The Ku Klux Klan and the War on Poverty

Author(s):  
Emma J. Folwell

Chapter three traces the history of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi from Reconstruction to the 1960s, before exploring the wave of white supremacist violence that exploded across the state of Mississippi in 1967. This renewed wave of Ku Klux Klan attacks was directed at the state’s antipoverty programs, and in particular at white men and women involved in those programs. The chapter traces the rhetoric used in Klan literature in opposing the war on poverty, which claimed the programs were part of a move toward federal dictatorship. The language fused the core myths and fears on which white segregationists drew—miscegenation, the spread of venereal disease, interracial sex, the threat of black power, and liberal welfare policies that benefitted African Americans. It also illustrates how gender shaped both the Klan violence and its ideology, as attacks on white women teaching in Head Start classes intensified.

Author(s):  
Alice O'Connor

This article examines the history of poverty research and the evolution of the practice of gathering knowledge about the poor. It distinguishes between poverty research and poverty knowledge, suggesting that the convergence of the two was a historically specific development that first began to gain wide currency in the late nineteenth century in response to the vast and increasingly visible disparities of industrial capitalism in Western Europe and the United States. It also situates poverty research within the politics and social organization of knowledge and considers the influence of broader contextual factors, such as the creation, expansion, and subsequent restructuring of welfare states in Western industrial democracies; the geopolitical imperatives of empire, decolonization, and the Cold War; and the official declaration of the War on Poverty in the 1960s. Finally, it explores how poverty knowledge was reshaped by the economic, political, and ideological transformations associated with the rise of neoliberalism.


Author(s):  
Emma J. Folwell

When President Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty arrived in Mississippi in 1965, it was met with a ferocious response. The federally-funded war against poverty—the embodiment of 1960s liberalism—clashed explosively with Mississippi’s closed society. In the years between 1965 and 1973, the opposing forces of the war against poverty and a war against the war on poverty transformed the state. Through a state-level history of the war on poverty, this book traces the attempts of white and black Mississippians to utilize antipoverty programs to address the desperate poverty in the state. The war on poverty was, at times, a powerful tool for black empowerment. But more often, antipoverty programs became a potent mechanism of white resistance to black advancement. Through the war on poverty, both black activism and white opposition to black empowerment evolved following the momentous events of 1964. White Mississippians used massive resistance as a template for resistance to black economic empowerment, forging antipoverty programs into tools to marginalize black political and economic power. This book traces the grassroots war against the war on poverty that laid the foundation for the fight against 1960s liberalism, as Mississippi became a national model for resistance to social change through its evolving resistance to the war on poverty that lay at the heart of the emerging new conservatism. Many white Mississippians forged this resistance into the political, economic, and social structures of the state, contributing to the development of the state’s Republican Party and articulating a new conservatism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 263-267
Author(s):  
Françoise Vergès

Abstract This article draws from Françoise Vergès's book, Le ventre des femmes: Capitalisme, racialisation, féminisme,* which traces the history of the colonization of the wombs of Black women by the French state in the 1960s and 1970s through forced abortions and the forced sterilization of women in French foreign territories. Vergès retraces the long history of colonial state intervention in Black women's wombs during the slave trade and post-slavery imperialism, and after World War II, when international institutions and Western states blamed the poverty and underdevelopment of the Third World on women of color. Vergès looks at the feminist and Women's Liberation movements in France in the 1960s and 1970s and asks why, at a time of French consciousness about colonialism brought about by Algerian independence and the social transformations of 1968, these movements chose to ignore the history of the racialization of women's wombs in state politics. In making the liberalization of contraception and abortion their primary aim, she argues, French feminists inevitably ended up defending the rights of white women at the expense of women of color, in a shift from women's liberation to women's rights.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (18) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Angela Saward

This article looks at the forgotten history of a television programme on venereal disease for teenagers broadcast in the United Kingdom (excluding Scotland) in 1973. It was produced by BBC Schools and Colleges and deemed to be very successful. The production was one of a trio of programmes entitled ‘Health Hazards’, from the series Twentieth Century Focus, which reflected issues relevant to teenagers over a period of social change from the 1960s to the 1970s. The archive record is lean on schools programming and this programme is very well documented from concept to delivery, representing a discrete, but ephemeral, intervention into 1970s sex educational broadcasting. This research contributes something new about public health and sexual education in the period immediately before AIDS.


Author(s):  
Greta de Jong

This chapter describes how the conservative political discourse of the 1970s echoed the sentiments expressed by southern opponents of the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty in the 1960s, tracing changes in federal policy that reflected the growing acceptance of these ideas among government officials and the population at large. Citing the need to halt the trend toward federal intervention in the economy and other areas of American life, President Richard Nixon proclaimed an era of “New Federalism” that reduced funding for antipoverty programs and restored control over economic development to state and local governments. These moves neutralized the transformative potential of the War on Poverty and left existing power relations intact, leaving poor people without strong advocates in government or adequate assistance during a decade of rising unemployment and economic distress.


Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Maya Mazelis ◽  
Stephen Pimpare

This entry includes a variety of sources on American beliefs about welfare and race. There is a much larger literature on poverty and race not included here, including the important topics of residential segregation, employment inequality, mass incarceration, and housing discrimination. Welfare here is defined narrowly, mostly to include Mothers’ Pensions/Aid to Families with Dependent Children that welfare reform changed to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Perceptions of Blackness in particular shape welfare policy and opinion, so the focus on racism herein is on anti-Black racism, essential to making sense of the development of US social welfare policies and programs and how they function. Ideas of work, of the “proper” roles for women, and of opportunity all shape opinion and policy. Notions of the “Welfare Queen” still dominate American thinking. The first section focuses on the history of poverty and welfare and the second specifically focuses on the role of racism in welfare. The third section focuses on the use of the term ‘underclass’ and its racist undertones. In the fourth section the sources are the main texts by key authors who assert negative consequences for society of having welfare and who advocate reducing or eliminating benefits. These first four sections focus on welfare’s early days, including the earliest relevant history of the colonial period and the Revolutionary War but through the New Deal of the 1930s and the War on Poverty of the 1960s. In the fifth section the sources detail issues of public opinion and discourse regarding race, welfare, and the “American Dream.” The sixth section examines the Perspectives and Discourse among Poor People and Welfare Recipients, while the seventh section includes sources on the Experiences of Welfare Recipients before welfare reform. The eighth section is the first section in the article to engage with the topic of the 1996 welfare reform, the law which overhauled welfare and spelled its demise as an entitlement, transforming welfare for the decades that have followed. The ninth section focuses on Welfare Rights Activism, both before and after welfare reform. The tenth section’s sources examine the causes and consequences of welfare reform. Finally, the eleventh section contains sources that present information about the experiences of poor people in the years after welfare reform.


Stroke ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (Suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Hou ◽  
Elizabeth Aradine ◽  
Kathleen Ryan ◽  
Prachi Mehndiratta ◽  
Seemant Chaturvedi ◽  
...  

Introduction: It is well known that African Americans (Afr-Am) have a higher prevalence of hypertension (HTN) compared to Whites. Few studies have compared Afr-Am and Whites for the prevalence of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH; a marker of long-standing hypertension) in young ischemic stroke patients with and without a history of hypertension to assess hypertension severity and undiagnosed longstanding hypertension. We hypothesized that the prevalence of LVH by echocardiography would be higher in Afr-Am than in their White counterparts. Methods: We identified 1033 patients from a population-based case control study of young patients with first-time ischemic stroke (age 18 to 49 years old, enrolled from 1992-2006) from the Baltimore-Washington area. Patients (n=191, 16%) without an echocardiogram were excluded yielding an analysis sample of 842. Prevalence of LVH by echocardiography (Echo-LVH) were determined in those with and without a history of HTN, stratified by sex and race. Age-adjusted odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals comparing Afr-Am and Whites for the prevalence of Echo-LVH were calculated by logistic regression. Results: Of the 842 young stroke patients included in this study, the median age was 43.0, 55.2% were men, and 48.7 % were Afr-Am. Echo-LVH was common in young patients with ischemic stroke, even patients without a prior history of hypertension. Afr-Am women, both with and without a history of HTN, had higher age-adjusted prevalence of LVH than White women. Afr-Am men with no history of HTN had higher age-adjusted prevalence of Echo-LVH than White men. Afr-Am men with history of HTN had the highest prevalence of LVH, but the age-adjusted comparison with White men with HTN did not achieve statistical significance. Conclusions: The evidence suggests that Afr-Am have greater end organ damage from HTN, even among those who do not have an established diagnosis of HTN. These findings emphasize the need for earlier screening and treatment of HTN in young Afr-Am adults.


Author(s):  
Dawn Rae Flood

This chapter provides an overview of the experiences of women as they entered the justice system after reporting sexual attacks prior to the 1960s, when judicial decisions significantly altered trial proceedings. Victims' social differences were muted from a prosecutorial standpoint because of standardized investigative procedures—procedures much more rigorous, if not entirely sensitive, than previously understood by contemporary studies of sexual violence. Racial privilege shaped the majority of these successful prosecutions, in that African American women almost never appeared in court testifying against white men, and white women testified against black men far more often than they did against white rape defendants. Women's marital or class status did not preclude their central importance to the States' cases, demonstrating how many women challenged the limitations of chivalry, which awarded protections to only a select few, by standing up for themselves and being taken seriously when they reported sexual violence.


1965 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 323-347
Author(s):  
Robert Goldstein ◽  
Benjamin RosenblÜt

Electrodermal and electroencephalic responsivity to sound and to light was studied in 96 normal-hearing adults in three separate sessions. The subjects were subdivided into equal groups of white men, white women, colored men, and colored women. A 1 000 cps pure tone was the conditioned stimulus in two sessions and white light was used in a third session. Heat was the unconditioned stimulus in all sessions. Previously, an inverse relation had been found in white men between the prominence of alpha rhythm in the EEG and the ease with which electrodermal responses could be elicited. This relation did not hold true for white women. The main purpose of the present study was to answer the following questions: (1) are the previous findings on white subjects applicable to colored subjects? (2) are subjects who are most (or least) responsive electrophysiologically on one day equally responsive (or unresponsive) on another day? and (3) are subjects who are most (or least) responsive to sound equally responsive (or unresponsive) to light? In general, each question was answered affirmatively. Other factors influencing responsivity were also studied.


1964 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Shepherd ◽  
Robert Goldstein ◽  
Benjamin Rosenblüt

Two separate studies investigated race and sex differences in normal auditory sensitivity. Study I measured thresholds at 500, 1000, and 2000 cps of 23 white men, 26 white women, 21 negro men, and 24 negro women using the method of limits. In Study II thresholds of 10 white men, 10 white women, 10 negro men, and 10 negro women were measured at 1000 cps using four different stimulus conditions and the method of adjustment by means of Bekesy audiometry. Results indicated that the white men and women in Study I heard significantly better than their negro counterparts at 1000 and 2000 cps. There were no significant differences between the average thresholds measured at 1000 cps of the white and negro men in Study II. White women produced better auditory thresholds with three stimulus conditions and significantly more sensitive thresholds with the slow pulsed stimulus than did the negro women in Study II.


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