WEAVER, ROBERT CLIFTON

Robert Clifton Weaver (December 29, 1907–July 17, 1997), New Deal race relations adviser, was born and raised in the black middle class of Washington, D.C. Weaver attended Harvard University on a scholarship, where he came to know fellow African-American students Ralph Bunche, John P. Davis, and William H. Hastie. In 1933, during the New Deal's first "100 Days," Weaver and Davis formed the Joint Committee on National Recovery to represent the needs of black people at congressional hearings. In November 1933 Weaver was chosen to assist Clark H. Foreman, then race relations adviser to Secretary of Interior Harold L. Ickes. Two years later, Weaver succeeded Foreman as Ickes's adviser in both the Department of the Interior and the Public Works Administration (PWA). In 1938, Weaver joined the newly created United States Housing Authority and from 1940 to 1944 he served in a number of capacities with federal agencies.

With Mary McLeod Bethune, Weaver was one of the most influential members of the Black Cabinet, an informal group of African Americans appointed in the Roosevelt era as racial advisers to federal departments and newly established agencies. Weaver's importance as an advocate for African Americans derived from his expertise in black housing and labor issues, his academic and personal qualities, and his belief in the New Deal's significance as an agency for change. Although he helped force integration of the Interior Department's lunchroom facilities in the 1930s, he was not a political or civil rights activist like Bethune or Davis. Focusing on jobs and housing, Weaver used statistics and analysis to influence federal policy and to expand public awareness of the "Negro problem."

Weaver saw New Deal reform as instrumental in transforming the condition of African Americans. The integration of blacks into the American economic system, through expanded federally financed employment and housing opportunities, would not only create necessary skills for blacks and facilitate their entry into a growing industrial society, it would also improve the climate for race relations. For Weaver, economic segregation reinforced the social and political separation of the races. The Depression had illuminated the depth of black destitution and the urgency for immediate black assistance. Only the federal government possessed the power necessary to modify social institutions and provide blacks and other minorities with the material and spiritual aid necessary to secure their ultimate integration into American life. At Weaver's urging, racial discrimination was not only prohibited in PWA labor contracts, but in 1934 Harold Ickes supported a quota system to assure black worker participation. Weaver had an equally important impact in gaining black inclusion in public housing programs begun in the late 1930s. He left the government in 1944 believing that his influence was limited but he never lost faith in the New Deal or in the government's critical role in improving the quality of black life. In 1966, when Lyndon Johnson appointed Weaver secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he became the first African American to head a federal cabinet post.

WEAVER, ROBERT CLIFTON

BIBLIOGRAPHY