THE WALKOUT OF FOUR HUNDRED black social workers from the 1968 National Conference on Social Welfare (NCSW) annual meeting was a powerful scene and remains a central element of the NABSW’s narrative history.
1 However, it was not the first plan of action for confronting the National Conference, nor was it the preferred one.
In the April preceding the 1968 NCSW forum, a black caucus organized at the National Association of Social Workers’ (NASW) National Social Action Workshop on the Urban Crisis, held in memory of Martin Luther King Jr.
2 The Urban Crisis Conference (UCC) invited a powerhouse group of activists and radical scholars to speak, including Charles V. Hamilton, Alvin Poussaint, and Richard Cloward.
3 The event was marked with numerous demands for greater activism on the part of NASW.
4 Throughout the conference, the national organization was pushed to support the upcoming Poor People’s March on Washington, and a march was organized by several social workers along with a seven-point platform.
5 They wanted to proudly take a stand as social workers to call for action on the
Kerner Report, to push for legislation on a guaranteed annual income, to eliminate the welfare freeze, to immediately pass open housing legislation, that negotiations to end the Vietnam War begin immediately, to cease the riot suppression bills, and to support the poor people’s campaign.
6Black social workers played a prominent role in the workshop’s activism. The social workers who came together at the Urban Crisis Conference in Washington, D.C. represented several groups of black professionals who had organized separately in 1967: the Black Social Workers of Detroit; the Associations of Black Social Workers of New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh; the Catalysts and the Afro-American Family and Community Services of Chicago; and the Alliance of Black Social Workers of Philadelphia (Jaggers 2003; Johnson 1976). The black participants of the conference were called together by Audreye Johnson in response to their anger about the lack of black leadership and representation at a conference on the urban crisis (Johnson 1976). Black social workers at the conference were incensed when a memorial service was held for Martin Luther King Jr. in the garage of the hotel—just three weeks after his assassination.
7 At the caucus meeting, they formed a tentative national association called the National Association of Black Catalysts, came up with an organizing plan to recruit other social workers, and decided to caucus again at the NCSW meeting coming up in May.
8 Core organizers decided to meet with NCSW leadership to discuss a list of demands they had put together.
When they arrived in San Francisco on Sunday, May 26, 1968, the word was already out that black social workers would be meeting after the opening reception to talk about the development of a separate national organization. They found their planned meeting room was locked, so they decided to meet the next day. On Monday, in the absence of a meeting room, the group met in a hotel suite. The room was overflowing with people and energy. The discussion was “hot and heavy” with lots of disagreement and intensity, but the group reached an agreement in the end. They appointed a steering committee and individuals who would arrange to meet with NCSW leaders. Despite many attempts, however, the Executive Committee of the NCSW refused to meet with the steering committee of the Catalysts. Nor would they allow time on the conference program for black social workers to discuss their demands.
9 It seemed their hand was forced by unresponsiveness and resistance.
Tuesday, May 28 was a working day for the group. They collaborated in small groups to generate a list of concerns, which were then compiled into a larger position statement. Preparing a unified statement from such a wide range of social workers from all over the country was a difficult process. Doug Glasgow recalls it as a tense but exciting time: “It was a period of great strategy in the sense that made it possible in two days. By the second day, we finally said that at the opening session plenary session we want all blacks to walk out and come across to Glide Memorial where we are going to discuss an agenda that the black community needs.”
10 In those two days, the decision was made to take over the meeting, present the demands, and walk out. The position statement was hammered out and photocopied to be distributed the next morning. After they delivered the position statement and walked out, the group re-convened at Glide Memorial Church. Between Wednesday, May 29, and Thursday, May 30, the group appointed an official steering committee and decided on an organizational structure.
11The discussions at Glide were intense. Participants not only decided on a formal position statement, but they spent a good deal of time discussing what they wanted to be moving forward. They addressed questions of whether to be a caucus or a separate organization. They dealt with issues of identity—should they call themselves “black” social workers or use “Negro”? Should it be an exclusively black organization, or could it include white social workers? Social workers involved in working with and organizing with black communities from across the United States articulated their visions for the nascent organization’s direction.
12The organizing that occurred at the 1968 conference was only the beginning of the organized national movement of black social workers within the profession. In the year that followed, the newly formed National Association of Black Social Workers would pursue a dual strategy of negotiating with the NCSW and NASW leadership and “closing ranks” to work on their own organization. They held their own meetings and conferences, and were hard at work setting the agenda of the organization.
13 While they would come back together with the NCSW at the 1969 meeting, black social workers’ actions at the 1968 annual forum changed the trajectory of social welfare and was a part of a much larger context of social protest during this era.
In many ways, the 1968 annual forum of the National Conference on Social Welfare was caught in the crosshairs of numerous movements (actual and ideological) taking place around the country. The organizing of black social workers at the conference was but one of many challenges to the social welfare profession at this time. The Poor People’s March on Washington took place that very week, and welfare rights organizers were represented at the forum. California fruit workers were also striking as student uprisings flared up on campuses across the country. And less than two months earlier, the Kerner Commission had published its report, which called out social welfare as a part of constellation of institutions that created the conditions for urban riots. There was also a general air of criticism of social welfare coming from all corners (Vasey 1968).
Even though the 1968 forum saw protests from fruit workers, black social workers, peace protestors, and welfare rights organizers, it is the 1969 NCSW annual forum that has been characterized as the most tumultuous in conference history.
14 John C. Kidneigh recollected “the tone of social action and social change permeated every session.” The 1969 New York conference was certainly more contentious than the initial demonstration in San Francisco, in part because of a strengthened alliance between NABSW and the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), who had planned to disrupt the meeting. The NWRO, a radical organization of welfare recipients and allies active in demanding changes in social welfare during the late 1960s and early 1970s, took the lead early on, and in fact garnered the bulk of the attention for their disturbances.
15 Before the opening session started, the NWRO took over the registration area, demanding free registration and donations from conference attendees.
16 “As soon as the opening session had been convened at 7:30 on Sunday evening,” wrote Margaret Berry, “the platform and microphone was taken by a group of welfare mothers and George Wiley, national direction [
sic] of NRO [
sic].”
17 The NWRO demanded a total of $25,000 from the audience in addition to a direct donation of $35,000 from the NCSW to them, and informed NCSW participants that no one would be allowed to leave until the money was collected.
18 From their perspective, the NCSW was filled with professionals profiting from work with the poor without genuinely seeking to change their dire situation. The group’s logic was to force financing for social action by demanding money from the very social workers they called “fat cats,” “racist pigs,” and beneficiaries of “white imperialistic society.”
19The crowd did not, however, passively accept these accusations or demands. Participants yelled back and many tried to walk out, but like the disruption at the 1968 meeting, members of the NWRO and the NABSW blocked the doors.
20 People were physically stopped from leaving the ballroom during the demonstration, so the tensions were high.
21 Eventually, the staff of the Hilton Hotel intervened and removed a temporary wall so people could leave.
22 The police were called in and at least six people were arrested for unlawfully detaining people from leaving.
23 After a brief statement in the morning, the NWRO left the conference to march on Sears, which they claimed was discriminating against welfare recipients in granting credit.
24 Their departure, however, did not bring an end to the disruptions. The NABSW soon took over, and as Margaret Berry wrote in her recollection of the events, they “emerged in force.”
25As the organization’s annual business meeting began on Tuesday evening, the NABSW took over the stage and read their demands.
26 The demands presented in writing were similar to those presented in 1968. Black social workers and the NWRO reiterated their belief that “the present structure, policy, and functioning of the social welfare system is racist, inadequate, and unresponsive to the needs of black and brown colonized people in this country.”
27 More specifically, NABSW demanded greater representation of “black and brown people” throughout the boards and committees of the NCSW; that the 1970 meeting be focused on white racism and poverty; that the NCSW hire lobbyists to work on issues of race, poverty, and national welfare policy in Washington, D.C.; that the NCSW work with the Council on Social Work Education to completely overhaul social work education in order to develop curricula “relevant to the urban crisis and minority groups”; and, lastly, to give African American social work professionals greater access and control over admissions, financial aid processes, and faculty appointments in social work schools and agencies.
28The NCSW leadership’s lukewarm response was that they agreed with the spirit of the demands and planned to look into them.
29 Though the NABSW abdicated the stage in the face of this seemingly positive response, actions were already underway that would change the course of their organization. The new organization had decided to give the national leadership only one more chance to respond to their demands. If they did not, the NABSW would stop negotiating for any increased inclusion in favor of organizing for change within the profession and within black communities through their own separate organizational body (Jaggers 2003).
30While the organization had decided to make an attempt to negotiate with the NCSW, NABSW leader Howard Prunty made an executive decision to give the NCSW an ultimatum to respond by noon on May 27, just a single day after receiving them.
31 It was a move that had only partial support from the NABSW membership. Garland Jaggers (2003), who was a part of the founding group and published an account of their movement, characterizes the issuance of a twenty-four-hour ultimatum as a “tactical mis-step” (52). However the decision was characterized, it was a key turning point in the group’s move to focus on their own organization and mobilize against the profession as a sort of “outsider within.” “This was the last time that NABSW sought dialogue with NCSW,” wrote Audreye Johnson (1988:13). As Shirley Better put it, “We were looking to be a caucus until then, but then we decided to move on and become our own organization.”
32 “This,” Jay Chunn added, “was when we said, ‘we’ll build our own thing.’”
33CLOSING RANKS
This idea of closing ranks was also evident at the first national conference of the Association of Black Catalysts, which later would become the NABSW. On August 30, 1968, the Chicago Catalysts hosted the first national conference of the fledgling organization in Chicago over the weekend. More than two hundred black social workers participated in the conference, dubbed the “Confab in Black.”
34 Both Charles Hamilton, coauthor of
Black Power (1967), and Charles Ross, then on the Metropolitan Welfare Council, delivered keynote addresses to the group.
35 The overarching theme of the conference was “Unity-Survival,” which manifested in discussions about the role of the black professional in the liberation movement.
36 The invitation detailed that the “confab will revolve around such questions as: How can the Black Professional participate in the current revolution? What are the present dilemmas facing the Black professionals? How can Black Professionals create their own power base? What new roles and linkages does the Black revolution demand of the Black Professional?”
37 Much of the conversation revolved around maintaining black identity and loyalties even while working among whites. Ross, for example, talked about a system in the United States that had produced “a race of colorless men and women—who have Black skins and white minds and grey loyalties.”
38 He pointed out the gap between the “brother in the streets” and the “brother in the office” who had been “whitewashed” through his subjection to the system in the colleges and graduate schools.”
39The workgroups that met the second day of the conference agreed on a set of goals and justifications for the organization.
40 The items reveal a self-conscious consideration of the role of the black professional in relation to the larger black community, emphasizing the necessity for black professionals to “unite Black people regardless of status to work toward relationships directed toward their mutual survival,” to “play a supportive role in assisting groups, offering expertise in the planning needed or asked for by groups,” and to “embody a code of ethics relevant to Black people.”
41 In describing their purpose, they stressed that the new organization must “concern itself with connecting Black [
sic] of all descriptions (light, brown, tan, Black, non professional and professional, pimps and Ph.D.’s etc.).”
42This self-evaluation and self-conscious commitment to affirming a black identity and connection to the black community is also clear in the code of ethics produced for the conference. The introduction to the Catalysts’
Code of Ethics for Black People defines the codes as the “take-off points to help develop awareness about our current state of Blackness and to look at the relevance of what it may take to improve our total participation in the Black Revolution. They are designed to help us confront ourselves.”
43 The first point reads: “We must recognize that the traditional role of the Black Leaders has been to act as a buffer between a hostile and unsympathetic white community and our oppressed Black Brothers and Sisters. As Black People, we must determine that this is a condition that we cannot and will not tolerate this any longer.”
44The rest of the codes develop a set of standards for black professionals in relationship to the larger liberation movement. “We must,” they claim, “make it absolutely clear that we are totally committed to the Revolution.”
45 They underscore that their commitment is to the black community and not white employers with codes like, “We must view all issues only from the vantage point of what is best for Black People,” and, “We must be responsible for using our acquired skills to wipe out the obstacles which prevent Black People from achieving maximum realization of their innate potential for social economic and political growth.”
46 Many of the codes also address how to use their position as professionals responsibly. For example, they argue, “we must take advantage of our unique relationship to the system and ‘TELL IT LIKE IT IS’ at every opportunity” (capitalization in original). Moreover, they maintain that black professionals “must use our skills to initiate programs for the Black Community based on information collected and interpreted by Black Researchers” and “take advantage of every opportunity to use the system in whatever fashion that is beneficial to Black People.”
47 Others make statements about the responsibility to hold all social workers accountable for their actions in the black community. For example, one code reads, “We must demand excellence from anyone serving the Black Community,”
48 and another that “We must demand that the same level of goods and services be placed into Black communities that is taken out.” And still another reads, “We must demand that the same level of excellence in service be extended to Black People that is extended to whites.”
49This rhetoric was clearly embedded in the ideology of Black Power. In his January 1973 editorial of the
NABSW News, William Greene discussed the organization’s growth. He drew attention to some of the forces that gave impetus to the NABSW’s formation, such as the “failure of integration efforts and the visibility of a separate Black America and white America; the velocity of the Black Power revolt that was penetrating the very fabric of American life; [and] the Black revolution and solidarity that would provide power and increased opportunity.”
50 Yet while the NABSW activists obviously placed themselves within the Black Power movement, it is clear that their gaze was primarily inward. Both the Confab and the code were as much about who they must be or what they must do as black professionals as they were about what they must demand of their profession and the institutions they were a part of. The focus on the development of a black identity that supported the “Black Revolution” and the commitment to use their skills for the benefit of the black community call on the Black Power frames of self-determination and self-help rather than the civil rights rhetoric of access and integration.
What both the “Confab in Black” and the Code of Ethics reveal is that black social workers were critically evaluating their role as professionals in a rapidly changing society and in a black political environment that was shifting to a focus on working-class identities rather than the middle-class sensibilities of the earlier civil rights movement. As new professionals, as members of a rising middle class, as MSWs, as degree-holding African Americans—what was their role in a movement for which the economic question was central and the primary representative image was the inner-city working-class rebel? Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, they were struggling with the question of how they, as a part of a profession implicated in the oppression of African Americans, could use that same position in the service of gaining greater economic, social, and political power for black people.
This act of claiming a place in the Black Power movement would manifest itself in an internal movement within their profession to make their home base live up to the promise of the Black Power movment and create a mold for black professionalism that would mesh with emergent Black Power identities. Their movement was paralleled in other professions, and their collectively forged black professional identity would draw a blueprint for being black and professional in a way that remained committed to the ideals of black liberation.
THE NABSW MOVEMENT
Reflecting on the organization’s past twenty years, Audreye Johnson (1988) wrote that
accountability to the Black community was and continues to be the focal point of NABSW, it is the heart and soul of the organization. For NABSW there has been the need to understand and cope with racism in social work which is carried out in the social welfare arena in the delivery of social work services, whether in administration, education, or professional practice.
(11)
Shirley Better, when recalling the conditions that gave rise to the movement, spoke of arriving in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California in 1966 when the community was “still smoldering” from the riots, and finding that social work agencies were not playing an active role in needy black neighborhoods. She was shocked at the few benefits the poor black community accrued from the civil rights movement and came to the conclusion that “every social institution in [the] community served the white establishment and not [the community].”
51 Though the War on Poverty policies meant that more social workers were in low-income communities, Better felt that they weren’t helping the conditions in the black community. As a black social worker herself, she observed that the social work profession “continued to suggest that the poor minorities were to blame for the dismal state of their communities,” and was keenly aware that the professional education black social workers received taught them to be “gatekeepers” rather than “advocates for change.” Further, she astutely commented that “faculty in the schools of social work continued to make money and get tenure doing research on us.”
52In fact, all of the NABSW founders I spoke with pointed to the urban rebellions of the 1960s as important junctures in their own thinking about their work in black communities. Garland Jaggers recollected how he and his colleague Louis Bates had formed a small organization of black male social workers early in the 1960s. They were primarily concerned with the treatment that their black clients received in social welfare agencies and their own position within the profession. “So we decided to do something about it,” he said, “so we set up a meeting with other black social workers—at first only men. So we met at my house and organized the Association of Black Social Workers in Detroit.” “But,” he continued, “it was after the rebellion of 1967 in Detroit, that the organization really picked up steam. After that, social workers gravitated to the organization looking for ways to counter the destruction in their community.”
53Douglas Glasgow, one of the founders of the NABSW and former dean of the Howard School of Social Work, had a similar story about working with the Sons of Watts in Los Angeles while he was a doctoral student. The Sons of Watts, an organization of young men from the community who were involved in the rebellion, became a community improvement organization of sorts. He cites this experience—witnessing the ineffectiveness of social welfare to deal with the kinds of issues that Watts was facing—as a part of the impetus for developing the organization, both for him personally and as a whole. He also remembered that when black social workers arrived at the pivotal 1968 NCSW conference in San Francisco they immediately noticed there was nothing on the program that dealt with the current situation of African Americans.
We came into San Francisco that year. It was a year in which, of course, King had died—had been killed. Bobby had been shot. The cities had been burning. Some 80 cities in the United States went up in flames, you know—uh, were put up into flames, I should say. Uh, and we came into San Francisco at this national level conference of social welfare and they had the usual agenda…. It had no relationship to the reality of what America was facing because America’s cities were burning. America was in total shock at the death of both King and Kennedy and wondering what is going to happen in this country. So we walked in to this conference, we looked at the agenda, and we said, “They don’t even talk about the cities, the urban cities,” um, and I think that’s what propelled us.
54
All of these founders’ observations point to three major categories of grievances that black social workers leveled within the profession, all of which echo Johnson’s depiction of the NABSW being a challenge to racism in social work administration, education, and practice: (1) Black social workers were treated as second-class citizens within the profession, and that white leadership did not value their perspectives and implemented racist interaction styles; (2) the institution of social work was racist at its core, as the structures for obtaining jobs and promotions were racist in character, the processes by which profession-level decisions were made unfairly benefited white social workers, and the curricula of social work schools were racist in scope; and (3) white social workers in black communities were carrying out racist practices, and simply providing services without seeking social change and action in the communities they served was inherently racist.
While the NABSW movement extended beyond the profession to issues such as state proposed welfare reform
55 and other local matters affecting the poor and black people,
56 here I focus primarily on the work the NABSW did to bring about changes in administration, education, and practice within their profession. I find that their tactics were both constrained and enabled by the profession they were seeking to challenge. Therefore, although we might commonly think of social movement tactics in terms of marches and pickets, movements in organizations need to be considered in context. In the case of black mobilization within social work, their various campaigns were played out in the conventions, schools, journals, and committees rather than on the streets.
Black Marginality in the Profession
Black social workers had multiple concerns about job opportunities and security. For one, black social workers, especially those who dealt with issues of race or concerning African Americans, were often marginalized and ghettoized within the profession. This often made it difficult to find opportunities to publish and get their white colleagues to take their work seriously. Because of this marginalization, African American social workers often faced difficulties being promoted in both academic programs and in social agencies.
When I spoke to Dr. Sokoni Karanja (formerly Lathan Johnson), a social worker during the civil rights era who was an activist in the profession and who attended the founding conference of the NABSW, I asked him to state some of the primary grievances expressed during that time. He offered his time at an agency in Cincinnati as an example:
I was the assistant director—[another social worker] who was white ran it. And you know, I consider myself to be a man of average intelligence and [this guy] was about half as smart as me. (
laughter) But he would try to treat me as though I didn’t know anything. There was a black lady too, worked with us, who he also tried to treat like she was stupid. We had to stop them from thinking they were special—these folks were not like Jane Addams. These were ordinary white folks who wanted to treat us like we were “less than”…Yeah, we dealt with a lot of white rejection and looking-down-the-nose type behavior.
57
Garland Jaggers related a similar point in a conversation he had with Louis Bates when they founded of their organization in Detroit. He recounted, “I talked about one of my white classmates who graduated with us and became a director of minority relations. Whoa. And I had been told by my supervisor it would take me ten years to become a supervisor.”
58This sentiment is echoed throughout the movement, and it was certainly an overarching theme at the first conference of the Association of Black Catalysts in Chicago in August 1968. In addressing the gathering, Hamilton said that “Blacks working in the midst of whites are subject to compromise and coercion or rejection” and that “in the conflicts of interests, white ones will, in the majority of cases, prevail.”
59 And in discussing his interest in organizing black male social workers in Detroit, Jaggers (2003) recalls that he and Bates “bemoaned the fact that there were very few Negroes in key positions…in Detroit’s social welfare system,” and how he observed white fellow graduates fast-track into publication and new positions while they struggled for promotion, and were often not even made aware of opportunities for promotion in the first place (13).
Indeed, the idea that black social workers were marginalized within the profession was the primary impetus behind the creation of the
Black Caucus Journal in 1973.
60 The journal, Audreye Johnson (1988) wrote, “offered to African American social workers something which had not been readily available to them in the past, an opportunity to publish their work” (14). Indicating the difficulty of publishing research on African Americans in the mainstream journals, Johnson (1988) asserted that “there was no need to apologize for the focus of the work upon Blacks” in the NABSW journal (14). As a result, she argues, “the publication opportunities within NABSW pushed white dominated social work publications to be more responsive to publishing African American authors” (14).
Concerns over the employment of black social workers in the field were also at the heart of this grievance. As Shirley Better put it, when asked about the problems they had with the profession, “Well, our jobs was another thing. We always had to be worried about our jobs.”
61 She talked about the sense that black social workers were always in a tenuous position in universities and agencies alike. Her impression was certainly echoed in the situation at the Berkeley School of Social Welfare (BSSW) in 1969. On May 19, 1969, several students from the program issued a list of demands regarding the program. The list was not addressed by the school’s faculty or administration.
62 These same students were among the actors who addressed the conference at the contentious 1969 NCSW meetings in New York, and they worked with the nascent NABSW to put pressure on the BSSW.
63 In the NABSW’s position statement, two of the specific complaints against the BSSW drive home the point about the marginality of black social workers in the profession and in their respective workplaces. First, the NABSW observed that “the U.C. Berkeley School of Social Welfare sent 15 white faculty members to the NCSW conference with expenses paid; the request of two Black faculty members to have their expenses paid was denied.”
64 The second criticism pointed to a specific faculty member whose reappointment had been threatened. They claimed “because Ron Lewis, as a Black faculty member has been working on behalf of Black students and the Black community, the white members of the school’s evaluation committee are threatening the repressive action of recommending not to reappoint him.”
65 The NABSW went on to demand the charges of discrimination at the BSSW be investigated. This case is illustrative of the overarching anxiety over employment experienced by many black social workers as a result of racism within the profession.
Institutionalized Racism
The second grievance addressed the inherent racism they saw within the profession. They repeatedly argued that racism was institutionalized into the structure of the profession. This racist core began in the nation’s social work schools, as was evident in numerous complaints about the practices there. Dr. Glasgow recounted that the profession was trying to develop programs and curricula that were important to black communities without any consultation from black people themselves. So, he says, they started intervening “in the normal processes of CSWE and NASW and NCSW who were doing business without blacks. And so then we said that blacks must be in every area.”
66 He spoke specifically about the problems in social work schools. At UCLA, for example, black social work students needed to confront the school of social work and the whole social sciences division in order to bring more black faculty in the university on tenure lines, as it had been normal practice to bring in black faculty as adjuncts and part-time instructors who “came and went, and came and went.”
67 He also highlighted the concerns black social workers had with how few black students were included in schools of social work around country.
The list of demands at the 1969 National Conference on Social Welfare included a sharp indictment of social work education, and called for “schools of social welfare become more relevant to the Black and Brown communities, and minority groups, especially by a marked increase in the number of such persons on the faculty and that the schools employ more of such persons with tenure.”
68 To work toward this aim, the NABSW suggested that “the schools of social work should work toward specific quotas of fifty percent of Black and Brown personnel on their faculty and administrative staff.”
69 But the demands did not stop at just representation on the faculty level. They proposed that “schools of social welfare should launch positive recruiting programs that will open up new post-high school educational opportunities for Black and Brown and minority groups students. Such students and faculty should participate actively in developing admission and financial aid policies and supportive services for these programs.”
70 They further contended that schools of social welfare should do more to provide more field placement for minority students and communities, and that there should be more “black and brown field work supervisors.” They end their statement with a critique of social work curricula, pushing for schools to “move diligently to develop curricula that relate to the urban and rural needs of Black and Brown and minority group students, faculty, and the community, as well as the understanding by the white community of their participatory role in the disfunctioning of all groups of people.”
71In general, black social workers’ arguments about the institutionalized racism in the profession stemmed from the overt and covert racism that they saw pervading the system that educated social workers. In addition, they argued that the national organizations of social workers utilized racist practices. In the first list of demands presented to the NCSW at the 1968 meeting, they claimed that the NCSW was a “white institution” whose board and planning committee did not reflect the “ethnic composition commensurate with its expressed concern.”
72 They also demanded that NABSW representatives be appointed to the “powerful committees” of the NCSW. During the follow-up protest at the 1969 NCSW meetings, they continued with the same line by demanding that “there be a sharp increase in the representation of Black and Brown people and minority groups, minority groups includes Indians and Asiatics [
sic], at all levels of the NCSW, including the National Board, staff and all committees.”
73 Implicitly, this set of demands goes beyond concerns for job security and reflects a desire to move beyond simple demographic or descriptive representation. In other words, black social workers were not demanding some sort of symbolic representation that would be fulfilled by inserting any black faces into the NCSW power structure. Rather, they sought substantive representation. They wanted to be represented by black social workers who would represent the interests of African American social workers as the NABSW articulated them.
74CURRICULAR TRANSFORMATION
By all accounts, American social work had reverted to a white-centered focus by the 1920s, following an earlier focus on pluralism among at least settlement workers within the profession. But in response to pressure from the NABSW, African Americans and other people of color throughout the profession in the 1960s, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE)—the accrediting and standards-setting body of the profession—eventually adopted standards mandating content on race, racism, and people of color (Potocky 1997).
Social work made huge strides in the recruitment of people of color into the profession and in making curricular change in social work education as a result of internal professional activism. The CSWE had nondiscrimination mandates in place much earlier than many professions. In fact, CSWE had implemented a standard prohibiting discrimination in the selection of students and faculty for schools seeking accreditation as early as 1954 after the
Brown vs. Board of Education ruling (Pins 1971; Trolander 1997). But the pressure black social workers exerted on the profession—both through NCSW and within other arenas, including CSWE—led to the adoption of relatively aggressive recruitment standards for students and faculty of color and to the creation of diversity-related curriculum standards in the early 1970s.
By 1965, the CSWE nondiscrimination standard was revised to require accreditation reviews to incorporate details on how schools deal with discrimination in admissions, their overall program, and in recruitment and retention of faculty (Trolander 1997). The standard was further revised in 1968 to mandate schools “demonstrate the special efforts it was making to enrich its program by providing racial and cultural diversity in its student body and staff” (CSWE 1971). This made the CSWE the “first among national accreditation bodies to have an affirmative action standard” (Trolander 1997:120). When it was formalized as Standard 1234 in 1971, review teams were tasked with assessing promotion and tenure policies for faculty of color, discrimination within field placements, and internal procedures for handling discrimination complaints in programs (Trolander 1997). They also launched several special programs to aid schools in attracting, developing, and retaining more students and faculty of color (Pins 1971). Standard 1234A, added in 1973, would specify that “a school must make special, continual efforts to enrich its program by providing racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity in its student body and at all levels of instructional and research personnel and by providing corresponding educational supports” (CSWE 1973:1). As Jani and colleagues (2011) point out, this was also the first time CSWE guidelines “explicitly suggested that the curriculum should reflect knowledge of racial and ethnic minority groups” (286). The primary purpose of Standard 1234A, according to CSWE (1973), was “to achieve the incorporation of knowledge of racial, ethnic and cultural groups, their generic components as well as differences in values and life styles, and the conflicts these generate in the configuration of American Society” (1).
Standard 1234A was largely a reflection of internal pressure. Responding to activism by people of color within social work, the CSWE organized task forces to increase the numbers of faculty of color in schools of social work. These task forces were convened for American Indians, Puerto Ricans, and Chicanos in 1970, and later for African Americans and Asian Americans in 1971. The CSWE Black Task Force grew out of a June 1970 CSWE workshop titled “Problems and Needs of the Black Community—Issues, Development, and Perceptions: Implications for Social Work Education.” The workshop called for the CSWE to identify and develop curricular content on African Americans, as well as find ways to increase the numbers of African Americans in social work programs, at both the graduate and undergraduate levels (CSWE 1973). The Black Task Force was charged with answering this call. It was made up of fifteen black social workers and nine liaison members from black schools of social work. NABSW members were an important part of the process. Both Jay Chunn and Charles Sanders served as liaison participants at the Howard University and Atlanta University Schools of Social Work respectively.
The task force concluded that the absence of black content in the social work curriculum was a result of pervasive and persistent racism in the United States. They made the case that the lack of black social work educators was directly tied to this lack of curricular materials. So, while it acknowledged that recruiting and retaining black faculty was important, the task force focused its report on curriculum reform. Pointing out that “many white social work educators continue to view the inclusion of Black content as a non-scholarly endeavor,” the task force asserted that “an endeavor of this nature must have the commitment of the total social work education community, adequate funding and minority staffing” (CSWE 1973:2). Overall, the Black Task Force’s curriculum suggestions proposed heightened attention to the role of institutional racism in the lives of African Americans, and made particular recommendations for the three major areas of study in most schools of social work: human behavior and social environment, social welfare policy, and services and methods/practicum.
In the CSWE curriculum policy, human behavior content was defined as the “body of content relating to human behavior that is designed to contribute the student’s understanding of the individual, group, organizational, institutional, and cultural contexts within which human behavior is expressed and by which it is significantly influenced” (CSWE 1969, as cited in CSWE 1973). The Black Task Force insisted that for social work students to understand black behavior in context, they must account for the distinctiveness of the black American experience marked by a history of slavery and exclusion. Therefore, the curriculum should “consider the Black experience in the United States as unique, not to be compared to any other immigrant group” (6). They further asserted that “social work education must recognize that societal-economic forces and the resultant institutional racism may be a major factor that creates stress in Black communities and limits the realization of potential in Black individuals” (6).
This focus on institutional racism was also central to the Black Task Force’s recommendations for curricular changes in the social welfare policy and services sequence. The CSWE instructed social work programs to provide a way for “all students to acquire knowledge of the general policies, conditions, legislative bases, institutions, programs and broad range of services relevant to social welfare in contemporary society” (CSWE 1969, as cited in CSWE 1973:7). The task force pointed out that while social work education does look at the history of social welfare policy, it had not considered the failure of these policies as they related to black communities. They argued that social work “has not acknowledged that the nation’s preoccupation with power, profit, and privilege has been a primary determinant of American social welfare policy” in a way that institutionalized discrimination against African Americans in social welfare (6). They went on to suggest that this sequence of the curriculum “must include historical documentation of the fact of racism in American life and, in so doing, direct scholarly attention to its solution” (7).
The Black Task Force also provided an outline of educational objectives and underlying assumptions as a guideline for adopting their suggestions. Their object was to help the student to develop:
1. An understanding of how the economic, social, political, and class forces that determine social policies are implicitly influenced by racism;
2. An ability to analyze how social policy is formulated by legislation, by the courts, and by government bureaucracies, and how this formulation is influenced by racism;
3. An awareness of the impact of institutional racism on Black Americans and other ethnic minorities with a particular reference to the distribution of societal resources and the patterns of delivery of educational, health, and social services.
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The task force based these objectives on three basic underlying assumptions: that “racism in combination with poor-law thinking is dysfunctional and inhumane in our current society”; that “the persistence and viability of institutional racism is incompatible with the goals of social justice”; and, finally, “social problems such as poverty, unemployment, and ghetto living require basic structural changes rather than remedial, incremental reforms” (8).
Recommendations were also made for the practicum and methods area of social work curriculum, which the CSWE defined as “the area of the curriculum designed to help the student learn and apply the knowledge and principles of social work practice in accordance with the values and ethics of the profession” (CSWE 1969, as quoted in CSWE 1973:9). They point to three areas of basic knowledge that they believed social work students would need to develop in order to work with African Americans: the history of black people, especially as it relates to culture, religion, and family development; the political and economic systems that affect African Americans; and a perspective on “human growth and development…that recognizes the oppression of Black people and evaluates behavior with regard to the societal forces that depersonalize and reject Black people” (CSWE 1973:10).
Taken together, this was a harsh critique of social work education, but the task force also offered a way forward. Their suggestions were reflected in the new CSWE diversity curriculum standard. The first curriculum policy statement by CSWE in 1952 stated that social workers should consider all social, cultural, and spiritual influences on an individual’s development. By 1962, the curriculum guidelines mandated that social work curricula help students to “recognize, understand, and appraise, ‘human behavior in the light of personal and cultural norms and values and varying conceptions of effective social functioning and well-being’” (Moore and Dhooper 2000:7). The 1973 guidelines for implementing Standard 1234A went even further, suggesting that “effective responsible participation in the helping professions in a diverse society requires that opportunities be provided to incorporate the understanding that is based on direct interaction and involvement with different groups in the broader society” (CSWE 1973). By 1983 the curriculum policy statement advocated for the inclusion of diversity content and required the curriculum to pay attention to “patterns and consequences of discrimination and oppression,” and “the experiences, needs and responses of people that have been subject to institutionalized forms of oppression” (CSWE 1983, sect. 7.4, as quoted in Moore and Dhooper 2000:7). This shift towards a focus on institutional racism is a clear reflection of the black movement within the profession.
In addition to changes in the CSWE guidelines, black pressure within social work resulted in other important developments: new courses with diversity content were offered at schools of social work, new textbooks were developed that dealt specifically with diversity issues, more articles were published in the discipline on the subject of race, and there were modest increases in the number of students and faculty of color in social work. By the 1970–1971 academic year, almost 25 percent of all incoming first-year MSW students were students of color: about 14 percent of first-year students were black, and 4.3 percent were Chicano or Puerto Rican, reflecting a 2.5 times increase in the total number of students of color that entered in 1968 (Pins 1971). A year later in 1972, there were 1,226 black first-year MSW students, almost 15.8 percent of the incoming class of Masters students (CSWE 1972).
LICENSURE
While the general demands were for greater inclusion and representation in the national organizations and changes in social work education, the institutional racism grievance might be best illustrated through an examination of the NABSW’s campaign against licensure for social workers early in the 1970s. In 1969, the National Association of Social Workers approved a resolution to start requiring the regulation of social work practice through licensure at the state level (NASW 1973). The NABSW vehemently opposed this measure, seeing the proposal as racist both in intent and outcomes. The licensure system, as proposed, would only be available to those holding Masters or doctorate degrees; black social workers largely practiced with undergraduate degrees or as para-social workers, without degrees. Secondly, the NABSW expressed concerns about the tendency of certification boards to use discriminatory testing (Johnson 1975). The long history of bias against blacks in standardized exams, both inside and outside the profession, did not inspire much confidence that licensure exams would be any different (Garcia 1990).
The NABSW saw this potential for widespread exclusion of black social workers as incredibly problematic. Since many of those receiving social work services were black and poor and there were already limited numbers of African American social workers, the licensure system would lead to an even greater mismatch between service providers and their clients. To NABSW, the licensing proposal would further entrench a system in which whites “intervene, plan for, set values, define needs, and intimidate Black folks in the name of ‘social work.’ They claimed it was a ‘catastrophic insult to a whole race of people for whites to attempt to institutionalize these racist, condescending, missionary, [practices]” (Johnson 1975).
Moreover, they insisted that the licensing proposal was made in response to massive internal dissent—a sort of sanction for challenging the profession. In his statement to the New York State Legislative Higher Education Committee on licensing, Phillip Berry, vice coordinator of the New York State Association of Black Social Workers, targeted licensing in particular as an ineffective way to deal with the identity issues the profession was trying to resolve. He contended that the questions around which services should be provided to whom, by whom, and for what purposes should (and could) not be dealt with through the licensing of practitioners. “Licensing under the guise of an attempt to answer and address these issues,” Berry argued, “is deceptive, elitist, non-functional and inadequate.”
75 “This is an unequivocal drive to diminish and/or undermine progressive and reform seeking practitioners and organizations committed to viable social change, like the NABSW.”
76In all, the idea of requiring licensure for social workers reeked of elitism and racism for NABSW members, and it was perceived as a desire to promote professionalization over the needs of clients. In the official position paper against licensure, the organization lambasted this “diabolical scheme” as intending to weed out new professional minorities who had struggled to achieve Associates and Bachelors of Social Work degrees. It was, they believed, meant to drive the profession “back into the passive, conservative, clinical, and white middle class characteristics of the past.” The official statement concluded with an allusion to Malcolm X: “the National Association of Black Social Workers serves notice to all advocates of this racist and class oriented scheme that we have mobilized to fight the implementation of this proposal through any and every means necessary.”
77They did rely on several means, playing out their campaign against licensure within the context of their profession. One tactic they used was coalition building. They built a particularly strong coalition with the Radical Alliance of Social Service Workers (RASSW),
78 who wrote their own position paper against licensure.
79 The NABSW also testified before the New York State Legislative Higher Education Committees on Licensing and lobbied at both the state and federal levels.
80 They also published articles on the “absurdity of licensure” in numerous social work newsletters and journals.
81 But even after a long and concerted opposition, the NABSW and their supporters lost the battle. The American Association of State Social Work Boards was created in 1979 to coordinate the regulation efforts of state boards and by 1990 all fifty states regulated social work practice in some way.
82The opponents of licensure had little chance of winning this battle. Operating in an era of the rapid growth of American universities (Jacoby 1987) and the increasing academization of social work practice, it would be difficult to imagine arguments against licensure gaining any real ground. Proponents framed licensure as the last step in securing real professional status for social workers. It was, in many ways, the final tool in creating an exclusive, skill-based profession.
Yet the NABSW’s concerns with institutionalized racism in the profession are reflected in the licensure battle. And while they were not able to change how the profession would use licensure on the path to professionalization, they were more effective in making curricular innovations and in increasing diversity in the profession.
Racism in Social Work Practice
Another major grievance was related to the ways in which the profession’s racism was projected onto black communities. As shown in the
Code of Ethics produced by the Catalysts, there were serious concerns about the quality of goods and services in the black community. Moreover, the idea that social work—and the NCSW in particular—just was not meeting the actual needs of black communities was closely connected to what the NABSW saw as the profession’s lack of political involvement in the racial issues in the era. In an essay about the emergence of the NABSW, Jay Chunn—the official NABSW’s first president—wrote, “in 1968, when America was burning down—Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Watts—the white folk were still building the role and function of case work, looking at intrapsychic conflict and the like.”
83 Also, recall T. George Silcott’s depiction of the NCSW as “a do-nothing group which has consistently demonstrated that it will not involve itself in social action.”
84In an interview with Dr. Chunn, I asked him what the major conflicts were with mainstream social work during this uncertain time. After correcting my use of term “mainstream”—it would be better characterized as “white social work,” he said—he answered: “irrelevance to the struggle, irrelevance to liberation, to community development, the black community, crime and joblessness. I mean, it was almost completely oblivious. You have to keep in mind that social work organizations at that time were designed to strengthen the profession as opposed to strengthening the community.”
85 Shirley Better had a similar response: “Social service agencies did not operate in a way to meet the needs of poor black people. They mainly went along with the social welfare system—punitive, stigma—all that. Social work wasn’t standing up to issues. They just went along with the status quo.”
86One of the earliest statements by the national body of black social workers—made at the Urban Crisis Conference—did not shy away from criticizing this institutional obliviousness and apathy, and openly declared: “The NASW has been, and is now, irrelevant to meeting the needs of Black people. We feel that the NASW is not committed to system changes in the interest of Black folk.”
87 And in the list of demands circulated at the 1969 NCSW meeting, they called on whites to confront their own racism and for “Black Experts (not white experts who heretofore acted as experts) to speak to the issues confronting the Black community.”
88 Along these same lines, Audreye Johnson, one of the founders of the NABSW, argued that “social work agencies and institutions were found to be non-responsive and non-reflective of the needs of the Black community and of the Black perspective” (Johnson 1975).
The association’s most well-known battle—the fight against transracial adoption—grew out of this particular grievance. In 1972, the NABSW issued a statement opposing transracial adoption on the grounds that the preservation of black identity and black culture can be best accomplished if a black child is placed with a black family. The association charged adoption agencies with not putting enough effort into the recruitment of black adoptive families, and alleged that agency policies discriminated against black families who might otherwise be interested in adopting. They insisted that “Black families can be found when agencies alter their requirements, methods of approach, definition of suitable family and tackle the legal machinery to facilitate inter-state placements.”
89 But overall, they maintained that the desire to place black children in white families was due to the shrinking numbers of white children available for adoption, such that interracial adoption was chiefly about filling the needs of white people who wanted to adopt to the detriment of the black family. The NABSW says as much in their statement: “We fully recognize the phenomenon of transracial adoption as an expedient for white folk, not as an altruistic humane concern for black children. The supply of white children for adoption has all but vanished and adoption agencies, having always catered to middle class whites, developed an answer to their desire for parenthood by motivating them to consider black children.”
90In the statement, the NABSW also pointed out several alternatives to transracial adoption, which included exploring and supporting options within the child’s extended family and changing standards to make adoption more feasible for interested black families. The NABSW contended that if there were viable options within the family, those would be preferable, even if the family members required financial support. They also observed that adoption agencies’ “emphasis on high income, educational achievement, residential status and other accoutrements of a white middle class life style eliminates black applicants by the score.”
91In addition to bringing the issue into the national spotlight, the association created adoption assistance programs for black families, lobbied for the creation of subsidized adoptions for black families, aided in the growth of black-run adoption agencies, and published numerous articles on the issue.
92 Between 1971 and 1973, for example, the New York State chapter of the NABSW was actively involved in a campaign to start their own foster care and adoption agency.
93 While they were unable to raise the necessary funds for this endeavor, they did start a counseling and referral service for black families interested in adoption.
94 The service advised prospective adoptive families on the “requirements, procedures, and policies” of child welfare and adoption agencies.
95 In their announcement of the service, the New York chapter of the NABSW claimed, “Our goal is to recruit as many homes as possible for the thousands of Black children who need the warmth, love and security of a loving Black family.”
96The transracial adoption struggle certainly did not end the practice altogether. However, the NABSW was exceptionally successful in changing the debate around the practice. Despite the fact that there was no law banning transracial adoption, by 1973 the Child Welfare League had changed its adoption standards to say that same race adoptions were preferable. These were the same standards that had been revised only in 1968 to be more favorable towards interracial adoptions. And by 1973, transracial adoptions had slowed to a trickle, reversing a slight upswing (Silverman 1993). And even with the rise in international adoptions to the United States since then, domestic black/white adoption rates have remained low.
Any way you look at it, the transracial adoption issue has never been the same. The central issue in the debate moved from the value of decreasing barriers to interracial families (the dominant discourse between 1968 and 1972) to preserving black culture and identity in a way that mirrored aspects of the Black Power movement and worked to challenge the notion that families should be colorblind. Whatever individuals may believe about transracial adoption, the work that the NABSW did ensured that, whatever the outcome, the best interest of black children (however conceived) would be at the center of the conversation, and that the idea of white families wanting to adopt black children could be problematic was integral to the discussion.
Professional Identity and Style as Resistance
The NABSW movement clearly focused on issues affecting the black community, but the development of a new professional style—a new way of being in the professional world—was also a central resistance strategy for the NABSW. The organization collectively developed a professional identity that would reflect a commitment to black liberation, which was increasingly defined by the practices of the larger Black Power movement. The professional norms they developed required not only maintaining and demanding a commitment to a high standard of practice in black communities, but created standards for interacting with one another, advocating values such as not “back-stabbing” and supporting the endeavors of other black professionals. Furthermore, there were clear principles for interacting with white coworkers and bosses, including adherence to rules like always “telling it like it is”
97 and calling out white racism. They also developed a basis to make racial claims to expertise on “black issues.” Central also to the emergent identity and interaction style was the idea that activism was essential to racial loyalty for African Americans and to racial progressivism for whites.
In his editorial for the Fall 1970 issue of the Black Caucus Journal, Charles Sanders observed that several traditionally white journals had attempted to increase black representation since the birth of the publication. So he issued a challenge to both black and white social workers:
As we mirror ourselves against our white and black world, we see additional roles for both as vital to our mutual welfare. Many of our black brothers are not motivated to write for black journals, even when it has been expressly created for them. The black brothers will run vigorously to the opportunity to get published in white journals, because these are more prestigious, highly developed and circulated. Again this is a reflection of the self-hate, cynicism, discontinuity which constrains real blackness. To these brothers we say, “Are you really committed to creating and developing viable black institutions?”
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Sanders challenged the “blackness” of black social work professionals who chose not to publish in the Black Caucus Journal. It is a clear example of a professional norm growing out of Black Power-era professional associations—that in order to be authentically black, you are required to support the professional endeavors of other black professionals.
His challenge to white social workers was related: “To our white brothers we say, ‘Yes, competition is a major reality of our social system.’ But if we are truly to replace newer values for our older ones, and vitally concerned with the black quest for developing viable institutions in the black community, then your technical assistance, not competition, is appreciated in this venture” (8). As he sets a standard for black professionals to be authentically black, Sanders is simultaneously explicating a standard for white social work professionals who claim to “be down” for the cause—assist, don’t compete.
This new professional style grew out of both self-reflection and through their mobilized interaction with the white social work establishment. It was an identity and approach that would reflect their desire to merge the sometimes conflicting roles of activist and professional. Former NABSW president Cenie Williams, in his Fall 1969 “Message From the President,” emphasized the necessity for African American social workers to identify with the black community over their profession. Existing social agencies “perpetuated dependency,” he argued, and “black professionals have an obligation to confront (those) institutions,” and to make their “own innovations” (9). He writes:
This identification with blackness and with the plight of our more unfortunate brothers and sisters draws us all closer together in these critical times. In the past, many Black professionals believed that the best way to survive in America was to disappear completely, leaving no trace of our African heritage. We were under the assumption that the only way we could be citizens was to acquire all of the Anglo-Saxon values and patterns of behavior, in short, to “ape” whites. History has proven the fallacy of this logic.
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Williams continued, “Black social workers have an obligation to attack, discover and expose all the pathological social ills that retard and destroy our people. These ills are mainly economic exploitation, political impotence, and social degradation.” Though social workers were not political or economic experts, they could work through community organization and group work to “create vehicles for technical assistance” to deal with the many issues affecting the black community. “The Black social worker,” he argued, “must cease serving as a buffer or peacemaker for the establishment” (9).
Williams also made it clear that his primary goal as president of the association was to “provide a structure through which all Black social workers can become actively involved in helping Black people regardless of their philosophies.” He chided that “we can’t afford to spend long hours and months debating about which philosophy, program, or approach is best for Black people. In my opinion the only question that should be raised is simply ‘Is it good for Black people?’” He ended by saying that “the Black community has no need for ‘suitcase-carrying intellectuals’ who just sit around and talk about problems without ever becoming involved.” Black social workers were encouraged to “do” rather than just “talk,” and that an activist orientation was required in order to be “authentically black” (Williams 1969).
This set of norms was characterized by a professional style that valued closing ranks in the most literal sense of the term by (1) maintaining a commitment to black-only organizing, (2) defining commitment to Black Power ideals as the only way to truly be black, (3) shunning (at least rhetorically) interracial relationships and those African Americans who were in them, and (4) rejecting white aesthetic norms. In many ways, it was also built on a conception of blackness that privileged men and masculine ways of being in the world.
The NABSW’s code of ethics, which was written in 1968 and remains unchanged, begins: “In America today, no Black person, save the selfish or irrational, can claim to be neutral to the events taking place in our society. Therefore, this is a statement of ideals and guiding principles based on functionalism and not professionalism, given the context of pain in our daily lives as Black Americans practicing in the field of social welfare.”
98 This opening reflects the sentiment that their organization was central to their ability to function or survive in their role more than it was a statement on how to behave as professionals. Moreover, it made a clear claim that in order to be truly black one had to take a stand on the issues facing black people in America.
Members are asked then to commit themselves to the interests of the black community by subscribing to seven statements:
I regard as my primary obligation the welfare of the Black individual, Black family, and Black community and will engage in action for improving social conditions.
I give precedence to this mission over my personal interest.
I adopt the concept of a Black extended family and embrace all Black people as my brothers and sisters, making no distinction between their destiny and my own.
I hold myself responsible for the quality and extent of service I perform and the quality and extent of service performed by the agency or organization in which I am employed, as it relates to the Black community.
I accept the responsibility to protect the Black community against unethical and hypocritical practice by any individual or organizations engaged in social welfare activities.
I stand ready to supplement my paid or professional advocacy with voluntary service in the Black public interest.
I will consciously use my skills, and my whole being as an instrument for social change, with particular attention directed to the establishment of Black social institutions.
99
The code of ethics embodies three of the functions I propose that Black Power-era professional associations serve: identity work, operating as monitors on racial issues, and acting as a protest wing. From the get-go, it formalizes the professional norm of identifying with the black community over a professional identity. The NABSW founders were explicit in their expectation that black social workers were black first and social workers second. In her twenty-year retrospective on the organization, Audreye Johnson wrote that the organization “served as a cohesive agent not only for Black social workers, but recognized the unique relationship which exist [
sic] between African Americans whether they are providers or consumers of service.” Secondly, the professional norms laid out in the code point toward a sense of responsibility for monitoring, shaping, and changing social work practice with black communities. Lastly, in claiming that members use their “whole being” for the purpose of social change—especially establishing black institutions—the architects of the organization declared its function as a protest wing of the profession.
In some ways, the focus on black social workers and the development of a professional identity and black professional standards were primary to the NABSW’s founding. Johnson (1975) recalls that, at first, the “NABSW had moved toward a recognition of its heritage in social work, and would later address issues which were germane to the African American community.” Indeed, much of black social workers’ activism was about the confirmation of a new black identity, which in part meant demanding respect based on an unapologetic blackness and identification with a black community as opposed to white social work. For example, in announcing they had formed a national organization at the 1968 Urban Crisis Conference, they listed their goals as (1) “to reinforce Black identity,” (2) “to act as a vehicle for united action for Black folks,” (3) “to provide a vehicle for communications on a Black basis,” and (4) “to reconstruct systems to meet the needs of Black folks.”
100Many times these demands came about as explicit appeals to black masculinity and the supremacy of men and their ways of being in the world. For example, when Detroit social workers organized their national organization in 1967, it was created for black
male social workers (Jaggers 2003:14). I also asked key informants about the relationship between men and women in these organizations, and each echoed the idea that the sentiment of the time was for men to lead the way. This seems to have been a matter of respect. In confirming an identity based on unchecked blackness, men would be best suited to project a sense of “unapologeticness” around racial issues. Social workers’ mobilization, like many other Black Power-related mobilizations, occurred in the aftermath of the 1967
Moynihan Report and other social science attacks on black men and families. This led to a conscious desire to reclaim and project a strong image of black men and to take control over a public redefinition of black manhood. When I asked Dr. Karanja the question, we beat around the bush for a while until he eventually interrupted me: “Let’s be clear—we were a bunch of chauvinists—in fact, I’m a recovering chauvinist to this day.” He admitted that they had a tendency to “devalue women’s involvement and commentary” then, and that the organizations “could have been stronger had [they] been more engaging of women.”
101 Certainly, not all black men who were social workers during this period would agree with this characterization. But he is not alone in his sentiment as it relates to the organizations of the period.
While the gender dynamic of Black Power-era organizations has already been well documented and thoroughly debated,
102 the dominance of men in the NABSW was particularly peculiar because of the predominance of women in the social work profession. It was an oddity noticed by outsiders as well as insiders. Reporting on the 1968 conference for
The Monitor, a Catholic newspaper in San Francisco, Will Connelly noted first that while men were increasing in numbers in the profession, they were still in the minority. Nonetheless, he observed that “the males, still vastly in the minority in this kind of work, did most of the hard talking at NCSW’s most muscular convention in almost a century of its existence.”
103 Audreye Johnson retrospectively addressed the issue by saying that women made up the majority of the NABSW and had served in all leadership positions except as president of the organization. In recounting the “positives and negatives” of their movement, she mused, “Will they question the pattern of leadership everywhere but at the top?” (Johnson 1988)
The centrality of men to the movement also revealed itself in homophobia and antifeminist sentiments within the movement. Poet Cheryl Clarke (2005) recalls that the national director of the NABSW was given a standing ovation for these remarks during a speech given at the 1979 annual conference of a regional chapter of the organization: “Homosexuals are even accorded minority status now…. And white women too. And some of you Black women who call yourselves feminists will be sitting up in meetings with the same white women who will be stealing your men on the sly” (34). Clarke saw this construction of competition over black men as a tactic that “many Black men use to intimidate Black women from embracing feminism” (35).
The gender dynamic between black activists in the profession (the most visible of whom were men) and white social workers (many of whom were white women) was thus fraught with a unique tension. The decidedly masculine tone of black social workers’ organizing was often perceived as angry and attacking. This, as is discussed later, is a central trope in American racism: painting black men as angry and white women as victims. Here, this dynamic was on display.
In Audreye Johnson’s (1988) retrospective, she said that the NABSW conferences “have provided respite and renewal where members could speak and act Black.” She says “this was acceptable and expected behavior which members enjoyed.” What speaking and acting black meant, however, was taken for granted, and it was constructed in a very particular way. The movement put together a space and language that not only excluded whites, but also those African Americans who maintained intimate relationships with them or strayed too far to the white end of the black/white spectrum they had formed. The movement’s push for “black consciousness” and to “free our minds” was presented in contrast to thinking or acting “white.” There is a picture of a woman with an afro who attended the Association of Black Catalysts conference in 1968. The caption reads: “Naturals were very much in evidence at the ABC confab. This sister…is typical of the movement of professional Black women away from white concepts of beauty and toward a glorification and appreciation of their own natural selves. ‘The first step in Black liberation is to liberate oneself from the honkified [
sic] concepts we have been saturated with,’ she says.”
104 Also, recall Charles Ross’s charge that black men and women who had been socialized into educational and religious institutions “have Black skins and white minds and grey loyalties.”
105 Black men who had white girlfriends were said to “talk Black and sleep white.”
106 Language like this promoted an idea of blackness that was free of white influences.
In that meeting at Glide Memorial Church, there was also much discussion about naming between those who felt like the term “black,” as rooted in the Black Power movement and as a term of empowerment, should be used and those who still argued for the use of the term “Negro.”
107 But underlying this debate was a discussion over still-developing definitions about what “black” was and who fit that description. Garland Jaggers recalled that “there was a struggle in the 60s in terms of whether or not you were black. It was ‘Who is black?’ And the blacker you were, the faster you would move up, and we had no definitions of blackness, but everyone was throwing it out there.”
108 This identity work—deciding who is black, what black is and isn’t—was essential to the NABSW movement, even if the definitions were unclear.
All of the language, norms, and expectations of being black in the space of the NABSW reflected the dominant Black Power ideology of closing ranks, then being championed by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton. It was in sharp contrast to the rhetoric and norms of the civil rights movement, which valued integration and movement closer to the “mainstream.” Another way closing ranks operated is through claims to legitimacy and challenges to the social work establishment based on the idea that black social workers were better suited to deal with black communities because they were black. This sentiment—an almost strictly racial definition of expertise—is echoed in both the struggle against licensure and the transracial adoption issue. But this process also parallels what the literature on professions says about the process of professionalization in many ways. Expertise is central to professionalization, serving as the foundation to authority in the work that professionals do. Certain skills, tasks, and competencies are defined as uniquely theirs, thereby creating a basis for the profession’s existence. As Abbott (1988) argues, professionals claim to have the jurisdictional authority to classify a problem, reason about it, and take action. Black social workers were clearly a part of the profession of social work and thus were “insiders” in the field’s professional practice. However, their intra-organizational movement challenged the collective expertise of social work professionals by claiming that African American social workers had specialized knowledge, skills, competencies, and sensitivities that white social workers did not and could not have, making them experts on black communities. This was a challenge to the institutional logic of the profession, which held that expertise came exclusively, or most importantly, from training and not one’s race or other characteristics.
Yet, this professional identity was shaped by black social workers “outsider within” status as well (Hill-Collins 1986). As nonwhite people socialized into the logic of a profession that operated on white assumptions, valued white ways of thinking, and was demographically dominated by white people, African American social workers had a unique vantage point from which to view the profession. This position allowed black social workers—who both understood the logics, conventions, and norms of the discipline but were simultaneously rooted in the black community and the logics, conventions, and norms of the Black Power movement—to place themselves at the intersection of professional and movement understandings. These professional norms and their issues, framings, strategies and tactics are a sign of this positionality.
The rise in the number of African Americans in white collar jobs also coincided with the Black Power movement in a way that shaped the very meaning of black professionalism. This new professional style—marked by a commitment to the larger movement above their profession, a commitment to high standards of practice in black communities, an ethic of sticking together, a commitment to call out racist behavior, and a move towards closing ranks around all black organizing—set a standard for being an “authentically black” professional. This standard was further defined against a white professional identity and other “inauthentic black” identities. Moreover, it created the foundation of black professional associational life in the 1960s and beyond. These newly forged identity and professional standards represented a new class of black professional organizations, which would facilitate what Bayard Rustin (1965) called the transition from “protest to politics” as well as the institutionalization of Black Power within the professions.
CONCLUSION
Black social workers, along with other black professionals who made movements within their professions, drew primarily on the identities, ideas, and strategies of the Black Power movement. They worked to adopt a new black identity and affirm black values, black aesthetics, and black interaction norms and apply them in their profession. The assertion of the right for black communities to have control over the institutions in them was also central to their movement. At its heart, black social workers were standing up for a new blackness and claiming a position of power and control over the destiny of themselves and the larger black community. They were also developing and operating on a sophisticated understanding of institutional racism, one attuned to the idea that racist intent was not always necessary for racist outcomes to occur and that seemingly race-neutral policies and practices could have a disparate impact on people of color.
The popular and scholarly understanding of the Black Power movement is that it was largely a tool of the black masses and only at times embraced by the black intellectual. The black middle class has been almost universally characterized as falling into the assimilationist, accomodationist, or the moderate camp of the black liberation movement. But these black middle class workers were organizing around Black Power frames and strategies and their enduring efforts would shape the way we think about racial politics in the workplace and professional well into the twenty-first century. While black social workers and other black professionals clearly were not among the most radical or revolutionary elements of the larger movement, how they employed the movement’s content firmly places them in the Black Power tradition.
To be clear, though, their mobilization was not some sort of romanticized utopian movement. In many ways, by adhering to a strict racial definition of their issues, they worked to reinscribe and confirm existing gender and class lines. In resorting to claims to power based on a forceful male leadership, the respect they demanded emphasized male respect, or respect based on a manly form of being in the world. Doing this actually bought into the domination of women. Additionally, the dominant tactic of making racial claims on expertise on the black community, while rooted in a desire to subvert white patronization and imposition, reinscribed a class hierarchy in which “we,” a decidedly middle class of African Americans, are perfectly capable of making claims and decisions for a poor black community. Many of their arguments seem rooted in a claim that the black middle class, rather than the white elite, is the rightful guardian of the black poor. Moreover, while it’s hard to assess the extent to which mobilized black social workers spoke for all social workers, it is apparent that on some level they did not. Not every black social worker walked out that day in May 1968. There were also black social workers of the era who did not join the up-and-coming NABSW because of fundamental disagreements about issues or tactics.
109 Though this mobilization represents a dominant trend among black social workers—and indeed, black professionals of the era writ large—it is important to recognize those black social workers who stood in opposition to the movement.
Still, without a doubt, their movement had a profound impact on the profession and practice of social work. One of its greatest triumphs is forcing a review and interrogation of the curriculum in schools of social work. A complete transformation is still elusive, but most social work education does reflect the less pathological representation of black culture and black communities that black social workers struggled for. Furthermore, the inclusion of Afrocentric visions of social work practice is a direct outcome of their efforts. Their work has also forever changed both discourse and practice around transracial adoption and black family policy, and the NABSW should be credited for the focus on kinship care programs and familial support in the black community.
Another extremely important, though less formal, outcome of the movement is changed interaction styles and expectations for black professionals. Black professional organizing in the Black Power era demanded respect and pushed for new ways of talking to and interacting with black colleagues. Moreover, as professionals they created space for making racial claims to increased representation on committees, in leadership positions, and in hiring by black professional workers. Their organizing undeniably laid the groundwork for a new way of being a black professional as the 1960s drew to a close. Their claims were new, surprising, and shocking to white colleagues. When I spoke to Shirley Better, she told me that their white colleagues were “startled” at the claims they were making. Early NABSW members went even further and worked to create organizations that validated and justified demands about the professional place of African Americans in the field.
By making a tactical decision to withdraw from negotiations with the NCSW, the NASW, and any other white social work organizing body, the NABSW movement was at the forefront of a larger movement of black professionals seeking to organize as “technical support for the black liberation movement” (Sanders, as cited in Smith 1992:435). There is evidence that many of the Black Power-era professional associations emerged in similar ways. Many initially confronted the white-dominated professional organizations at national conferences somewhere between 1968 and 1970 followed by a series of negotiations. However, closing ranks and creating separate organizational structures was not the only way that black professionals inscribed the Black Power movement within their career worlds. On the contrary, as the earlier discussion of the Techni-Culture Movement within the National Federation of Settlements revealed, some organized black workers were successful at changing existing organizational structures and dissolved their temporary organizing structures as a result. A comparison of these two movements both highlights some important theoretical concepts in the study of social movements and sheds greater light on how the movements worked together to exact change in the social work profession.
