The liberal dilemma: Welfare and race, 1960--1975

This study seeks to understand the role of racial politics in the development of welfare reform in the U.S. The broad purpose of the study is to provide greater understanding of changes in the way that the liberal agenda was publicly characterized following the 1960s. To achieve this goal, the research focuses on the ways that racial politics shaped congressional and presidential treatment of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program from 1960--1975. It begins with a legislative and demographic overview of AFDC from 1935--1996, focusing on the evolving relationship between race and welfare. Following this overview, a close analysis of the 1962 and 1967 amendments to AFDC in Congress is presented, identifying the importance of race in changing congressional welfare politics between these two sets of amendments. The second half of the dissertation utilizes archival materials from the Johnson, Nixon, and Ford presidential libraries, including oral histories, to more closely investigate the role of race in shaping federal welfare reform efforts during these years. The study's primary finding is that race played a fundamentally important role in shaping post-civil rights era efforts to reform the AFDC program. Secondary findings note the specific dynamics of race and welfare in shaping President Johnson's War on Poverty and President Nixon's Family Assistance Plan. These dynamics are directly connected to the core tensions in the Democratic Party's New Deal liberal coalition as it confronted the civil rights movement and economic racial inequality. A liberal dilemma is identified, extending from the inherent conflict between the evolving political needs of the New Deal coalition and the 'racialization' of federal social welfare policies.