welfare rights movement advocated for poor people making decisions for themselves.[23] Welfare rights organizers criticized the prioritization of expert opinions in anti-poverty policy, pointing out that those experts had never lived in the indigent conditions that their policies would allegedly rectify.[24] Instead, they demanded that recipient participation be a guiding principle in antipoverty reform, arguing that the effectiveness of social programs hinged on their input.[25]
In their advocacy, recipients framed their perspectives as mothers, citing the low quality of care they could provide for their children on limited welfare payments.[26] This perspective clashed with the historical prioritization of Black women’s value as laborers that had shifted the purpose of welfare from helping women stay home to take care of their children to pushing them into the workforce.[27] Recipients also couched their advocacy in their perspectives as citizens and as consumers in a society of conspicuous consumption.[28] They discussed the racism of the welfare system and the class-based nature of their oppression, which resonated with civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. who believed that economic justice was required for social equality.[29] However, civil rights leaders who prioritized Black employment were less supportive due to the belief that greater welfare payments would discourage economic self-sufficiency.[30]
The NWRO and its local affiliates organized based on their respective contexts. The NWRO held federal demonstrations in Washington, D.C. and served as a resource and communications hub for local groups, while local NWRO affiliates were autonomous in their own advocacy.[31] Locally, organizers targeted specific caseworkers or patterns of behavior.[32] In 1971, the Pulaski WRO publicized their complaints about the Pulaski County Welfare Office’s superintendent in the newspaper after the welfare board refused to meet with them.[33] Their complaints included a call for equal treatment regardless of race, that the welfare office employee inform recipients of their rights, that welfare employees not interfere with those who join the Virginia Welfare Rights Organization, and that meetings to discuss recipients’ problems be taken in an office rather than the public waiting area.[34] The diversity of WRO chapters’ actions and demands in advocating for recipients reflect the NWRO’s tactical range. Beyond direct actions, the NWRO and its affiliates leveraged various forms of legal advocacy to strengthen and enforce the rights of recipients.[35]
WRO legal organizing ranged from advocating alongside recipients at administrative hearings, providing know your rights handbooks, and litigating against HEW. Based on 1950 federal legislation, all welfare recipients had a right to a fair hearing to contest decisions made in their case; they could take their case from the local welfare department to the state welfare department for review.[36] The Virginia WRO partnered with UVA’s Legal Assistance Society to help recipients exercise their right to a fair hearing; law students conducted investigations into the welfare office’s decisions and advocated for recipients before local welfare officials.[37] In the Massachusetts WRO, grievance committee members trained in welfare law would discuss issues with recipients and go to the welfare office with them to serve as advocates.[38]
Additionally, recipients had limited access to welfare office manuals, excerpts of which were provided only if the office determined it was relevant to a recipient’s immediate problem.[39] WRO affiliates provided legal education through know your welfare rights handbooks that guided recipients on what to expect at a welfare office.[40]
The NWRO and the ACLU used test cases to expand and define the rights of welfare recipients.[41] However, the test case strategy took time and resources away from grassroots organizing.[42] The legal battle was one facet of the broader social struggle and the NWRO needed the social movement, its publicity, and street demonstrations to support the legal victories.[43] Protests at local welfare offices, articles published in Ms. magazine, and federal lobbying efforts provided opportunities to share the NWRO platform and push back against negative stereotypes of welfare recipients.[44]
Ultimately, the NWRO fell apart when its base split over what to advocate for next in a hostile political climate.[45] The NWRO was dedicated to building a permanent mass membership organization of poor people because they believed that such an organization would yield political power; in the end, they helped recipients gain a voice, political force, and money temporarily.[46] By gaining recognition as a legitimate participant in the policymaking process, the NWRO laid the foundation for similar organizations in the future.[47]
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[1] Johnnie Tillmon, Welfare Is a Women’s Issue, Ms. Magazine (Spring 1972), https://msmagazine.com/2021/03/25/welfare-is-a-womens-issue-ms-magazine-spring-1972/.
[2] Laura Briggs, Taking Children: A History of American Terror 30-34 (Univ. of Cali. Press, 2020).
[3] See id., 33; Dorothy Roberts, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families–and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World 115 (Basic Books, Kindle ed. 2022) (ebook); Mary E. Triece, Tell It Like It Is: Women in the National Welfare Rights Movement 6 (Univ. of S.C. Press, 2013).
[4] Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail 264 (Vintage Books, 1979).
[5] Premilla Nadasen, Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States xiv-xv (Routledge, 2005).
[6] Id. at 2.
[7] Id. at 16.
[8] Id. at 20-21.
[9] Id. at 42.
[10] Id.
[11] Lawrence Neil Bailis, Bread or Justice: Grassroots Organizing in the Welfare Rights Movement 8-9 (1974).
[12] Id. See Piven and Cloward, supra note 4, at 265; Triece, supra note 3, at 19 (Piven and Cloward’s direct disruption strategy).
[13] Nadasen, supra note 5, at xv.
[14] Id. at xviii.
[15] Id. at 42.
[16] Id. Bailis, supra note 11, at 16-17.
[17] Nadasen, supra note 5, at 50.
[18] Id.
[19] Id. at 14.
[20] Id. at 23. Frances Fox Piven, Foreword to Lawrence Neil Bailis, Bread or Justice: Grassroots Organizing in the Welfare Rights Movement xiii (1974).
[21] Nadasen, supra note 5, at 14.
[22] Id. at 46.
[23] Id. at 63.
[24] Id.
[25] Id. at 64.
[26] Id. at 32.
[27] Id.
[28] Id. at 232 (recipients working to expand welfare rights to gain economic resources independent of their status as workers). Id. at 103 (recipients discussing welfare rights in the context of American consumerism).
[29] Id. at 31-33.
[30] Id. at 29.
[31] Bailis, supra note 11, at 16-17. See Thurman Sensing, Welfare Recipients Demand More Rights and Benefits, Sw. Times, July 12, 1970, at 5.
[32] Nadasen, supra note 5, at 51.
[33] Dan Rooker, ‘He’ Is Well-Known to Many Pulaskians, Sw. Times, Jan. 13, 1971, at 1.
[34] Id.
[35] See Nadasen, supra note 5, at 53-56.
[36] Nadasen, supra note 5, at 56.
[37] Service, Black L. Students Ass’n at the Univ. of Va., https://blsalegacy.law.virginia.edu/service (last visited Dec. 20, 2023).
[38] Bailis, supra note 11, at 64.
[39] Nadasen, supra note 5, at 53.
[40] Id. at 53-56.
[41] Nadasen, supra note 5, at 59.
[42] Id. at 62.
[43] Id. at 62-63.
[44] See Applicants Seek More Benefits, Farmville Herald, July 23, 1969, at 1 (the Buckingham WRO held a spontaneous demonstration at their local welfare office); Tillmon, supra note 1 (article in Ms. magazine); Nadasen, supra note 5, at 69 (federal lobbying).
[45] Nadasen, supra note 5, at 190-191.
[46] See generally Piven, supra note 20.
[47] Bailis, supra note 11, at 141.