Robert C. Weaver

• Born: December 29, 1907
• Birthplace: Washington, D.C.
• Died: July 17, 1997
• Place of death: New York, New York

Politician and activist

From the New Deal era, when he served as a member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet,” to the time of his service as a trail-blazing member of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s cabinet and as a university professor, educator, and civil rights leader, Weaver enjoyed an active career that spanned forty-five years.

Early Life

Robert Clifton Weaver was born into a modestly prosperous family environment. His father, Mortimer Grover Weaver, was a Washington, D.C., postal employee; his mother, Florence Freeman, was a schoolteacher. Upon graduating in 1925 from what is now Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, Robert C. Weaver entered Harvard, earning a B.A. in 1929, an M.A. in 1931, and a Ph.D. in economics in 1934. The sudden death of his gifted older brother, Mortimer Grover, Jr., in 1929 affected Weaver deeply, motivating him to advance his education.

Life’s Work

In 1933, Weaver began work as associate adviser to the secretary of the interior. His vast knowledge of urban issues, his interpersonal skills, his attention to administrative detail, and his capacity for hard and methodical work propelled him, in spite of his young age, to the top ranks of the Federal Council of Negro Affairs (better known as the “Black Cabinet”). This was a loosely organized group of about forty-five African American academics, civil servants, and community activists, which was patched together by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune to advise President Franklin D. Roosevelt on matters pertaining to the African American community. Weaver was instrumental in helping to engineer the “Great Switchover” of the African American vote to the Democratic Party. In July, 1935, Weaver married Ella V. Haith. The couple adopted a son in 1942 and named him Robert Clifton Weaver, Jr.

During the 1930’s, Robert C. Weaver undertook various projects. In 1938, he went from the Department of the Interior to be special assistant in the U.S. Housing Authority. In 1940, he worked for the National Defense Advisory Commission, then as chair, in succession from 1942 to 1944, of the Negro Employment and Training Branch of the War Production Board and the Negro Manpower Service. Disillusioned by the slow pace of progress against racial discrimination in government, Weaver left his position as head of the Negro Manpower Service on February 1, 1944, and went to work for the Chicago mayor’s office as head of its Committee on Race Relations. From 1945 to 1955, he had short-term university lecturing positions and a six-month stint in 1946 as acting deputy chief of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration’s initiative in war-ravaged areas of the Soviet Union. From 1955 to 1959, he served the state of New York as deputy housing commissioner and rent administrator; then from 1959 to 1960 he chaired the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

On February 11, 1961, Weaver returned to government service as President John F. Kennedy’s appointee to head the Bureau of Housing and Home Finance, declining the cabinet position as secretary of health, education, and welfare. It then became Kennedy’s intent to elevate Weaver to secretary of a proposed cabinet-level Department of Housing and Urban Development, but the proposal was stymied in Congress in 1961 and 1962 by Republicans and Southern Democrats because of the likelihood of a black man’s appointment to the position. It would not be until the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson that Congress passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965, and on January 13, 1966, Weaver was sworn in as the department’s first secretary and the first African American to attain a presidential cabinet post. After Weaver left the cabinet in 1969, he served for a year as president of Baruch University and rounded off his career as Distinguished Professor for Urban Studies at Hunter College from 1971 to 1978. He wrote four books: Negro Labor: A National Problem (1946), The Negro Ghetto (1948), The Urban Complex: Human Values in Urban Life (1964), and Dilemmas of Urban America (1965).

On November 6, 1962, the Weaver family suffered a devastating blow when Robert, Jr., died of a gunshot to the head, self-inflicted while playing Russian roulette. In 1997, Weaver died at home at the age of eighty-nine.

Significance

Because of his preference for working behind the scenes in a low-key style and for avoiding confrontation and publicity, Weaver is a much-overlooked figure. This has obscured public perception of his effectiveness as a groundbreaker and an agent for change and the enduring and pivotal role he played in the field of civil rights. His efforts formed the foundation and conceptualization of urban renewal as it has moved into the twenty-first century. Weaver was among the early New Deal reformers to tie economics to racial discrimination.

Bibliography

Bowser, Benjamin P., Louis Kushnick, and Paul Grant. Against the Odds: Scholars Who Challenged Racism in the Twentieth Century. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004. A series of short individual autobiographical studies, using the subject’s own words to demonstrate his or her lifelong struggles against racism. Weaver is studied in chapter 6: “Blending Scholarship with Public Service: Robert C. Weaver.”

Pritchett, Wendell E. Robert C. Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. As the first definitive biography of Weaver, this volume is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand his role and his significance. It is clearly written and highly detailed.

Taylor, Henry Louis, Jr., and Walter Hill, eds. Historical Roots of the Urban Crisis: African Americans in the Industrial City, 1900-1950. New York: Garland, 2000. Sigmund Shipp’s contributing article (chapter 8), “Building Bricks Without Straw: Robert Weaver and Industrial Employment, 1934-1944,” sheds some light on the crucial nature of Weaver’s published research and intragovernmental lobbying efforts in bringing about racial labor and housing reforms.