The Black Power Movement and American Social Work

WHEN FOUR HUNDRED BLACK SOCIAL WORKERS walked out of the 1968 National Conference on Social Welfare, T. George Silcott, their spokesperson, commented to the press that the National Conference was “a do-nothing tea party group which has consistently demonstrated that it will not involve itself in social action.”¹ His statement hit at the heart of the balancing act that has defined the social work profession: a tension between the provision of services and engaging in social action has shaped the field’s professionalization projects, internal conflicts, and outside criticism of social workers. Indeed, the retreat from social action by the social work establishment just as the struggle for black liberation was radicalizing was a centermost grievance black social workers had against the profession. Let me be clear, however, that—with the exception of the National Conference on Social Welfare—social work organizations maintained an overall commitment to the institutionalized forms of social action they had always used. They wrote letters, testified in legislative hearings, and lobbied on behalf of the issues they saw as relevant to their clients. Yet by 1966, with Black Power on the rise and rebellions raging in America’s cities, “paper activism” would no longer count as legitimate social action in the eyes of the most radical social workers.

In this chapter, I contend that during a social movement wave, activism outside of social movement organizations becomes defined by the practices of movements. I make the case that groups like social workers, who straddle the fence between activism and service, are forced to rethink their roles. I further argue that this atmosphere of uncertainty, caused by shifting movement ideas and practices, created openings for dissenting social workers to seek change within the profession.

Settlement workers at the turn of the century—who were generally middle-class, educated white women—lived with their clients in impoverished communities, ran educational programs, and sought reform in labor, child welfare, and women’s rights. They believed that the primary function of social work should be advocacy, community development, and reform. Caseworkers, on the other hand, still rooted in the charity tradition, were confident that it was the individual client who was the cause of his or her own misfortune, and individual change was the key to solving the individual’s problems. While both approaches have always existed within the profession, the dominance of either model over the other has shifted drastically over time. In the post-Civil War era, the individual change model was in such ascendancy that settlement workers were hardly tolerated at the National Conference on Charities and Casework (NCCC). Yet in 1909 Jane Addams, respected as the mother of the U.S. settlement movement, was elected president of the body.

The solution was a wide turn to psychoanalytic theory and practice in the 1920s and the mental hygiene movement came to dominate the bourgeoning profession. The thrust of this movement was the idea that personality traits are shaped by our environment—not the larger structural environment, but our individual home environments, and child-rearing practices in particular were essential to determining different adult personalities and behaviors. This shift toward psychiatric social work marked a successful turn in the drive towards professionalization since the medical model they aspired to was already an accepted paradigm for treating the “disorders of the mind.” By 1929, social workers were approaching full professional status, complete with organizations, journals, twenty-five Masters programs, and a code of ethics. But as Ehrenreich (1985) notes, “perhaps the surest sign of social work’s growing credibility was the formation of community chests, common fundraising and distributing organizations, by social work administrators and local philanthropic elites.” Community chests, formed in 1913, saw tremendous growth between 1919 and 1948, going from nineteen in 1919 and surpassing a thousand by 1948 (United Way of America 2007). These organizations (later known as United Way) were the primary fund-channeling organizations in social welfare and allowed local elites control over the allocation of money to agencies whose policies and programs were acceptable to them. This money management ensured the domination of the individual casework model of social work for years. The reliance on community chest funding by settlement houses and other social agencies meant that many of them maintained conservative positions on many social issues (Trolander 1975).

During the turbulence of the 1930s, the Rank and File movement within the profession invigorated the commitment to social reform. In adopting the name that challengers within labor unions used to distinguish themselves from their leadership, the advocates of the Rank and File movement made the claim that they were the equivalent of the foot soldiers in the labor movement (Fisher 1980; Walkowitz 1999). In so doing, they were also equating the social work establishment to the labor establishment—an implicit accusation that social work leadership was upholding the status quo (Fisher 1980; Wencour and Reisch 1989). The Rank and File movement rejected the idea that increased professionalization would lead to greater recognition and higher salaries for social workers, arguing instead that it was an illusion representing the views of social work executives rather than actual practitioners. Operating on an analysis that social workers were a white-collar proletariat and that professionalization mystified the real relationships between managers and workers in social work agencies, between 1935 and 1938 several social workers’ unions developed across the country. These new movements within the profession challenging the dominant individual casework model, would together with the large scale poverty of the 1930s return reform to the ideological forefront. The rapid expansion of relief meant that financial assistance was given as a right rather than at the discretion of caseworkers, further leaving the role of casework unclear (Reisch and Andrews 2001; Withorn 1984).

A central element of the racial dynamics of the period following World War II is that whiteness became synonymous with suburbanization and prosperity and blackness with inner cities, poverty, and crime. The simultaneous subsidization of white suburbanization by U.S. housing policy and the concentration of poverty in American core cities meant that African Americans and Latinos were heavily represented on the welfare rolls, with African Americans making up as much as 45 percent of the welfare clients in cities like New York (Walkowitz 1999). As welfare became associated with blackness, the identity of “social worker” also became associated with whiteness. Despite the fact that African Americans had more of a presence in social work than in most other professions, the shifting racial dynamics of the period created an entrenched symbolism of the field as white intervention into the lives of the black poor (Walkowitz 1999). Compounding this perception was the fact that 1950s McCarthyism made identifying with or taking a particular interest in African American or Latino clients dangerous and unprofessional for social workers (Walkowitz 1999). All of these factors worked to further divorce social work from social activism around racial inequality, all while the United States was on the brink of what has been called “the minority rights revolution” (Walton 1988).

As the direct action phase of the civil rights movement emerged with attempts to enforce the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, social work would again find itself called to the carpet. Would the profession live up to the social action legacy of Jane Addams and the settlement movement advocates, or would it remain committed to service provision above all else? The former dedication to social action and the tension it created was evident in the relationship between the one body of social workers most committed to social action, the National Federation of Settlements (NFS), and the civil rights movement. Different social work agencies—such as the National Association of Social Welfare (NASW) and the National Conference on Social Welfare (NCSW)—had different relationships to the movement, so the following analysis cannot speak for the profession as a whole. However, the story of the NFS is illustrative in at least two respects. First, most national social work agencies maintained some level of commitment to social change through social action committees or policy advocacy groups within their organization. The NFS was no different. Secondly, the NFS served as the action wing of the whole profession in many ways. Several social work leaders held leadership positions in both the NFS and the NASW or NCSW either simultaneously or at different points in their careers. So while it is true that the NFS had a stronger identification with the profession’s activist legacy, the NCSW also claimed Jane Addams as one of their founding mothers. Despite these overlaps, how the NFS interacted with the movement is central to understanding the larger relationship between the profession and the civil rights movement because it operated as the outer boundary of acceptable social action within the profession. No other national social work body would have a greater opportunity, ability, or ideological impulse to participate in the emerging movement. In this way, the story of the relationship between civil rights and social welfare is the story of how settlement workers and leaders interacted with the movement.

Meanwhile, the NFS underwent several reflective moments in regards to their policy and identity around social action. Though the organization was redefining and reorienting itself throughout the civil rights era, there were several serious episodes of boundary renegotiation as Black Power ideas took hold in the black liberation movement. Its first in-depth period of self-reflection occurred between 1963 and 1965, when the NFS needed to address earlier criticism surrounding social action leveled by settlement practitioners in Detroit and areas of the South. Some settlement professionals argued that their national federation was going too far in making social policy statements and Southern houses preferred a “go slow” approach to changing race relations. In this context, the late 1950s and the early 1960s were marked by counterarguments and defenses by the NFS of its long-standing social action policy.

As a response to the dissent, the NFS sought to clarify its position on social action in 1960. Fern Colburn, secretary of the Social Education and Action (SEA) committee, produced a report called Social Action Methods in the Practice of the National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers.² She opens by drawing on the organization’s activist legacy, claiming that “the National Federation has a proud history in working to alleviate the suffering of men, women, and children in this country and on the other hand to enhance them in their own right, and help each to make his contribution to society.” She then expands her scope, not only emphasizing how the federation helped individual cases but also how “all through history settlement people have not only tried to heal the wounds left by society, but have always sought ways to help society improve itself.” “In this endeavor,” she argues, “settlements have been leaders among all social workers.” She proceeds to outline how the NFS practice of social action included engaging in the serious study of social issues; passing resolutions only when there was substantial agreement among the people at the annual meeting; offering administrative consultation; testifying at legislative hearings; and submitting letters and statements “for the record.”

Much of what the SEA secretary had to say was aimed at legitimating the federation’s practice of “stance taking.” In addition to noting that majority consensus has always been necessary for resolution passing, she points out that (1) no resolutions had been passed when there was a significant minority opposition, (2) while there had been disagreement over social work programs throughout NFS history, these originated from one or two dissenters and never out of a general sense of controversy, and (3) “the social action program ha[d] always been non-political and non-partisan.”³

While there was indeed some controversy over the advocacy work that NFS had long been a part of, an appeal to the federation’s legacy was enough to smooth over the ruffled feathers of those who would have preferred neutrality on matters of civil rights. But this defensive posture would soon be challenged by the question of whether they would participate in the March on Washington in 1963. While the leadership was comfortably able to rely on the legacy of Jane Addams to defend their practice of stance taking and legislative lobbying, the prospect of supporting this high-profile direct action measure brought their willingness to be activists into question. This question would mark the beginning of a period of reflection and identity renegotiation that would signal NFS’s first real foray into civil rights action.

When the call to march on Washington was sounded, the NFS paid very little attention. Soon, however, local member houses began asking whether NFS would publicly support and condone the participation of settlement workers in such a demonstration.⁴ In other words, these members wanted to know if it was acceptable to attend the march as full representatives of their respective settlement houses. A series of executive committee meetings ensued discussing whether it was appropriate to participate in direct action techniques. In the end, the federation decided that member houses that wished to participate could do so with its support.⁵ Nevertheless, some of the official NFS letters sent to member agencies arrived too late for individual boards of directors to approve settlement participation.⁶ In response to this confusion around the appropriateness of settlement participation in the march, NFS sent out a questionnaire to all member houses, asking whether they had participated and to solicit any information about their involvement.

Thirty-nine member houses responded to the survey. Of them, only seventeen directly participated in the march. However, several others were very involved in many aspects of the action, including sending members, sponsoring buses to transport neighborhood residents to Washington, D.C., and local settlement houses providing lodging and food to marchers. These settlement houses were clear to point out that their activities were undertaken as citizens and supporters of the community and not necessarily as representatives of the settlement houses and the NFS. In actuality, most settlements were not involved in social action. Some had followed the national organization’s lead and taken stances on issues such as fair housing, fair employment practices, and school desegregation, but many workers were interested in participating in more civil rights activities and sought guidance on how to handle these issues.⁷ The response written by Benjamin Leonard, the head of the Five Towns Community House in New York City, highlights this desire. After confirming that his agency had participated in the march, he noted that the march had a galvanizing effect on their agency: “One of the significant results for the marchers was that each returned to his home community imbued with the idea that he must do something on the local level.” He continued, “The march also revealed to the non-leaders (rank and file) of each community, that there is power and strength in demonstrations. I think this becomes the challenge for the leaders of each community, namely to help keep pace with the urgency of this social revolution of which we are all a part.”⁸

Similarly, in a letter to their board of directors, the executive staff of the Mount Pleasant Community Center in Cleveland, Ohio, expressed their interest in being involved in a new association of civil rights agencies, “which was working to eliminate discrimination and segregation of minorities…in the city of Cleveland.” Asking the board to meet, discuss, and make a decision on this activity, the staff argued that, “social work as a profession and settlement work in particular are being criticized for touching the surface of many problems, but aggressively tackling nothing; that we offer palliatives after the damage has been done; that we are fence straddlers wanting to please everybody, offending none, accomplishing little. That we give information, talk much, meet in committee but have not enough strong convictions to act.” They then asserted that they “should become more actively engaged with the enlistment and participation of the ‘grass roots’ in our Mt. Pleasant area in being seen and heard in the field of human relations and civil rights.” Murtis Taylor, the center’s director, and her staff perfectly reflected the tension snaking through the settlement endeavor at this critical moment in the civil rights movement: a desire to use the appropriate bureaucratic procedures of their organization to encourage social action, while recognizing that those procedures and structures were often not conducive to these same goals. In this same vein, Taylor briefly remarks in her survey response how the United Freedom Movement (also based in Cleveland) “moves so fast in making decisions for action that further Board involvement has been difficult because there is no time for Board to discuss whether the agency should officially picket this group or that company.” She continues, “The community is much aware of the Freedom Movement sweeping the country…. Perhaps we can discuss at the May Conference the Civil Rights Movement and the Settlement’s role.”⁹

The president of the Hamilton-Madison House in New York City expressed a similar sentiment in his response as well. “Since last fall Hamilton-Madison House has faced a series of situations arising from the intensified fight for civil rights which have caused disagreement between our board and staff. The basic issue,” he argued, “has concerned the stand which the House ought to take respecting civil rights activities which violate the law; obstructing the construction at Rutgers Housing site and the recent school boycott are two cases in point.”¹⁰ He went to say that the board had been confronted with the “need to take a stand for or against an action program formulated and led by strong outside action groups. In each case, we were asked to devote the resources and prestige of our agency and the time of our staff to achieve a goal we approved of through methods we opposed.”¹¹ His concern represents the central issue to this moment of redefinition of identity and renegotiation of boundaries: the desire to support the civil rights movement and participate in direct action methods of social protest, but intense uncertainty about the appropriateness of such tactics for settlements.

In the Goddard Riverside Community Center’s response to the survey, Frederick Johnson also addressed the issue of movement tactics. He wrote, “It was my feeling that most of the white people who went on the trip were very happy to have an opportunity to directly participate in a cause that they believed in and yet not have to ‘storm the barricades,’ e.g. get arrested, sit-in. In short it was a dignified, respectable demonstration.”¹² His response reflects the centrality of the discussion around the settlements’ commitment to civil rights but aversion to extralegal tactics.

In 1964, after the difficulty of deciding whether to support the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the NFS realized that member agencies were dealing with civil rights concerns in their communities and wished to participate in wider civil rights debates and issues. As a result, they formed a subcommittee on civil rights to provide informed guidance on impending civil rights actions for which their support would be requested, and to direct local houses on emerging civil rights issues.¹³ This decision was largely shaped by the sharp criticism leveled at the settlement method of social action, which Herbert Gans (1964) portrayed as marginal and failing in an article published in Social Work, and which was under intense fire by Alinsky organizations in various parts of the country.¹⁴

The need for the subcommittee was underscored by the results of a survey conducted in March 1964. The survey asked member houses to report any involvement in local civil rights efforts, to describe any stands they had taken on civil rights issues, and to let the NFS know if guidance on any policy matters from the larger national organization was needed. Forty-one member agencies responded to the survey and the majority (twenty-nine in total) had been involved in some sort of civil rights effort. Most of this involvement, however, cannot be characterized as direct action. For example, several member agencies reported writing letters and attending meetings, but not much else. The director of the Market Street Neighborhood House in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote, “Please share with us any information you have about ways of taking action, etc. We have only worked with our own club groups, written letters, attended meetings, etc.”¹⁵ Many of the requests for guidance indicated a need for direction on how to reconcile civil rights movement activity with the long-established settlement identity and process. When asked where guidance was needed, Shig Okada of the West Side Community House in Cleveland, Ohio, listed concerns about “the use of picketing to bring about desired changes (and) the extent of Board involvement where there is a diversity of views on civil rights.” Similarly, Denis Dryden of the Stuyvesant Community Center in Brooklyn, New York, said that “sensitizing and activating Board members (and) (a)ctivity without losing settlement character—that is rent strikes, sit-ins,” were areas of concern.¹⁶

Settlement professionals interested in participating in the civil rights movement were forced to ask themselves: Is this really what we do? Can we march on Washington and still be who we are? Does participating in direct action mean we are becoming something different than what we have always been? Does refusing to participate mean we are not who we say we are? To know the answer to any of these questions the NFS had to first answer the most fundamental question of all: “Who are we?” This was not a simple query. It called into question their legacy as activists. Even further though, it held their brand of social action up against the efforts of activists risking their lives in the Selmas and Birminghams of the civil rights movement.

In many ways, through these multiple surveys and extensive conversations around civil rights activism, the NFS was putting their finger on the pulse of the movement to see where they should go. It represents a wider complicated navigation of rapidly shifting political norms and values created by the intense uncertainty of the period. “Real activism” became defined by what the movement was doing rather than just its stances, and the question for NFS soon became “Where do we fit?” By 1965, the federation was beginning to find its way in the new political terrain and was prepared to stake a claim in the new politics. In Executive Director Margaret Berry’s ¹⁷ report to the board of directors in January 1965, she asserted, “We meet at a time when change is in the air in this rich country. We are irrevocably part of one world. We have finally made the great leap forward in civil rights legislation. There is hope we can turn our generosity and compassion on the dark spots in our own country. Settlements are an important part of this effort.”¹⁸

How to deal with the civil rights movement, especially as the federal government was moving forward with civil rights legislation, was certainly a central concern for settlements. Whitney Young, then executive director of the National Urban League, delivered an important speech to the 43rd National Conference of the National Federation of Settlements in San Francisco. He commended the settlement movement for its work with African Americans in urban centers: “I am proud to say that most of the settlement houses of this country have stayed and fought when neighborhoods changed. In remaining behind, they forged ahead. In responding to new challenges, they created new opportunities.”¹⁹ On the other hand, he pointed out that the problems these new populations faced were different than those confronted by the European immigrants who settlements originally served. Citing the loss of manufacturing jobs, lack of adequate housing, and deteriorating urban neighborhoods, Young argued that “your settlement houses stand in the crucibles of our greatest challenge—the neighborhoods in which there is the greatest hardship, the greatest discrimination, the greatest poverty, the greatest disorganization and the greatest despair.” Such a situation, he contended, called for “an all-out, massive, coordinated assault at the neighborhood level by philanthropy, local, state, and federal governments, civil and non-sectarian religious groups, and civil rights agencies working together.”²⁰ His address spoke to the same concerns Berry previously addressed at the board meeting just months before.

In October of that same year, Loma Allen, the secretary of the Social Education and Action (SEA) committee, gave a speech to the Delaware Valley Settlement Alliance detailing the role of settlements in civil rights. Attempting to offer some much needed clarity on the issue, she maintained that settlements could serve three purposes in the new movement. First, they could be a “builder of bridges over chasms,”²¹ serving as a link between local neighborhoods and the wider community, between people who have and those who have not, and between those with light skin and those with dark skin. She contended that the settlement “spans the gullies and the ditches that isolate people from one another.”²² Secondly, she said that the settlement could be the central location for information on what’s going on in the world, a kind of “radar station” to the entire community. Finally, Allen argued that the settlement should be a working demonstration of people of different racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds involved together in finding solutions to the problems that affect them all.²³

Allen also emphasized the historical roots of settlement work in creating meaningful social action. She reminded the audience that the origins of settlement work were rooted in the abolition movement, and of the role of Jane Addams, for example, in the creation of both the NAACP and National Urban League. She then claimed that integrated settlements were neither new nor radical for the profession, citing the steady growth of working with black populations during the first twenty-five years of the settlement movement. On the basis of this historical background, she offered this guideline to the leadership and activities that settlements should participate in: “the primary function of a settlement, as such, is not that of aggressive leadership in the application of pressure, but that such a position does not preclude a wide range of possible choices in defining areas of cooperation in complementary action with organizations for which this is a primary role.”²⁴

Moreover, she stated that settlements had a responsibility to provide opportunities for interracial participation. In the era of Community Action Programs that required maximum feasible participation, many communities were demanding more and more representation on settlement boards and staffs. In this context, Allen noted that

where tensions have been high within predominately Negro areas, agencies may find themselves under attack for having white persons on their board and staff. They may sometimes find themselves under pressure to increase the minority representation to the point where the interracial nature of the team would be destroyed. However there can be no compromise on the principle of maintaining an interracial board and staff…which provides an ideal situation for expressing commitment to the goal of integrated society.

In 1964, following the March on Washington and the ensuing discussion about civil rights, the NFS sought funds to study the particular role of settlements in the shifting racial and political climate and on race relations generally. They hired St. Clair Drake, coauthor of the book Black Metropolis (1993[1945]) and professor of sociology at Roosevelt University, to carry out the study in that following year. He and his research assistants surveyed executives of 142 agencies in fifty-nine cities. His report, completed early in 1966, covered issues ranging from the racial composition of boards and staffs to whether member agencies allowed black groups to use the facilities. He concluded that while the end of segregated cities was a long way off, integration must remain the long-term goal. Settlements thus had to resist the urge to create all-black boards and staff as that would compromise the integration ideal. Moreover, he argued that settlements should not make aggressive leadership for integration their primary function, and should instead concentrate on building bridges between the ghetto and other parts of the city and between blacks with whites. He contended that, “the white volunteer must continue to be used,” and agreed with Loma Allen that “there can be no compromise on the principle of maintaining an interracial staff.” He finished with another reminder of the settlement movement’s historical roots, noting that “settlement houses had played a major part in moving immigrants into the mainstream of American life and they should play a similar role for Negroes.”

Drake’s report, titled Race Relations in a Time of Rapid Social Change,²⁶ was published in 1966 and distributed to each member house as a guide to race relations. It reflected the organization’s unwavering commitment to integration as well as its resolute disapproval and fear of separate black activities. The Drake Report was widely publicized as the NFS’s big contribution to helping member agencies deal with race relations. One of the primary outcomes of the report was a restatement of the organization’s overarching belief that integration was good and Black Power was bad. The choice to hire Drake itself has been characterized as “unfortunate” (Lasch-Quinn 1993) as he was a staunch integrationist, therefore precluding any consideration of how to engage the emerging radical movement in the settlement tradition.

The Race Relations project not only reflected the desire of the National Federation of Settlements to insert itself into civil rights politics, but also the deep confusion around racial issues for member houses. Moreover, the Drake Report was a clear attempt at keeping their activism within the bounds of the settlement movement. The NFS’s second civil rights project would do the same.

In 1966, the NFS was active in the struggle to get the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to reconsider its decision to withdraw funding to 121 Head Start centers run by the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM). As a result of the pressure, OEO did renew funding and the NFS saw this as an opportunity to support the activities of the Freedom Neighborhood Centers (which were closely connected to the CDGM and other Mississippi movement organizations) to further promote the self-determination of black Mississippi communities. Upon announcing the project, Loma Allen remarked that “progress towards justice and equality in Mississippi depends on the success of the self-help community programs conducted in these centers.”²⁷ This was an ingenious decision on the part of the organization, as it recognized its expertise in supporting local community centers as an important contribution to the Southern civil rights struggle. It made perfect sense, so much so that the Stern Family Fund provided a grant to support the project.²⁸

The key concept that the NFS rallied around in proposing and maintaining their support of the Mississippi Project was “self-determination.” In an exploratory study of Freedom Centers, Herbert Brunson, a researcher hired by NFS, reported that though the programming at the centers varied, the core was structured around meeting community needs. For the most part, they were created as places for people to be able to hold conversations “with some assurance of freedom of expression.” He also made clear the centers’ relationship to the rest of the Mississippi Freedom Movement, noting that they generally housed the CDGM Head Start programs, held literacy classes to support voter registration drives, and were central to the development and support of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).²⁹ Brunson recommended that the NFS employ a consultant to the community centers, arguing that there was a clear need for guidance so that the centers did not fail for lack of skilled leadership. He further proposed that the consultant should live in and be familiar with the area they served due to the rapidly changing social conditions. Moreover, he felt that the consultant should be explicitly identified with the Freedom Movement and accepting of “involvement in the political realms.”

The NFS followed through with Brunson’s proposals. Two African American field workers from Mississippi, Al Rhodes and Coleman Miller, were hired to provide technical assistance to the two hundred Freedom Centers in that state, which were struggling to maintain their funding and programming. Margaret Berry recalls interviewing Rhodes and Miller in an airport, as there was no other place for a white woman to safely meet with two black men in Mississippi’s racially hostile environment.³⁰ Both men had been active with CDGM and other Mississippi movement organizations.

The work the consultants carried out in Mississippi was by far more political and movement-oriented than other NFS activities. The Mississippi workers were involved in boycotts, organized students to protest against police brutality, and helped in the MFDP’s struggle to replace the state’s Democratic Committee.³¹ They maintained relationships with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), and many other well-known social movement organizations.³² Al Rhodes ran for state representative in 1967 with the permission of NFS to do so while still on the organization’s payroll. Rhodes, who stayed on with NFS after Coleman Miller left in 1968, was also involved in Charles Evers’s successful mayoral campaign in the town of Fayette.³³ By 1969, he was facilitating a relationship with the Republic of New Afrika, a radical organization, to buy land to support a housing project for poor families.³⁴ The work that the NFS carried out through their Mississippi Project even earned them surveillance by the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission,³⁵ which was detailed in records released in 1998.³⁶

The Mississippi Project is a largely untold story of the history of settlement houses, and social welfare history in the United States. The federation’s strong financial and ideological support for the Southern civil rights movement between 1966 and 1970 sits in contrast to the uncertainty—indeed, at times outright resistance—that it had toward black organizing in Northern and Western states and cities. Two factors help to explain this puzzle. First, there were no official, NFS-affiliated centers in Mississippi and very few in the South generally.³⁷ This created a space for the NFS to answer only to the needs of the Freedom Centers and the communities they served. There were no long-seated boards with conservative white members or old settlement heads who were worried about the implications of social action to contend with. Therefore, the national office could freely act on their desire to support civil rights without fear of repercussion. Secondly—and more importantly—the Southern civil rights struggle represented something very different than the Northern struggle in the NFS’s perspective. The movement in Mississippi was still struggling for enforcement of integration policies, for fair democratic representation in local and federal politics, to be allowed to take advantage of the franchise, and for the elimination of the insidious brand of racism that made safe travel impossible for interracial groups. The Northern struggle, however, was associated with a rejection of white norms and white liberalism, separatist sentiment, militancy, race riots, and the emergent Black Power movement.