AbstractHistorical studies of the War on Poverty have overwhelmingly focused on its consequences in African American communities. Many studies have grappled with how War on Poverty innovations co-opted a thriving African American social movement. This paper explores the impact of War on Poverty programs on the development of a political cadre of Mexican American grassroots leaders in Oakland, California. It investigates how coordinated 1960s protests by Mexican American organizations reveal Oakland's changing racial/ethnic conditions and shifting trends in the state's relationship to the urban poor. It demonstrates how a national shift to place-based solutions to poverty devolved the “problem of poverty” from the national to the local level and empowered a new set of actors—community-based organizations—in the fight against poverty. This essay argues that the devolution of federal responsibility for welfare provided the political and institutional opening for the rise of powerful Mexican American organizations whose goal was the recognition of a “Mexican American community” meriting government intervention. This essay also demonstrates how Mexican American organizations mobilized in relation to African American social movements and to geographies of poverty that were deemed exclusively Black.
Collaborative Development of Clinical Trials Education Programs for African-American Community-Based Organizations
