FROM THE DAYS of the earliest settlers, the spirit of helping others has been a key element of American society. On the frontier the family and neighbors were the only sources of assistance. As communities sprang up and populations grew, the church and other voluntary associations became important social institutions and helpmates to those less fortunate.
The Industrial Revolution in the late-1800’s witnessed the development of the settlement house, one of the early examples of a physical facility other than a church that served as a center of activity for community problem-solving.
Hull House in Chicago became the national model. Most settlement houses were for new immigrants from European nations and provided language instruction, job training and social services to help people “settle” into life in America.
In the early 1900s, colleges began to offer formal training in the principles and methods of social work, which led to the birth of a new profession.
The great depression of the 1930s overwhelmed the nation’s communities. The nation’s families, churches, voluntary agencies, and state-funded social welfare programs were unable to cope with the magnitude of the economic and social problems. Up to this point the widely held social value had been that the Federal government should not interfere with the economy, but with the Depression, the public called for a new Federal role.
The government stepped in with a “New Deal” to provide retirement income through a new social insurance program called Social Security. Initially, it did not include domestic workers or farm workers – and about 2/3 of Black Americans worked in one of those two sectors. The “New Deal” also created a new Unemployment Insurance System. Congress passed many new banking and labor laws to strengthen the economy, regulate industry and protect workers.
The Aid for Dependant Children program was created as part of the Social Security Act. AFDC was modeled on programs that existed in about 17 states -- especially the Illinois version that had been created in 1912 under prodding from the Hull House. AFDC was created to provide “temporary public assistance” for children of men killed in industrial accidents and for others that local authorities decided were “the deserving poor.” Social workers were hired to determine who -- in keeping with the local social values – “deserved” assistance, to advise recipients about how to use the money, and help the mothers of those children to obtain the services and make the transitions necessary to get their lives back together (which in the 1930’s usually meant to move back in with her family or to get married again).
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From the 1930s to the late 1950s, state and local governments had much of the responsibility for administering most of the programs created during the depression.
After World War II the G.I. Bill provided money for college for veterans and propelled millions of people into the middle class. The communications media, especially television, expanded across the United States. The American public became more aware of the problems of the aged, the effects of segregation, of poor education, of health problems caused by malnutrition and hunger, of the need for people to be educated in order to get good jobs, and of the other difficulties experienced by minorities and the low-income population.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1954 in Brown vs. Board of Education declared that separate schools for blacks and whites in Topeka, Kansas (and several other school districts) did not provide an equal education, i.e., that “separate was not equal.” This was a 180 degree reversal of the 1896 “Dred Scott Decision” in which the court had said that separate was equal. (How many other things should we be doing exactly the opposite of the way we do them now?)
“Brown” was a dramatic expansion of Federal authority into what had previously been the domain of state’s rights and local determination. In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the decision. To the surprise of many, the Federal government was in fact going to enforce the decision. The decision led to an expansion of awareness of the discrimination that existed in other areas of publicly financed activity such as bus and train transportation, employment on government-funded projects, and in use of licensed public accommodations, including lunch counters, restaurants, and hotels. Citizens began to organize to seek equal rights in those areas, and the Civil Rights Movement (which has existed since before the nation was formed, e.g. the abolitionists) began to gain new support from the general public.
By the early 1960’s, the economy was booming. A majority of the American public believed that everyone could live “the good life”, and that society as a whole had a responsibility for helping people overcome barriers that prevented them from sharing in the fruits of American society.
This paper was originally written by Jim Masters of the Center for Community Futures and published by NACAA for the
25th Anniversary of Community Action in 1989. He updates it here for the 40th Anniversary
Questions or comments? Contact him at jmasters@cencomfut.com
• Background
• LBJ State of the Union
• Creation:1964
• Formative Years: 1964 - 1967
• Restructuring Phase: 1967 - 1968
• Transition Years: 1969 - 1974
• Program Management Years 1974 - 1981
• Block Grant years: 1981 - Present
• The Results and Outcomes Years: 1993 - and into the future
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