The New Deal and Beyond: Social Welfare in the South since 1930

The New Deal and Beyond: Social Welfare in the South since 1930 Review

This collection of ten original studies covers a wide range of issues related to the regional distinctiveness of welfare provision in the South and the development of the larger federal welfare state. The studies examine New Deal and Great Society programs from the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps to Social Security and Medicare. In addition, they draw attention to such private-sector organizations as the Salvation Army and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Some essays look at the degree of federal responsiveness to, or actual engagement with, recipients of assistance. One such study examines the dynamics between the New Deal bureaucracy, poor women who worked in WPA-organized sewing rooms in Atlanta, and local political activists concerned about the women's working conditions. The power of race and racism to shape the delivery of social services in the region, as well as the strong connections between social welfare and civil rights, is a concern common to many studies. One study shows how linking the availability of federal Medicare funds to racial equality helped end segregation in southern hospitals. Others focus on topics ranging from the pioneering North Carolina Fund, a state program that shaped Great Society initiatives, to the public health nurses and home economists of the Farm Security Administration, to Georgia governor Eugene Talmadge's maneuverings against the Federal Emergency Relief Administration.

The New Deal and Beyond is filled with many new insights into initiating and maintaining social programs in the South, a region whose welfare history is key to understanding the larger story of the American welfare state.

Three Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and the American Welfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal (Princeton Studies in American ... International, and Comparative Perspectives)

Three Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and the American Welfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal (Princeton Studies in American ... International, and Comparative Perspectives) Review

Three Worlds of Relief examines the role of race and immigration in the development of the American social welfare system by comparing how blacks, Mexicans, and European immigrants were treated by welfare policies during the Progressive Era and the New Deal. Taking readers from the turn of the twentieth century to the dark days of the Depression, Cybelle Fox finds that, despite rampant nativism, European immigrants received generous access to social welfare programs. The communities in which they lived invested heavily in relief. Social workers protected them from snooping immigration agents, and ensured that noncitizenship and illegal status did not prevent them from receiving the assistance they needed. But that same helping hand was not extended to Mexicans and blacks. Fox reveals, for example, how blacks were relegated to racist and degrading public assistance programs, while Mexicans who asked for assistance were deported with the help of the very social workers they turned to for aid.

Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Fox paints a riveting portrait of how race, labor, and politics combined to create three starkly different worlds of relief. She debunks the myth that white America's immigrant ancestors pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, unlike immigrants and minorities today. Three Worlds of Relief challenges us to reconsider not only the historical record but also the implications of our past on contemporary debates about race, immigration, and the American welfare state.

Welfare, Democracy and the New Deal

Welfare, Democracy and the New Deal Review

Although Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal is remembered in large part because of the aid and assistance it brought to millions of unemployed and indigent Americans, surprisingly little has been written about federal relief for unemployment. The great experiment of the Federal Emergency Relief Act had implications that went beyond its immediate purpose: it challenged directly the deep-seated conviction that the relief of poverty was a local responsibility, and in doing so highlighted the deficiencies of local self-government. In reviewing the experiment of the F.E.R.A. and the New Deal, Professor Brock's book raises important questions about American attitudes toward welfare, local government, and national responsibility.

Whose Welfare?

Whose Welfare? Review

Over the past few decades, the goal of welfare reform has been to move poor families off of welfare, not necessarily out of poverty. By that criterion, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 has been successful indeed: throughout the nation, millions have vanished from the welfare rolls. But what has been the cost of this "success" to the women and children who were the overwhelming majority of recipients?

Here a group of distinguished feminist scholars examines the causes and the impact of recent changes in welfare policy. Some of the authors trace the politics of welfare from the 1960s, emphasizing how attitudes toward "motherwork" and "working mothers" have evolved in the backlash against poor women's motherhood. Several other authors consider the effects of the new welfare policy on employment and wages, on the lives of noncitizen immigrants, on poor women's ability to escape domestic violence, and on their reproductive and parental rights. A third set of authors explores dependency and caregiving, along with the role of feminist thinking on these issues in the politics of welfare.

Whose Welfare? concludes with a historical analysis of activism among poor women. By illuminating that legacy, the volume challenges readers to build progressive agendas from the demands and actions of poor and working-class women.

Contributors Mimi Abramovitz, Hunter College Eileen Boris, University of Virginia Lynn Fujiwara, University of California, Santa Cruz Eve Feder Kittay, State University of New York, Stony Brook Demie Kurz, University of Pennsylvania Gwendolyn Mink, University of California, Santa Cruz Nancy Naples, University of California, Irvine Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York Dorothy Roberts, Northwestern University Rickie Solinger, Denver, CO