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Wesley G. Phelps - A People’s War on Poverty: Urban Politics and Grassroots Activists in Houston

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In A Peoples War on Poverty, Wesley G. Phelps investigates the on-the-ground implementation of President Lyndon Johnsons War on Poverty during the 1960s and 1970s. He argues that the fluid interaction between federal policies, urban politics, and grassroots activists created a significant site of conflict over the meaning of American democracy and the rights of citizenship that historians have largely overlooked. In Houston in particular, the War on Poverty spawned fierce political battles that revealed fundamental disagreements over what democracy meant, how far it should extend, and who should benefit from it. Many of the programs implementers took seriously the federal mandate to empower the poor as they pushed for a more participatory form of democracy that would include more citizens in the political, cultural, and economic life of the city.

At the center of this book are the vitally important but virtually forgotten grassroots activists who administered federal War on Poverty programs, including church ministers, federal program volunteers, students, local administrators, civil rights activists, and the poor themselves. The moderate Great Society liberalism that motivated the architects of the federal programs certainly galvanized local antipoverty activists in Houston. However, their antipoverty philosophy was driven further by prophetic religious traditions and visions of participatory democracy and community organizing championed by the New Left and iconoclastic figures like Saul Alinsky. By focusing on these local actors, Phelps shows that grassroots activists in Houston were influenced by a much more diverse set of intellectual and political traditions, fueling their efforts to expand the meaning of democracy. Ultimately, this episode in Houstons history reveals both the possibilities and the limits of urban democracy in the twentieth century.

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A Peoples War on Poverty
A PEOPLES WAR ON POVERTY
Urban Politics and Grassroots Activists in Houston
WESLEY G. PHELPS
Parts of appeared as National Ideal Meets Local Reality The Grassroots War on - photo 1
Parts of appeared as National Ideal Meets Local Reality: The Grassroots War on Poverty in Houston, in Richard B. McCaslin, Donald E. Chipman, and Andrew J. Torget, eds., This Corner of Canaan: Essays on Texas in Honor of Randolph B. Campbell (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2013). Copyright 2013 University of North Texas Press.
2014 by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
www.ugapress.org
All rights reserved
Set in Minion Pro by Graphic Composition, Inc., Bogart, Georgia
Printed digitally
Most University of Georgia Press titles are available from popular e-book vendors.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Phelps, Wesley G.
A peoples war on poverty : urban politics and grassroots activists
in Houston / Wesley G. Phelps.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8203-4670-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8203-4670-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8203-4671-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8203-4671-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Community Action Program (U.S.)History.
2. Community developmentTexasHoustonHistory20th century.
3. PoorServices forTexasHoustonHistory20th century.
4. PoorPolitical activityTexasHoustonHistory20th century.
5. PovertyGovernment policyTexasHoustonHistory20th century.
6. Social actionTexasHoustonHistory20th century. I. Title.
HN80.H8P44 2014
305.569097641411dc23 2013029149
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
ISBN for digital edition: 978-0-8203-4672-4
FOR DEVON AND JORDAN
Perhaps the story of Community Action must be told by a poet or mystic rather than a politician or historian.
Donald Rumsfeld, director, Office of Economic Opportunity
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the result of several years of research on the implementation of the War on Poverty in Houston. It began as a research paper in John Boless graduate seminar on the history of the United States South at Rice University, grew into a doctoral dissertation, and finally matured into a book manuscript. It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge those who have provided the encouragement, resources, and academic stimulation I needed along the way.
Each member of my dissertation committee made unique contributions to my work. Allen Matusow initially sparked my interest in the 1960s even before I arrived at Rice in 2005, and he continually challenged me to think more critically about my subject. John Boles provided much-needed encouragement when times got rough, and he is as good as it gets when it comes to academic professionalism and compassion. Caleb McDaniel brought a fresh perspective to my project, and our many conversations have helped me immensely in thinking about my work more broadly. Chandler Davidson offered an interesting sociological perspective that will continue to benefit my work as a historian, and as a scholar-activist his work has helped me see the link between rigorous academic inquiry and progressive social change.
I could not have completed this book without the generous financial support of several institutions. An Albert J. Beveridge Grant for Research in the History of the Western Hemisphere from the American Historical Association and a Moody Research Grant from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation funded the necessary research trips as I began this project. Additionally, the Rice University History Department generously funded research travel and provided significant institutional support. During each of their tenures as director of graduate studies, Ed Cox and Carl Caldwell unfailingly advocated for the graduate students and ensured we would be provided with the resources we needed to complete our work. Paula Platt, Rachel Zepeda, Anita Smith, and Lisa Tate guided me through the bureaucratic requirements for finishing my degree and made my time at Rice thoroughly enjoyable. I would also like to thank Dean Paula Sanders and the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at Rice University for providing a generous dissertation completion fellowship. Finally, the Sam Houston State University History Department provided generous financial support to complete the manuscript.
Many archivists and librarians helped me locate the materials I needed to complete this book: Tab Lewis and Barbara Rust at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and Fort Worth, Texas; Tamara Jordan, Erin Norris, Tim Ronk, and Joel Draut at the Houston Metropolitan Research Center; Allen Fisher and Claudia Anderson at the LBJ Library; Ellen Brown at the Baylor University Library; and Lauren Meyers at the Woodson Research Center at Rice University. I would also like to thank Earl Allen, Iris Ballew, Lee Grant, and John Wildenthal for sharing with me their memories of Houston in the 1960s.
I had many opportunities to present portions of my research at several academic conferences during the past several years, including the University of Virginias Conference on the War on Poverty and Grassroots Struggles for Racial and Economic Justice, the Texas State Historical Association, the Urban History Association, Houston Area Southern Historians, the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the University of South Carolinas Conference on Southern Student Activism in the 1960s and 1970s, and Rice Universitys Conference on the Past and Present of Race and Place in Houston. My work has benefited from the many intriguing conversations I have had with individuals at these conferences, particularly Susan Ashmore, Bob Bauman, Brian Behnken, Edwin Breeden, Bill Clayson, Laurie Green, Lisa Hazirjian, Tom Kiffmeyer, Max Krochmal, Guian McKee, Zachary Montz, Anna Roberts, Marc Rodriguez, Kyle Shelton, Jenna Steward, and Rhonda Williams.
Several individuals have read portions of my manuscript and have provided valuable comments and criticisms that I was able to incorporate into the finished product. Tom Jackson read an early version of a draft that eventually grew into several chapters and helped me conceptualize the project more coherently. Cary Wintz and Rick McCaslin provided excellent comments on , by far the most difficult section for me to write. Everyone at the University of Georgia Press has been wonderful to work with during the publishing process, particularly Jon Davies, Kay Kodner, Derek Krissoff, and Beth Snead. I would also like to thank the anonymous readers for their thoughtful and incisive comments and suggestions.
Many friends and colleagues have had a profound influence on my work. My daily lunch conversations with Luke Harlow and Rusty Hawkins during our time together in Houston allowed me to test out new ideas on a sympathetic audience and forced me to temper some of my more tenuous claims. Blake Ellis, Gale Kenny, Andy Lang, Joe Locke, Allison Madar, Jim Wainwright, and Ben Wright helped me think more critically about my project. I would also like to express my gratitude to the students who took my course titled American Biography: The 1960s at Rice University during the fall 2009 semester. It was a sincere pleasure to teach such bright, inquisitive, and ambitious students, and they helped me see how my project fits more broadly into the history of the 1960s in America.
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