making motherhood a felony: african american women’s

291The Journal of American HistorySeptember 2018

Making Motherhood a Felony: African American Women’s Welfare Rights Activism in New Orleans and the End of Suitable Home Laws, 1959–1962

Andrew Pope

On July 15, 1959, the Louisiana federal district court judge J. Skelly Wright ordered the Orleans Parish School Board to submit a school desegregation plan to him by May 16, 1960. As the deadline approached, Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis called a special ses-sion of the Louisiana state legislature with the intent to pass laws obstructing the federal government’s ability to desegregate public schools in New Orleans. During that session, Davis proposed a sweeping collection of laws. Dubbed a “segregation package” by op-ponents, nine of the bills targeted poor black women. The package would have made it illegal for black women to give birth in the state’s charity hospitals and would have imprisoned a woman for up to one year if she conceived a child out of wedlock. In his speech to the legislature, Davis argued that the government had a responsibility to thwart “mothers who engage in the business of illegitimacy in the same way as a cattleman raises beef.” Davis’s attorney general added that the state government’s interest was in putting an end to the “free love movement” that poor African American women supposedly em-braced throughout the 1950s. While Davis failed to win enough support to ban women from state hospitals or to criminalize pregnancy, he did secure unanimous legislative ap-proval for a new set of “suitable home” laws that redefined who could receive money in Louisiana from Aid to Dependent Children (adc), the federal “welfare” provision of the Social Security Act.1

Although the suitable home laws in Louisiana did not specify race, and supporters of the legislation used the phrase suitable home to bolster their claim that the laws ensured that government money benefited only homes that were good environments for children, caseworkers used the laws to target black women. LouisJana Acts nos. 251 and 306 of 1960 prohibited families from receiving payments from adc if the mother gave birth out of wedlock, if the mother lived with a man, or if the caseworker considered the mother to be generally “promiscuous.” The Louisiana Board of Social Welfare barred at least 29,565 African American women and children from receiving funds from adc following

Andrew Pope is a postdoctoral fellow at $BSOFHJF�.FMMPO University’s Center for African American Urban Studies and the Economy.

1 “League Asks Aid for La. Children,” Chicago Daily Defender, Sept. 8, 1960, p. A2; Taryn Lindhorst and Les-lie Leighninger, “‘Ending Welfare as We Know It’ in 1960: Louisiana’s Suitable Home Law,” Social Service Review, 77 (Dec. 2003), 555–84, esp. 569; Louisiana State House of Representatives Journals 1959–1960, pp. 173–74, box SP81–454, Louisiana State House of Representatives Collection (Louisiana State Archives, Baton Rouge); “Davis May Change His Strategy,” Shreveport (LA) Times, Dec. 9, 1959.

doi: 10.1093/jahist/jay145© The Author 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians.All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected].

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292 The Journal of American History September 2018

the passage of the two laws. The American Civil Liberties Union (aclu) review of the law found that over 98 percent of the families cut off from welfare were black. A local news-paper editor seeking the aclu’s legal assistance glumly concluded that Louisiana had suc-ceeded in “making motherhood a felony.”2

Louisiana was not the first state to use the tactic to prevent black families from receiv-ing welfare payments. Five years earlier, Mississippi had levied similar laws against black women, and Arkansas, Georgia, Texas, Virginia, and Michigan followed that state’s lead. Louisiana’s episode is notable, however, because of black mothers’ responses to the legisla-tion. These women cobbled together a protest campaign that gained attention from na-tional media, celebrities, and civil rights organizations. The mothers’ activism ultimately changed federal welfare policy, effectively banning suitable home laws.3

Following the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, Virginia senator Robert Byrd, for one, called for southern states to engage in “massive resistance” to prevent racial integration in the South. Historians have detailed the obstructionist laws passed by state legislatures, schemes to prevent black students from attending in-tegrated public schools, and a resurgence of white violence against African Americans throughout the South. Historians of “massive resistance” typically depict two compet-ing forces that wanted to maintain school segregation or abolish it, with some white moderates being caught in the middle. Southern state legislatures did more than seek to preserve the existing southern social order, however; they used the furor over school desegregation to reverse the progress made by poor black women who had managed to gain access to programs created during the New Deal, such as adc.4

Black women steadily gained access to adc funding during the 1950s, joining the white women and widows whom the program had always served. The percentage of black welfare recipients increased from 14 percent of the total in 1937 to 31 percent by 1950. It increased to 48 percent by 1961. In some states, such as North Carolina and Mississip-pi, the state legislatures responded by passing laws encouraging the sterilization of black

2 Act No. 251, 1960 La. Acts 525, 527 (July 7, 1960); Act No. 306, 1960 La. Acts 634, 635 (July 7, 1960). Ellen Reese, Backlash against Welfare Mothers: Past and Present (Berkeley, 2005), 45; Lillie Nairne to deLesseps Morrison, June 25, 1960, folder Welfare, subject file S60-34, series 1960, Mayor deLesseps S. Morrison Records (New Orleans Public Library, New Orleans, La.); Louisiana State Journals 1959–1960, pp. 53–54, box SP81–454, Louisiana State House of Representatives Collection; Jack Brady to American Civil Liberties Union, June 16, 1960, folder 1, box 1134, subgroup 2, series 4, American Civil Liberties Union Records (Department of Rare Books and Special Col-lections, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.).

3 Brief for the Child Welfare League of America as amicus curiae submitted to the Department of Health, Edu-cation, and Welfare, 1960, folder 11 Discrimination: Aid to Dependent Children Program 1960–1961, box A107, group 3, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.).

4 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). “Byrd Seeks Race-Order Resistance,” Baltimore Sun, Feb. 26, 1956, p. 1. Robbins Ladew Gates, The Making of Massive Resistance: Virginia’s Politics of Public School Desegregation, 1954–1956 (Chapel Hill, 1964); Numan V. Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South during the 1950s (Baton Rouge, 1969); William Doyle, An American Insurrection: James Meredith and the Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962 (New York, 2001); David Mark Chalmers, Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement (Lanham, 2003); Matthew D. Lassiter and Andrew B. Lewis, “Massive Resistance Revisited: Virginia’s White Moderates and the Byrd Organization,” in The Moderates’ Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia, ed. Matthew D. Lassiter and Andrew B. Lewis (Charlottesville, 1998), 1–21, esp. 3–6; Robert Cook, Sweet Land of Liberty? The African-American Struggle for Civil Rights in the Twentieth Cen-tury (New York, 1998), 93–94. For descriptions of the malleability of and variation within “massive resistance,” see Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, 2005), 7–8; and Nancy MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (Cambridge, Mass., 2008).


293Making Motherhood a Felony

women who gave birth to children out of wedlock. Other states passed suitable home laws in the same special legislative sessions held to prevent school desegregation, using the slur of “illegitimacy” to justify the laws: black women’s licentious nature, legislators argued, meant that their children should not be in school with white children.5

The case in Louisiana highlights the difficulty of uncovering the influence of poor black women on federal welfare policy during the 1950s and early 1960s. Mainstream newspapers captured popular white sentiment, depicting black women’s responses as hys-terical and unorganized. Even civil rights organizations followed the media’s lead, por-traying the women as supplicants rather than protestors. Daryl Michael Scott has shown that both liberals and conservatives in this period exploited the imagery of impoverished black people. In contrast to conservatives who used the imagery to convey unworthiness, liberals relied on it to evoke pity in an attempt to win support from white people. The personal papers of politicians seeking to exclude black women from welfare are readily available, as are oral history interviews with social workers who enforced the racist intent of the law rather than its race-neutral language. Absent in these sources are the perspec-tives of the black mothers because the women produced almost no records that have been placed in archives.6

Historians have analyzed the available sources and concluded that the women were simply powerless victims of a racist system. Linda Gordon, for example, argued that “the only reason the events came to public attention at all is that the Urban League appeal reached a group of British city councilwomen.” Building on Gordon’s work, other his-torians generally credit some combination of the National Urban League and the Urban League of Greater New Orleans (ulgno), white social organizations, and international attention for the campaign against suitable home laws. The arguments are supported by archival sources, but these exclude black women.7

Studies of the National Welfare Rights Organization (nwro) and the War on Poverty reveal that histories of social movements and the welfare state change when black women’s perspectives are incorporated. Felicia Kornbluh and Premilla Nadasen uncovered how Af-rican American women built the nwro and reshaped welfare policy to better serve poor and working-class women. Annelise Orleck’s study of Las Vegas showed how black wom-en created an infrastructure of social services in defiance of racist state officials. The work reinvigorated academic interest in the War on Poverty and spurred investigation of how federal policy inspired grassroots action in communities throughout the United States. Taken together, these histories indicate that black women articulated a vision for a just welfare system and undertook political action to realize it.8

5 Rickie Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy before Roe v. Wade (New York, 1992), 30; Winifred Bell, Aid to Dependent Children (New York, 1965), 34; Premilla Nadasen “From Widow to ‘Welfare Queen’: Welfare and the Politics of Race,” Black Women, Gender, and Families, 1 (Fall 2007), 56–57.

6 Daryl Michael Scott, Contempt and Pity: Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880–1996 (Chapel Hill, 1997), xi, 137–39.

7 Linda Gordon, “How Welfare Became a Dirty Word,” New Global Development, 14 (no. 1, 1998), 1–14, esp. 10. Lindhorst and Leighninger, “‘Ending Welfare as We Know It’ in 1960,” 564–84; Lisa Levenstein, “From In-nocent Children to Unwanted Migrants and Unwed Moms: Two Chapters in Public Discourse of Welfare in the United States, 1960–1961,” Journal of Women’s History, 11 (Winter 2000), 10–23; Adam Fairclough, Race and De-mocracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972 (Athens, Ga., 1995), 277; Reese, Backlash against Welfare Mothers, 45–47; Lauren K. Gauthier, “Desegregation and the Aid to Dependent Children Crisis in Louisiana: The Role of the New Orleans Urban League” (M.A. thesis, University of New Orleans, 1998); Bell, Aid to Dependent Children.

8 Felicia Kornbluh, The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America (Philadelphia, 2006); Premilla Nadasen, Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States (New York, 2004); Annelise



Inspired by this historiography, my project begins before the formation of the National Welfare Rights Organization or the start of the War on Poverty, to explore how poor black women won a ban on suitable home laws. I show how at least three hundred mothers coordinated to compel the ulgno to take up their cause. The mothers then attempted, albeit with limited success, to influence the subsequent national campaign to ban suit-able home laws. With few records of the mothers’ accounts unmediated by newspapers, government officials, or male-dominated civil rights organizations, I mined newspaper reports and government archives for the women’s stories. I use the evidence in the sources to demonstrate how the original framing of the black mothers as victims and beggars be-lies the vigor, tireless advocacy, and self-confidence exhibited in their protests. These sto-ries provide a more complex and accurate history of the campaign to repeal the Louisiana Plan for Aid to Dependent Children.

Poor black mothers in New Orleans used the immediate crisis of being cut off from welfare to demand changes in how the federal government administered the program. They transformed tactics of survival into political strategies that made a lasting impact on federal welfare policy. Securing their own food and housing was significant for poor black women, but their welfare rights activism in the 1950s and early 1960s also shaped how national civil rights leaders and organizations understood the relationship between welfare, poverty, and the civil rights movement. This case study of poor black women’s ac-tivism refocuses attention on African American women’s role in shaping welfare policy be-fore a national movement for welfare rights began in 1966. The study also highlights the precarious position of black mothers in the civil rights movement: by vocally defending their access to welfare, they pitted themselves against white opposition and mainstream black organizations.

African American mothers affected by the suitable home laws in Louisiana undertook political action to pressure the ulgno to mobilize to repeal the laws throughout the Unit-ed States. Facing antagonistic black male–dominated local civil rights organizations, a state government determined to starve them out of Louisiana, and an indifferent national media, the women succeeded in compelling the ulgno to form a national coalition, Op-eration Feed the Children, to raise money for families and lobby the federal government to intervene. Black mothers took action to feed and house their families, to send their children to school, and to successfully challenge the punitive suitable home laws. This study concludes with a demonstration of the effectiveness of their protests, showing how the new welfare rules prevented a city manager in Newburgh, New York, from enforcing suitable home laws one year after the black mothers’ movement. Paradoxically, the New-burgh case also shows how the successful campaign in New Orleans made the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp) and the Urban League more hesitant to intervene in welfare issues on black women’s behalf in the future.

The Origins of the Louisiana Plan and Black Mothers’ Response

The impetus for the Louisiana state legislature’s special session in May 1960 was a federal court order mandating the desegregation of New Orleans’s public schools. In 1956 Judge

Orleck, Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty (Boston, 2005); Lisa Gayle Hazirjian and Annelise Orleck, eds., The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964–1980 (Athens, Ga., 2011).



Wright had issued the initial order that the Orleans Parish School Board implement a desegregation plan for the district (which encompassed the city of New Orleans). Public schools in New Orleans were still racially segregated five years after the Brown decision and despite Wright’s order. Therefore, in 1959, prodded by a lawsuit filed by Constance Baker Motley of the Legal Defense Fund, Wright finally set a deadline of March 1, 1960, which he soon extended to May 16. That month, the Louisiana state legislature called a special session to pass laws obstructing federal intervention into school desegregation. In the session, Governor Davis proposed the sweeping package of laws that included the suitable home regulations.

The legislators intended the laws to limit black participation in politics and to punish African Americans for participating in the civil rights movement. Only months earlier, Davis won the governorship by stoking white anxieties and promising to disfranchise blacks, reaffirm Jim Crow laws, and obstruct federal interference in the state. An African American social worker described white people’s moods as “vindictive” and determined to target black people. Another white social worker in New Orleans described the policy as “tit for tat”: white legislators wanted to remind African Americans that asking for rights had consequences.9

Inroads made by African Americans in Louisiana into the political process through voter registration drives and protest activity created a sense of urgency among white law-makers. The package of suitable home laws also included legislation requiring all black men, when registering to vote, to disclose any children they had fathered outside of mar-riage. Ostensibly designed to protect women by encouraging men to make child support payments, the law instead immediately curtailed voter registration efforts. The same act barred any woman from voting if she had given birth while unmarried or had ever been in a common-law marriage. In 1947 Louisiana electoral roll numbers revealed that only ten thousand African Americans were registered to vote. By 1960 that number had grown to 161,410; the naacp believed that the largest number of unregistered blacks in the state lived in urban centers such as New Orleans. Moreover, direct-action campaigns had be-gun in earnest in April 1960 after local leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the naacp jointly formed the Consumers’ League of Greater New Orleans (clgno). In April the clgno began daily pickets of downtown New Orleans stores that refused to employ blacks. When a local judge issued an injunction to stop the protests, the student-led Congress of Race Equality took up the campaign in place of the clgno.10

The direct-action campaigns and the impending desegregation of public schools pro-duced a maelstrom that soon ensnared poor black mothers. The state legislature unani-mously passed, and the governor signed, the suitable home laws on July 7, 1960. That same day, Louisiana attorney general Jack P. F. Gremillian ruled that the law retroactively applied to welfare cases. His ruling meant that if a woman had ever given birth out of wedlock after receiving aid, she would no longer be eligible for welfare. On July 13 the Department of Public Welfare mailed the final round of welfare checks before convening to decide which families would be dropped from the program. The caseworkers never ac-

9 Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 231–32; Lindhorst and Leighninger, “‘Ending Welfare as We Know It’ in 1960,” 568.

10 Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 233; Margaret Price, “The Negro Voter in the South,” 1957, pamphlet, pp. 1–4, folder Southern Regional Council, Inc., container 28–253, series Publications, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People New Orleans Branch Collection (Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans, New Orleans); Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 272.



tually interviewed the welfare recipients to determine if the new law properly applied to them. Instead, the caseworkers made the lists by looking at the birth dates of the children in welfare-receiving households and using personal discretion to make a judgment. In New Orleans, the parish director of welfare, Lillie Nairne, drafted a form letter to notify families who were cut off from the funding program. The letter did not contain informa-tion on how to appeal or instructions on where to seek alternative forms of aid. Although Nairne assured New Orleans mayor deLesseps Morrison that every family affected by the new law had received notification, hundreds reported later that they had never heard from the welfare department.11

Caseworkers throughout Louisiana fulfilled the state legislature’s racially discriminato-ry intent when enforcing the suitable home laws. According to the aclu, over 98 percent of the families kicked off of welfare in Louisiana were black. The Louisiana Department of Public Welfare’s data indicated that 93.2 percent of the families were black. In a legal brief contesting the constitutionality of the law, the National Urban League argued that the state attorney general privately admitted that local caseworkers were aware that more than half of the women affected did not meet the terms of the law. Ultimately, Louisiana dropped almost every black family in the state receiving adc—41 percent of its total wel-fare recipients—in just one day.12

The affected families were so poor that they felt the loss of income immediately. Wel-fare officials in Louisiana calculated a subsistence-level budget each year and then paid a maximum of 87.5 percent of that amount while giving the local caseworker the discretion to pay even less. In 1960 a family with one child received a maximum of $72 ($558.80 in today’s dollars) per month, with small increases for each additional child. Casework-ers’ discretion to lower payments for black families exaggerated the meagerness of the cal-culated subsistence budget. Louisiana’s average monthly welfare payment was only $24 ($186.27 today) after the suitable home laws took effect. Thus, after families lost adc funding, mothers’ attention shifted to meeting the immediate needs of their children and regaining eligibility for welfare.13

African American women responded by overflowing the ulgno offices. The local chap-ter president J. Harvey Kerns reported that by the end of August 250 women and chil-

11 Brief for the Child Welfare League of America as amicus curiae submitted to the Department of Health, Edu-cation, and Welfare, 1960, folder 11 Discrimination: Aid to Dependent Children Program 1960–1961, box A107, group 3, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers; Lillie Nairne to Joseph Marchese Jr., July 15, 1960, folder 34-208 Aid to Dependent Children Program 1960, box 20, subseries 1.2 Social Welfare Plan-ning Council, series 1 Community Services Council of New Orleans, Community Services Council of New Orleans Collection (Long Library); Social Welfare Planning Council timeline of events, July 15, 1960, ibid.; Lindhorst and Leighninger, “‘Ending Welfare as We Know It’ in 1960,” 570; Nairne to Morrison, June 25, 1960, folder Welfare, subject file S60-34, series 1960, Morrison Records.

12 Lindhorst and Leighninger, “‘Ending Welfare as We Know It’ in 1960,” 570; Nairne to Morrison, June 25, 1960, folder Welfare, subject file S60-34, series 1960, Morrison Records; Lindhorst and Leighninger, “‘Ending Wel-fare as We Know It’ in 1960,” 571; National Urban League Brief as amicus curiae submitted to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Nov. 18, 1960, folder New Orleans, La., 1960–1964, box II:D62 Affiliates File 1959–1966, series Program Department Files 1956–1968, part II, National Urban League Records (Manuscript Division).

13 Brief for the Child Welfare League of America as amicus curiae submitted to the Department of Health, Edu-cation, and Welfare, 1960, folder 11 Discrimination: Aid to Dependent Children Program 1960–1961, box A107, group 3, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers; Margaret Pellegrin to Joseph Mar-chese, Feb. 1, 1961, folder 34-208 Aid to Dependent Children Program 1960, box 20, subseries 1.2 Social Welfare Planning Council, series 1 Community Services Council of New Orleans, Community Services Council of New Orleans Collection; Brief for the Child Welfare League of America as amicus curiae submitted to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1960, folder 11 Discrimination: Aid to Dependent Children Program 1960–1961, box A107, group 3, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers.



dren were streaming into the ulgno headquarters each day, impeding the ability of his office to perform its normal functions. The group even turned Kerns’s office into an infir-mary for sick and malnourished women. Although the women walked as far as six miles each way to get to the office, they did not hold a typical protest march. The decision may have been influenced by Louisiana Acts 70 and 80, passed earlier in 1960, banning dem-onstrations that the public found disturbing or alarming and prohibiting protests that blocked sidewalks.14

The Urban League of Greater New Orleans leadership grew so frustrated with the women’s occupation that they erected a wall in the lobby of the headquarters building to separate staffers from protesting women. Although the ulgno labeled the women “virtu-ally helpless,” the wall construction suggests it viewed the women as protesters. A photo-graph published by Jet magazine supports this interpretation. Thirteen African American women in the photograph sat inside the office next to the wall while hundreds of women not pictured stood outside the building. Some women defiantly refused to be photo-graphed by the media swarm. Others occupied the tables in the vestibule of the office, smoking, talking, and looking determined. The women certainly were not the “frantic mothers . . . flocking . . . like war-zone refugees to appeal for emergency aid” that one New York Post reporter described.15

The media did not treat the mothers’ actions as a protest or as the organized efforts of the ill-treated deserving poor. The reporter’s description of them as beggars matched many other descriptions by white reporters and black civil rights organizations: frantic, disheveled, and merely seeking aid. Historically, media and government officials have treated women’s activism as spontaneous and hysterical rather than as organized and in-tentional. An implication of this type of media coverage is that the poor mothers became the objects of history rather than its subjects, and that the particular demands they made dropped out of the historical record.16

In interviews with newspaper reporters and in letters to public officials, the women who descended on the ulgno presented themselves as anything but passive supplicants. Instead, they relied on neighborhood networks and were resourceful in making their ap-peal to the league. Gloria Handy and Beatrice Sumlin, for example, took turns babysit-ting each other’s children since they were next-door neighbors in a public housing com-plex. Sumlin watched Handy’s nine children while she walked to the ulgno office to protest. In return, Handy watched Sumlin’s children when she took her turn. Lacking any institutional support, the mothers initially relied on these types of social networks when they stopped receiving welfare payments. Moreover, the structure of segregated public housing communities proved to be a boon for the affected families in the short term. In newspaper accounts and league reports on how families removed from welfare were

14 National Urban League, “Report of Community Activities to Assist Children Deprived of Welfare Benefits in New Orleans Resulting from 1 of 30 Segregation Bills Passed by the Louisiana State Legislature,” Sept. 1960, folder New Orleans Urban League, New Orleans, La., Jan.–June 1961, box VI:A212 General Office File 1919–1979, se-ries Southern Regional Office General Office Files, part VI, National Urban League Records; Fern Marja Eckman, “Mothers and Babies, Crying for Food,” New York Post, Sept. 11, 1960, p. 1; Leonard N. Moore, Black Rage in New Orleans: Police Brutality and African American Activism from World War II to Hurricane Katrina (Baton Rouge, 2010), 44–45. 1960 La. Acts 70; 1960 La. Acts 80.

15 Unlabeled and undated photo, folder New Orleans, La., 1960–1964, box II:D62 Affiliates File 1959–1966, series Program Department Files 1956–1968, part II, National Urban League Records; Eckman, “Mothers and Ba-bies, Crying for Food.”

16 Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900–1965 (Chapel Hill, 1995), 10.



coping, journalists and social workers repeatedly expressed a mixture of shock, awe, and horror at the number of families living together in small apartments. Although evictions rose since many families could not pay rent after losing welfare eligibility, the families in public housing moved in with one another. In one poignant example, an ulgno em-ployee described a one-room apartment housing two families, with twelve people. One of the mothers had tuberculosis, and she risked exposing all of the children to the disease.17

Despite the women’s heroic struggle for survival, the sudden end to welfare payments pushed many to the limit of what they could tolerate. Geneva Williams wrote to the lo-cal naacp office asking for assistance after being kicked off of welfare for being a single mother. She managed to find a job doing laundry for $20 per week, but her rent was $10 per week. She had to bring her children with her to work despite the “soap powder and even poison” at her job, and they could not attend school because she could not afford school clothes or supplies. She had $3.50 a week for food, and the intense hunger pangs of her children caused them to cry every night. Given the lack of food and a looming evic-tion, she said that she was considering killing herself and her children. She did not know what else to do.18

Nothing in the history of the ulgno suggests that the league would have protested the suitable home laws, absent pressure from the mothers. Historians who credit the league for the campaign take for granted that the ulgno wanted to participate in, let alone lead, a campaign for mothers on welfare. Inspired by the founding board member Booker T. Washington’s insistence on building interracial ties through economic cooperation, the National Urban League (nul) typically eschewed protests to focus on integrating work-places through negotiation. Even after the Brown decision, the nul remained committed to its principle of interracial collaboration. In the debate over the nul’s decision whether to join popular protests following the Supreme Court’s Brown ruling, three members of the national organization’s board either resigned or were forced out for disagreeing with the decision not to join protests. Expressing frustration, one board member dismissed the National Urban League as “completely out of touch with Negroes and their desire to par-ticipate as full-fledged American citizens in our American democracy.”19

In New Orleans the heightened tension caused by the school desegregation lawsuit and the use of sit-ins convinced the ulgno director to instruct his staff to emphasize “more acceptable programs” such as black employment and self-help initiatives to avoid bad publicity. The ulgno did not want to intervene on behalf of the mothers. Even so, women living in public housing projects saw the ulgno as a potentially close ally because they were familiar with the organization. Every summer since 1957, the local league had sponsored mothers’ clubs, charm classes for women, and youth softball tournaments in the government-subsidized public housing projects. Such familiarity explains why the mothers chose to pressure the league for assistance.20

17 Eckman, “Mothers and Babies, Crying for Food”; “Davis of Louisiana Doesn’t Like the Spotlight,” Baltimore Afro–American, Oct. 4, 1960, p. 3.

18 Geneva Williams to National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Aug. 28, 1960, folder Au-gust 19, 1960–April 1961, container 28-71, series Publications, National Association for the Advancement of Col-ored People New Orleans Branch Collection.

19 Annie Woodley Brown, “A Social Work Leader in the Struggle for Racial Equality: Lester Blackwell Granger,” Social Service Review, 65 (June 1991), 269.

20 Anne Pauline Frainier, “The History of the New Orleans Urban League, 1938–1957” (M.A. thesis, Louisi-ana State University, 1973), 10–11; National Urban League, “A Review of Social and Recreational Needs in Public Housing Project Areas,” Dec. 1961, folder New Orleans, La., 1960–1964, box II:D62 Affiliates File 1959–1966, series Program Department Files 1956–1968, part II, National Urban League Records.



In contrast, black mothers did not target the local naacp nor other agencies in the city except the ulgno for assistance. naacp chapters throughout Louisiana were experienc-ing a period of what the historian Adam Fairclough characterizes as a “deep malaise.” In October 1959 Louisiana passed a law requiring public disclosure of all naacp member-ship lists. The association sued but effectively shut down in the meantime. White citi-zen councils and the Ku Klux Klan routinely harassed members. The head of the ulgno noted that he, too, would stop working on civil rights issues if the “boys from the citizen councils” ever targeted him as they had naacp leaders. The naacp won a court order bar-ring Louisiana from collecting membership lists, and the association officially reopened in February 1961. Still, the local chapter focused almost exclusively on the long-running naacp Legal Defense Fund campaign to desegregate New Orleans public schools. Impor-tantly, the women did not target any other social services agencies. The Social Welfare Planning Council of New Orleans member organizations reported that just 120 families had sought relief by September. The mothers’ daily return to the ulgno office indicates that the women considered themselves protesters. If those hundreds of women were seek-ing only aid from the Urban League of Greater New Orleans, they would have most likely also turned to other social welfare agencies in the city.21

A first sign of the success of the mothers’ protests appeared in late August when the ulgno attempted to shift the women to city government offices. As the month dragged on and the mothers ground normal league business to a halt, ulgno director J. Harvey Kerns spread word through radio interviews that the New Orleans mayor’s office had money for immediate aid and power to reinstate mothers on welfare. Whether Kerns in-tentionally lied is unclear, but he angered city administrators, who speculated that Kerns hoped to move the protesters from his headquarters to city offices. In memos exchanged between the mayor’s office and the Department of Public Welfare, city officials agreed to vote on a small emergency fund at the September 8 city council meeting. Without com-ment, the New Orleans City Council canceled that meeting.22

City officials became angry at the ulgno for attempting to shift the protesting wom-en toward the city government. An exasperated chief administrative officer for the city, David R. McGuire Jr., reminded the ulgno and other civil rights organizations that the proposals, committee hearings, and legislature votes had been “widely publicized and dis-cussed” throughout Louisiana. McGuire rebutted ulgno criticism by arguing that the civil rights organizations had been present in the political process but had not chosen to “express public concern” at the time or even to “impress upon the recipients of adc checks the new standards of eligibility.” Already knowing the answer was yes, he asked,

21 Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 273; Roy Wilkins to Doretha Combre, Feb. 15, 1960, folder Correspon-dence 1960, container 28-71, series Publications, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People New Orleans Branch Collection; J. Harvey Kerns to Lester Granger, April 6, 1960, folder New Orleans, La., 1957–1961, box I:A112 Affiliates File 1941–1961, series Administration Department 1911–1964, part I, National Urban League Records; Wilkins to Combre, Feb. 15, 1960, folder Correspondence 1960, container 28-71, series Publications, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People New Orleans Branch Collection; New Orleans National Association for the Advancement of Colored People September meeting agenda, Sept. 7, 1960, ibid.; Marchese to Father [Donald] Hebert, Sept. 2, 1960, memo, folder 34-208 Aid to Dependent Children Pro-gram 1960, box 20, subseries 1.2 Social Welfare Planning Council, series 1 Community Services Council of New Orleans, Community Services Council of New Orleans Collection.

22 New Orleans City Council memo, Sept. 1, 1960, folder Councilman-1960, subject file S61–25, series 1960, Morrison Collection; Kathryn Barclay to Nairne, Aug. 30 1960, telegram, folder Welfare Department, box 19, se-ries I Council District C, 1954–1962, Records of District A Councilman/Councilman-at-Large James E. Fitzmorris Jr., 1954–1966 (New Orleans Public Library).



“Were the organizations that are now expressing public concern represented at House and Senate Committee meetings?” The ulgno’s changing stance, and McGuire’s frustration with it, points to the changes spurred by the protests. Until the mothers launched their protest, no mainstream civil rights organization had objected to the suitable home laws. As the ulgno and the New Orleans City Council jockeyed to avoid bearing the brunt of the mothers’ ire, the women finally achieved a breakthrough when the ulgno launched a fund-raising campaign for them.23

While we cannot know the mothers’ specific plans, they did bring about this sudden and unexplained position change from the ulgno. The league announced it would begin a national campaign to feed families and repeal the suitable home laws, an effort that be-came known as Operation Feed the Children. The steady stream of resolute women arriv-ing at the ulgno offices, and the women’s refusal to concede to physical barriers, concil-iatory money from other organizations, and media dismissals of their actions had finally spurred the recalcitrant organization. The fight then shifted to debates over the type of assistance, the best solutions, and how to manage a national campaign against the Loui-siana Plan for Aid to Dependent Children.24

Operation Feed the Children and the National Response

The Urban League of Greater New Orleans started Operation Feed the Children in September 1960 when it became apparent that the women were not going to stop their protest. The campaign kickoff emphasized the mothers’ most immediate concerns: food, housing, and getting their children into school by the start of the academic year. The ulgno hoped to parlay the media attention into financial donations for the mothers and a repeal of Louisiana’s suitable home laws.

Even though black male leaders of the ulgno became the public face of Operation Feed the Children, women influenced its day-to-day activities. An example of that influ-ence is in the two sets of policy recommendations that the league released on the same day. The main office, where the mothers were protesting, published a nine-point plan to reduce caseworker loads, to increase the availability of free or low-cost day care centers, and to provide more recreational opportunities, such as playgrounds, in black neighbor-hoods. In contrast, the ulgno Religious Advisory Committee recommended that unmar-ried mothers give up their children for adoption. The committee also posed the question, “How can we get these women to attend religious services?” and asked for further re-search. Peculiarly, this single organization released contradictory policy recommendations on the same day. One set was released by the office that the mothers occupied while the other set was released by the middle-class committee that typified the programming un-dertaken by the ulgno before the mothers’ involvement. The nine-point document may be interpreted as a set of demands by the mothers within the context of their occupation of the league office. More likely, however, the policy recommendations were the culmi-nation of exchanges between office staff and mothers who were face to face for over one month. Although the ulgno records do not acknowledge the contribution of the moth-

23 David R. McGuire Jr. to Simon K. Marx, Aug. 27, 1960, James E. Fitzmorris Jr. Collection, 1954–1966, folder Welfare Department, box 19, series I Council District C, 1954–1962, Fitzmorris Records.

24 J. Harvey Kerns to Julius Thomas, “Report of Community Activities,” March 24, 1960, folder New Orleans, La., 1960–1964, box II:D62 Affiliates File 1959–1966, series Program Department Files 1956–1968, part II, Na-tional Urban League Records.



ers, the gap between the two sets of recommendations points to the policy preferences of the mothers and their influence on the nul main office.25

The ulgno had monetary motivation to downplay the involvement of these mothers in its operation. The National Urban League solicited donations from corporations such as Safeway, the H. J. Heinz Company, and General Foods Corporation. National donors wanted to avoid the appearance of participating in a protest action. The companies were inclined to donate, but they asked for assurances that only nul employees would be dis-tributing the food. Kerns gave his word that employees “strictly handled” all donations, and so any contributions were secure.26

The debate over participation and priorities took on even more importance when assis-tance arrived from England. On September 13, 1960, twelve British city councilwomen from Newcastle-on-Tyne persuaded Trans World Airlines to carry twenty-three pounds of food to New Orleans. Theresa Russell, who organized the airlift after reading a news arti-cle on the campaign, dismissed the subsequent abusive letters, phone calls, and telegrams she received from the “diehard racialists” in Louisiana as to be expected from any person willing to deny food to a child. When a reporter pressed Russell on the issue of harassers, she responded only that they “should be horsewhipped.”27

The twelve British councilwomen initially hoped to do something quite different than donate food. They intended to adopt the affected children and move them to England—a recommendation that fit with the ideals of the ulgno’s Religious Advisory Committee. Adoption was also a point of emphasis for the nul in 1960 after the league president Les-ter Granger lauded Nat King Cole for adopting a child. The national office used Cole’s adoption of two children to publicize its efforts to increase the adoption rates of black children. The New Orleans mothers, however, rejected this idea and stood by the main office’s policy proposals. The British women sent about 150 pounds of food per week to New Orleans for three months. More than sending a modest amount of food, the airlift fixed national and international focus on New Orleans to draw attention to Operation Feed the Children. The actions of Russell and the city councilwomen persuaded the Brit-ish ambassador to take up the issue in the United States, facilitated the creation of a peti-tion to the United Nations, and focused international attention on the African American women and children of Louisiana.28

Before the food arrived from Britain, only small black newspapers covered the events. Afterward, however, national media outlets flocked to New Orleans. The increased media attention garnered publicity in unanticipated ways. The folk singer Bill McAdoo wrote the song “You Can’t Let Little Children Starve to Death” about the Louisiana Plan for Aid to Dependent Children. Calling the plan the “biggest crime the states have ever seen,” Mc-Adoo crooned about the Jim Crow flag that flew high in Louisiana. Picking up on the ten-or of debate within the state, the song also identified the suitable home laws as retaliation

25 National Urban League recommendations, n.d., folder New Orleans Urban League, New Orleans, La. Jan.–June 1961, box VI:A212 General Office File 1919–1979, series Southern Regional Office General Office Files, part VI, National Urban League Records; Josephine Comeaux, “Foreward,” n.d., ibid.

26 Thomas to Kerns, Sept. 22, 1960, folder New Orleans, La., 1960–1964, box II:D62 Affiliates File 1959–1966, series Program Department Files 1956–1968, part II, National Urban League Records; Kerns to Thomas, Oct. 3, 1960, ibid.

27 “Britons Start Food Airlift to Louisiana,” Washington Post, Sept. 14, 1960, p. A9.28 Lester Granger, “Letter to the Editor,” Ebony, 15 (June 1960), 12; “Britons Start Food Airlift to Louisiana.”

John Corporon, “Group May Appeal to U.N. to Help Children Louisiana Cut off Relief,” Washington Post, Aug. 29, 1960, p. A1.



for blacks “fighting for their rights.” McAdoo toured the country with Pete Seeger to sing this protest song. The families affected by the Louisiana Plan were featured in a MovieTone News segment, shown at over 130 theaters in New York City. The New York Times editorial board also condemned the suitable home laws. In total, the rush of publicity for Operation Feed the Children raised over $33,000.29

During the public furor over the welfare plan, the naacp received a significant amount of mail despite its lack of involvement with efforts to repeal the laws. In part, this was because the issues of the naacp’s school integration efforts and the suitable home laws were intimately connected in the minds of many white Louisianans. Ideas about integra-tion and access to government services were rooted in debates dating back to Reconstruc-tion. A letter to the naacp drove this point home; the anonymous writer asserted that the naacp must think whites were “very stupid” for not realizing that they would see that the naacp promoted “illegitimacy.” Referencing the end of slavery and the South’s attempt at integration during Reconstruction, the writer argued: “All we got was a crop of hat-ers who cursed and cut and robbed and raped and murdered the very ones who paid for their raising.” The lesson, the writer concluded, was just to drown the children in a lake. A white parent wrote to the naacp that black “illegitimate” children proved African Ameri-cans were not yet ready to enter schools alongside whites. The parent added that all blacks should be forcibly sterilized after having two children without being married.30

The white citizen councils, founded to oppose integration during the 1950s, also en-couraged people to see the relationship of welfare policy to school desegregation. A citizen council newspaper argued that black women had larger than normal buttocks, where they actually stored extra food. “During a food shortage,” the Thunderbolt suggested, “they live off the stored food, much as a camel lives off his ‘hump.’” A picture of a black man with a small cranium was placed next to one of a naked black woman with large buttocks. In the minds of many southern whites, putting the two images together indelibly illustrated that biology linked the issues of welfare reform and school integration.31

Beliefs such as these were not limited to white crackpots and the citizen councils. Even New Orleans mayor Morrison—a moderate who had lost the gubernatorial election to Jimmie Davis for not being racist enough—harbored bias against African Americans. At the height of the school integration crisis, he responded to a constituent concerned about impending integration. In his letter, Morrison acknowledged that blacks had souls but claimed it meant only that they were human. Regarding his opposition to school integra-tion, he explained that the issue was “not a matter of civil rights; rather, it is a matter of evolution of the cranium and subsequent capacity to learn.”32

29 Bill McAdoo, “You Can’t Let Little Children Starve to Death,” performed by Bill McAdoo, Bill McAdoo Sings, Vol. II (lp; Folkways FW02449, 1961); On the MovieTone News segment, see Urban League of Greater New Or-leans, “23rd Annual Report, May 1960–May 1961,” folder New Orleans, La., 1960–1965, box II:H8 Affiliates File 1960–1966, series Printed Matter 1956–1966, part II, National Urban League Records; “Aid to Dependent Chil-dren Crisis in New Orleans,” folder New Orleans Urban League, New Orleans, La., Jan.–June 1961, box VI:A212, series Southern Regional Office General Office Files, part VI, National Urban League Records. “Sins of the Fathers,” New York Times, Oct. 6, 1960, p. 40.

30 Anonymous to New Orleans’ National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, folder Corre-spondence Incoming/Outgoing 1960, container 28-71, series Publications, National Association for the Advance-ment of Colored People New Orleans Branch Collection; A N.O. citizen to New Orleans’ National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, ibid.

31 “Propagandists Conceal Facts on Race,” Thunderbolt: The White Man’s Viewpoint, Sept. 15, 1960, folder Inte-gration, subject file SPR60-1, series Public Relations Office Subject Files 1960, Morrison Records.

32 Morrison to Henry O. Meisel, Jan. 24, 1961, folder Integration, ibid.



Despite the opposition in New Orleans, Operation Feed the Children raised enough money to feed many families while it waged a larger battle to repeal the suitable home laws. In October 1960, however, a four-month-old child died from pneumonia (exacer-bated by malnutrition). Although this was the only reported death, thousands of children were chronically malnourished, and Louisiana had few programs to help black children in particular. The federal government provided black schools with grants for a subsidized hot lunch program, but after the state cut off welfare payments, many mothers reported that they could not afford the clothes or supplies children needed to attend school. By cutting off access to welfare, Louisiana deprived children of another federal social welfare program.33

Operation Feed the Children continued to find success on the national stage. Popular attention to the situation in New Orleans drew the ire of federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (hew) officials who were responsible for monitoring state com-pliance with federal welfare laws. On October 1, 1960, hew officials notified Louisiana of a hearing to discuss the state’s compliance with federal law, to occur on October 25, 1960, before the Social Security commissioner in Washington, D.C. The Social Security Act, which had established adc, permitted states to determine reasonable restrictions on eligibility, consistent with the aims of the legislation. Operation Feed the Children per-suaded hew officials to review whether Louisiana had overstepped its authority in setting its restrictions.34

Operation Feed the Children’s success in winning national support reinvigorated the Louisiana state legislature’s commitment to the suitable home laws. The legislature voted to reaffirm the law, incorporating the attorney general’s ruling that the law applied retroac-tively. Only one legislator voted in opposition. The Louisiana attorney general managed to delay the federal hearing until the end of November by going through the motion of for-mulating a new plan. On November 29 Louisiana presented its new plan, clarifying that the retroactive policy applied only to mothers who had given birth to a child while unmar-ried in the previous two years. Even so, the new plan still did not recognize common-law marriage and retained vague clauses about suitability and caseworker discretion.35

While the state stalled, the aclu took up the women’s legal defense. The aclu screened its brief to the Social Security commissioner with hew officials before officially submit-ting it, actively collaborating to present the most persuasive arguments for repeal. Reflect-ing the beliefs of the black mothers, the aclu argued that women had the right to the money promised through Aid to Dependent Children. Rather than it being a privilege or an optional expense, the funding, the organization asserted, was compensation by state and federal governments for the women’s work as mothers. hew officials disagreed with this analysis and advised the aclu to remove the language, drily noting that “granting of

33 Kerns to Thomas, Oct. 3, 1960, folder New Orleans, La., 1960–1964, box II:D62 Affiliates File 1959–1966, series Program Department Files 1956–1968, part II, National Urban League Records; “Aid to Dependent Children Crisis in New Orleans,” folder New Orleans Urban League, New Orleans, La., Jan.–June 1961, box VI:A212, series Southern Regional Office General Office Files, part VI, National Urban League Records.

34 William L. Mitchell, “Decision of Commissioner of Social Security—Finding of Facts,” Jan. 16, 1961, folder 1, box 1134, subgroup 2, series 4, American Civil Liberties Union Records. Social Security Act of 1935, 49 Stat. 620 (1935). “Hear Case for Hungry Negro Babies,” Worker, Oct. 9, 1960, p. 10.

35 National Urban League Brief as amicus curiae submitted to the Department of Health, Education, and Wel-fare, Nov. 18, 1960, folder New Orleans, La., 1960–1964, box II:D62 Affiliates File 1959–1966, series Program Department Files 1956–1968, part II, National Urban League Records; Patrick Malin to Joseph Mayers, Dec. 14, 1960, folder 11 Discrimination: Aid to Dependent Children Program 1960–1961, box A107, group 3, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers.



aid to dependent children cannot and should not be regarded as a vested right.” The aclu dropped the language in subsequent drafts of the brief.36

The aclu and the poor black women exploited a section of the Social Security Act that southern Democrats thought protected Jim Crow. The act required that the federal gov-ernment fund state Aid to Dependent Children programs if the state’s plan included “a well-ordered system for dispensing assistance.” States determined eligibility criteria and monthly payment amounts, while the federal government bore the majority of the cost. The New York Times estimated that the state government in Louisiana was responsible for just $3.49 of every $23.99 spent on adc in the state. The two-tiered federalist system re-sulted from southern Democrats supporting a social welfare program only if the program provided federal money for states to distribute. State officials could then use their discre-tion to enforce Jim Crow policies. This strategy to preserve Jim Crow created an oppor-tunity for black women to bypass racist state legislatures. Each year, hew was required to certify that state plans were consistent with federal law. During most years, this was a mere formality; indeed, as of 1960 hew had never used its authority to decertify a state program.37

The hew hearing in Washington, D.C., highlighted the contrasting strategies within Operation Feed the Children. The Louisiana native and president of the Universal Asso-ciation of Ethiopian Women (uaew) Audley Moore led a small rally outside. According to the historian Ashley Farmer, the uaew “protested racism and sexism, connected dia-sporic communities, and championed African American culture and identity in the Deep South.” All three of these goals are evident in Moore’s advocacy on behalf of the mothers. At the rally, Moore declared that “the time has come for our people to realize that we can-not achieve freedom under this white man’s system of white supremacy.” Such language did not endear her to the ulgno leaders, who declined to bring any of the black mothers with them to the hearing. Similarly, the aclu paid only for its lawyers to attend.38

Moore’s increasing involvement in the black mothers’ campaign led to a standoff with the nul. Granger traveled to Buffalo, New York, as part of a fund-raising trip for Opera-tion Feed the Children. While there he discovered that a local mothers’ association had been in regular contact with Moore and had spearheaded local fund raising for the fami-lies in New Orleans. Granger described Moore as a “pro-Communist . . . peripatetic or-ganizer” from New York City who was detrimental to the National Urban League’s cause. He refused to accept the funds that she helped raise. He returned the money and ordered the uaew to cease all activity that could be associated with Operation Feed the Children. Deprived of administrative roles in the operation, the black mothers were probably un-aware of Granger’s actions.39

36 Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to the American Civil Liberties Union, 1960, folder 1, box 1134, subgroup 2, series 4, American Civil Liberties Union Records.

37 Arthur Flemming, Jan. 16, 1961, memorandum for the commissioner of Social Security from the secretary, reprinted in Ray O. Werner, review of The Attack on World Poverty by Andrew Shonfield, Social Science, 36 (June 1961), 210–11. “Sins of the Fathers.” Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Ra-cial Inequality in Twentieth–Century America (New York, 2006), 44–45.

38 Ashley D. Farmer, “Reframing African American Women’s Grassroots Organizing: Audley Moore and the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women, 1957–1963,” Journal of African American History, 101 (Winter–Spring 2016), 69–96, esp. 69; “Charges Gov. Davis Welfare Amid Remarks ‘Irresponsible,’” Louisiana Weekly, Oct. 1, 1960, pp. 1, 7.

39 Granger to the National Urban League, Dec. 30, 1960, memo, folder Admin 1960: New Orleans, box I:A112 Affiliates File 1941–1961, series Administration Department 1911–1964, part I, National Urban League Records; Alexander J. Allen to Willams Watkins, Nov. 28, 1960, ibid.



In January the Social Security commissioner upheld the modified Louisiana Plan for Aid to Dependent Children as congruent with federal law, concluding that the plan was legal because “in the face of many precedents and analogies established during the twen-ty-five years of experience in the administration of the Social Security Act, no practical alternative was left to me.” hew secretary Arthur Flemming acknowledged that his com-missioner’s ruling may have been consistent with current law, but he still disliked it. To solve the dilemma, Flemming issued a memorandum of law the same day. In what has become known as the Flemming rule, he required states to remove a child from a home if a caseworker deemed the home unsuitable for welfare. Knowing that the costs of run-ning foster homes or asylums far exceeded the state cost of the federally subsidized adc program, Flemming gambled that states such as Louisiana would no longer use suitable home laws as a cover for blocking black women’s access to welfare.40

Secretary Flemming did not intend his rule to be a cure-all; instead, he attempted to limit state suitable home laws at a time when congressional action on such a charged topic was not possible. The long-term achievements of the Flemming rule become clearer when the specific events that led to its formation are considered. With close to thirty thousand people destitute in Louisiana, Flemming realized that few other legal solutions existed for the mothers to pursue, so he made a decision that he thought states would tolerate. The rule did not end the authority of states to make judgments about the suitability of homes or prevent caseworkers from making racially discriminatory decisions. Either would have required congressional action. Still, the Flemming rule restored thousands of people to welfare in Louisiana and made hundreds of laws in other states unenforceable. Another ten years would pass before the Supreme Court decision in Goldberg v. Kelly guaranteed mothers the right to an attorney when a state cut off benefits, a pretermination eviden-tiary review in front of an impartial third party, and the right to a “fair hearing” appeal. Flemming did not have the power to go that far legislatively, however, and feared he would only provoke state resistance, the brunt of which would be borne by poor black mothers.41

Scholars and social workers have criticized the Flemming rule for failing to guarantee access to welfare or to eliminate suitability standards. As the historian Alison Lefkovitz has documented in her case study of Alabama welfare laws, the Flemming rule did not immediately address the byzantine suitable home laws in each state. Twenty-two states still had old suitable home laws on the books, and many of them were contradicted by other state laws; in their flurries of massive resistance, state legislatures were not at-tentive to the compatibility of new legislation with older laws. When George Wallace became governor of Alabama in 1963 he appointed his brother to make sense of the adc suitable home laws in light of the Flemming rule. As Supreme Court justice Hugo Black later observed in his dissenting opinion in Goldberg, state legislators evaded the rule by formulating new policies designed to prevent women from receiving welfare in the first place. The Alabama state government did circumvent the intent of the Flem-ming rule and could do so because the Social Security Act allowed states to administer

40 Shad Polier to Wilkins, Jan. 21, 1961, folder 11 Discrimination: Aid to Dependent Children Program 1960–1961, box A107, group 3, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers; Reese, Backlash against Welfare Mothers, 46; Flemming, memorandum for the commissioner of Social Security from the secretary, reprinted in Werner, review of Attack on World Poverty by Shonfield, 210–11.

41 Orleck, Storming Caesars Palace, 133–34. Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970).



welfare programs. So long as states did so, the standards would fluctuate based on state political climates.42

More than half the women affected by the Louisiana Plan for Aid to Dependent Chil-dren began receiving money from welfare within one year of the application of the Flem-ming rule. At a meeting with naacp head Roy Wilkins, hew secretary Flemming settled on granting Louisiana one year to become compliant with the new standard. Flemming’s rela-tively weak position underscored two important facts for mothers on welfare. First, the only other solution Flemming had available was to override his Social Security commissioner’s decision and to declare the state noncompliant with hew policy. This would effectively cut off all welfare funding to the state. In that case, a greater number of women would suffer. Second, if Flemming overstepped his authority, he could not rely on Congress to codify his new rules in legislation. The Child Welfare League of America feared that southern sena-tors would overturn the Flemming rule by attaching amendments to unrelated bills. By the end of 1961, Louisiana’s laws were consistent with federal law, but nearly 50 percent of the women who had lost benefits due to the suitable home laws remained off welfare. After de-claring victory, the ulgno disbanded Operation Feed the Children.43

The Aftermath in Louisiana and a Thirteen-Point Plan in Newburgh, New York

Shad Polier, an attorney for the Child Welfare League, sent Wilkins a congratulatory letter after Flemming announced his memorandum of law. He reminded Wilkins, “Now that Dr. Flemming has taken this action it all seems so easy, but you will remember how hopeless it seemed so short a time ago to expect such an outcome.” Not mention-ing the African American mothers who initiated the protests, Polier praised Wilkins by adding, “All of this only proves that freedom and decency is never won by the faint-hearted.” While he was heaping undeserved praise on Wilkins, however, the next suitable home law crisis was unfolding in Newburgh, New York, just one hundred miles from the naacp national headquarters in New York City.44

The first attempt by a locale to institute suitable home laws after the promulgation of the Flemming rule proved how important the black mothers’ victory in Louisiana was to black women across the United States. The test of the Flemming rule began on May 1, 1961, when Newburgh city manager Joseph Mitchell required all local welfare recipients to pick up their adc checks at the police station. There, an officer led each woman into a cramped, dark office and asked for identification and information about her work and dating history. As the line outside snaked around the block, mothers grew angry. One black mother told a reporter that she believed the so-called police muster was foolhardy. She noted, “I have seven children at home. One is dying of leukemia. I should be home with him now, not here.” The daylong event did not expose a single instance of fraud.45

42 Alison Lefkovitz, “Men in the House: Race, Welfare, and the Regulation of Men’s Sexuality in the United States, 1961–1972,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 20 (Sept. 2011), 594–614.

43 Polier to Wilkins, Jan. 21, 1961, folder 11 Discrimination: Aid to Dependent Children Program 1960–1961, box A107, group 3, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers.

44 Ibid.45 Geneva (NY) Times, May 2, 1961; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, July 1, 1961,

press release, folder Newburgh, ny 1960–1962, box A144, group 3, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers; Kenneth J. Neubeck and Noel A. Cazenave, Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card against America’s Poor (New York, 2001), 84–85.



The Newburgh plan illustrates how racists in the North drew on southern segregation-ist policies. It included elements of the Louisiana Plan for Aid to Dependent Children but added even more onerous requirements, including substituting vouchers for cash payments from adc and requiring all able-bodied people to work for the city in exchange for the vouchers. In addition, the police would conduct monthly eligibility reviews and bar payments to any mother who did not take a job or who gave birth while unmarried. Even if a family satisfied all of these requirements, the plan limited benefits to only three months per year. In disbelief, the Newburgh naacp leadership asked, “Must Louisiana come to New York?”46

After the New York Times featured pictures of the police assembling mothers on welfare in Newburgh on its front page, the New York State Board of Social Welfare intervened. The state officials described the plan as borderline illegal in the wake of the Flemming rule and certainly contrary to the department’s mission. Despite this warning, Mitch-ell proceeded with his plan. On June 19 the city council voted to support his plan, and Mitchell reaffirmed it publicly the next day. The New York State Board of Social Welfare sued in state court to stop the enforcement of the policy. In part, the lawsuit relied on the Flemming rule; the social welfare board feared losing hundreds of millions of dollars in aid because a racist city manager in a small town used suitable home laws to bar black women from adc benefits.47

Despite the proximity of its national headquarters to Newburgh, the naacp did not have any interest in fighting the Newburgh plan. But the Newburgh chapter displayed “militant leadership,” according to the national office. Wilkins urged caution. He wrote to the African American congressman from Michigan Charles C. Diggs that the New-burgh plan must be faced with “honesty and realism” rather than “racial emotionalism.” In part because of Wilkins, and because the New York State Board of Social Welfare won an injunction barring the immediate implementation of the plan, neither the black moth-ers nor the Newburgh naacp held any public marches.48

Wilkins revealed the real reasons for his hesitance in a private addendum he attached to a public letter to Congressman Diggs. He began by pointing out that, for tactical rea-sons, certain things could not be said publicly. “Loud and boisterous” protests by certain segments of the black population, he claimed, were detrimental to the long-term success of an African American agenda. Exactly who populated this “segment” became clear when he condemned “the utter indifference of a group of [black] women and girls . . . to any laws of sexual decency and morality.” He repudiated protestors who expected equality merely on the basis of their race, regardless of education or experience. Wilkins concluded

46 Historians have uncovered the national scope of racist laws and the civil rights movement. See Victoria Wol-cott, Race, Riots, and Rollercoasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America (Philadelphia, 2012); Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard, eds., Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles outside the South, 1940–1980 (New York, 2003); and Lisa Levenstein, A Movement without Marches: African American Women and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia (Chapel Hill, 2009). National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, July 1, 1961, press release, folder Newburgh, ny, 1960–1962, box A144, group 3, National Association for the Advance-ment of Colored People Papers; Joseph P. Ritz, The Despised Poor: Newburgh’s War on Welfare (Boston, 1966), 50–52; Newburgh National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, “Statement to ny Board of Social Wel-fare,” July 7, 1961, folder Newburgh, NY 1960–1962, box A144, group 3, National Association for the Advance-ment of Colored People Papers.

47 Newburgh National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, “Statement to ny Board of Social Welfare.” State Board of Social Welfare v. City of Newburgh, 28 Misc. 2d 539 (N.Y. Misc. 1961).

48 Gloster B. Current to Ellsworth Potier Sr., June 26, 1961, folder 4 Newburgh 1956–1965, box C104, group 3, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers; Gay Talese, “Wilkins Speaks: Calls New-burgh Plan Anti-Negro,” Aug. 22, 1961, folder Newburgh, ny 1960–1962, box A144, ibid.



this personal message by noting that the naacp could not publicly condemn the black women or seek to correct their behavior since such actions would be a tacit admission “on our part that our people are not yet worthy of the status we demand for them.” Wilkins concluded, “that is our dilemma.” He resolved this contradiction for himself by partici-pating as little as possible in the Newburgh and Louisiana cases.49

Wilkins’s letter to Diggs also indicates how much the protests by African American women affected their relationship with national civil rights organizations. These early wel-fare rights cases had long-term effects on how national organizations responded to activ-ism by poor black women. Along with the naacp, the National Urban League remained silent on the Newburgh case. Reluctant to get involved in another welfare rights case, the nul did not participate in or attend the public or legal hearings on the issue. Local white supremacists reinforced this hesitance by distributing thousands of pamphlets with the title “Uncle Sam: Black Bastard Breeder Supreme—Unwed Negro Mothers Battle New Orleans, Mississippi, and Newburgh New York.” By explicitly linking the three cases, the white supremacists deterred the nul from taking public position on the Newburgh plan. The league did not want to become known as the organization that defended mothers re-ceiving welfare payments. Still, a local nul member did compile a thirteen-page position paper on the Newburgh plan. It concluded that black women would be forced to take low-paying agricultural jobs on whatever terms they could find nine months out of the year. Surveying the local labor market, the official concluded that the plan effectively cre-ated a “slave labor” market among black mothers.50

Black women shared the nul’s fears. In interviews the women routinely disclosed un-even and unpredictable work histories. “Mrs. Arnold” worked at a local pocketbook fac-tory during busy months but was the first to be laid off for the rest of the year since she had bad vision. Without welfare, she would not be able to care for her three children the other months of the year. Similarly, Elaine Disnuke could not find steady work to support her two children. These stories highlight what eventually motivated opposition from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (afl-cio): the Newburgh plan would result in a large pool of cheap, nonunion labor for nine months every year. The addition of a cheap labor source would undercut union power while tak-ing away the little leverage black women had in determining their working conditions. The afl-cio described the requirements as a Republican attempt to revive the “code of the Know-Nothings.” The union sarcastically asked if the better alternative was to just shoot all poor people. Even after labor unions lobbied the naacp to oppose the Newburgh plan, Wilkins refused to let his organization get involved.51

The New York State Social Welfare Board secured an injunction against Newburgh to stop the enforcement of the plan. Twelve of Mitchell’s thirteen policies for Newburgh never went into effect. On August 17, the New York State Supreme Court declared twelve planks of the Newburgh plan to be incongruent with state law. The court permitted New-burgh officials to do only monthly reviews of a recipient’s eligibility for welfare. Unlike

49 Wilkins to Charles Diggs, July 26, 1961, folder Newburgh, ny 1960–1962, box A144, ibid.50 National Urban League, “The Newburgh Plan,” Aug. 22, 1961, pp. 3–4, 9, folder Newburgh plan 1961, box

II:A39 General Department File 1953–1966, series Administration Department File 1953–1966, part II, National Urban League Records.

51 Ritz, Despised Poor, 104. Joseph P. Ritz did not include Mrs. Arnold’s first name. Ibid., 105–6. Leo Perlis, “Newburgh’s Welfare Program: The Creed of the Know-Nothings,” Sept. 25, 1961, folder Newburgh, ny 1960–1962, box A144, group 3, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers.



in Louisiana, no families lost money because of the controversy. The Newburgh naacp speculated, however, that the debate scared away many people who would have otherwise applied for money through Aid to Dependent Children.52

Conclusion

In early battles for welfare rights, black mothers used protest tactics that melded rec-ognition of the urgency of their need with a political vision for how welfare could best serve them. The mothers did this activist work in their homes and in the streets, yet the archives of mainstream social organizations rarely represent their skills and experiences. Belying the silences of the archive, black women in Louisiana were the impetus for the formation of Operation Feed the Children and participated in it as it garnered national and international attention. African American women were often alone in their fight for welfare rights. During the period of “massive resistance” to integration in the 1950s, white southerners also targeted black women, with the intent to block access to govern-ment programs. Amid fights to desegregate schools and public accommodations, civil rights organizations did not voluntarily intervene on behalf of black mothers. Organiza-tions such as the nul and the naacp feared that association with single black mothers would tarnish their image and jeopardize their desegregation agendas. The protests of black mothers, however, wrangled organizations into representing them.

Poor black women in New Orleans turned civil rights organizations into capillary agents: by pressuring the naacp or the nul, the mothers influenced high-level govern-ment actors. The victory in Louisiana gave New York the legal basis to prevent similar measures from taking effect in Newburgh. Moreover, the women had succeeded in mobi-lizing civil rights organizations in the battle for welfare rights. Unions and legislators alike turned to the nul and the naacp for advice on welfare policy. For example, Wilkins’s ex-change with Diggs began after Diggs sought advice on how to respond to the Newburgh plan. In this way, the women used these national civil rights organizations to reach policy makers in places the mothers could not go. Even then, the mothers’ efforts were limited by their lack of leadership positions, and organizations severed support as soon as feasi-ble. The influence mothers exerted on welfare policy was not predictable or always even positive since it still depended, in part, on the whims of male-dominated civil rights or-ganizations. The formation of the National Welfare Rights Organization in 1966 finally permitted black women to hold leadership roles in an organization advocating for their interests.53

Despite the unprecedented success of the protests in Louisiana, the outcome was not an unequivocal victory for the mothers. The absence of a responsive federal legislative branch compelled Flemming to rig a solution for the immediate crisis. Flemming’s rul-ing restored many women’s welfare eligibility and hindered other states from passing new suitable home laws or enforcing suitable home laws already on the books. But the ruling had consequences for black families that the mothers could not have anticipated. Con-gress incorporated the Flemming rule into law when authorizing federal funds for foster care two years later. Today, if a social worker decides a home is unsuitable and cuts off a

52 State Board of Social Welfare v. City of Newburgh, 28 Misc. 2d 539 (N.Y. Misc. 1961).53 Diggs to Wilkins, July 24, 1961, folder Newburgh, ny 1960–1962, box A144, group 3, National Association

for the Advancement of Colored People Papers.



family’s welfare eligibility, the caseworker must remove the children from the home. So-cial work organizations attribute the disproportionate number of black children in foster care to the Flemming rule.54

Precarious even in victory, many black mothers were not able to resecure access to wel-fare. Months into the reenrollment process in New Orleans, Jesse Edmonds wrote Mayor Morrison a four-page plea for help. Edmonds did not have a “single brown penny” left to pay the rent due Monday, to buy food for her six children, or to pay the utility company to keep her electricity on. Her six-year-old son had lost one of his eyes, and she could not afford to replace or clean his temporary eye. None of her children had enough clothing to attend school. Edmonds wrote that the year before, the welfare department kicked her off its benefits list after it determined her children were born when she was not married. Since then, she had earned $23.63 a month working at the local Mortacin Brothers Res-taurant. However, to keep the job she had to “lock up [her children] in the house” while she worked the overnight shift. One of her children became ill, she missed a day of work, and the restaurant fired her. Edmonds’s friends and neighbors tried to help her by giving her food, but they no longer had any extra to share. Edmonds summarized her plight, “I don’t have no food at all for any children,” and she begged the mayor to intervene on her behalf at the local parish welfare office. Morrison responded with a polite form letter referring her to his aide.55

54 Claudia Lawrence-Webb, “African American Children in the Modern Child Welfare System: A Legacy of the Flemming Rule,” Child Welfare, 76 (Jan.–Feb. 2007), 9–30; Mark F. Testa and John Poertner, Fostering Accountabil-ity: Using Evidence to Guide and Improve Child Welfare Policy (Oxford, 2010), 271; Laura Briggs, Somebody’s Chil-dren: The Politics of Transnational and Transracial Adoption (Durham, N.C., 2012), 42.

55 Jessie Edmonds to Morrison, April 28, 1961, folder Welfare, subject file S61-25, series 1961, Morrison Records.


making motherhood a felony: african american women’s

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