This article traces the relationship between the Ford Foundation and the black-power incarnation of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) from 1967-1969, through two grants to CORE for voter registration and leadership training in Cleveland's black community. It uses this case to analyze what has often been seen as a key turning point in the history of American racial liberalism in the mid-1960s, when American society wrestled with the meaning of black freedom within the paradox of African Americans' newly reaffirmed legal equality and the social reality of structural inequality that continued to plague black people nationwide. While the race-conscious liberalism that resulted might be seen as new, this article argues that the asymmetrical relationship of the Ford Foundation and CORE was based on shared convictions about organizing the ghetto that were both mainstream and often longstanding. It also demonstrates the ongoing force of white power in the black-power era.
Douglas Robinson
, “
Ford Grant to Aid CORE in Cleveland
,” New York Times, July 14, 1967.
2.
CORE statement quoted in
August Meier
and
Elliott Rudwick
, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement , (
Urbana: University of Illinois Press
, 1975), 414.
3.
On the Ford Foundation's involvement with: New York City's schools, see
Jerald Podair
,
The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis
(
New Haven: Yale University Press
, 2002); community development corporations, see
Harry Edward Berndt
,
New Rulers in the Ghetto: The Community Development Corporation and Urban Poverty
(
Westport, CT: Greenwood
, 1977); all-black theatre, see
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
, “
The Chitlin Circuit
,” The New Yorker, February 3, 1997,
44-55
; and black studies, see
Nathan Huggins
,
Afro-American Studies: A Report to the Ford Foundation
(
New York: Ford Foundation
, 1985).
4.
Robert L. Allen
, Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History (
New York: Doubleday
, 1969), 61. Joan Roelofs has also used the Ford Foundation's connection to the “black struggle” to illustrate her argument about the hegemonic function of foundations in influencing American public policy.
Joan Roelofs
, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (
Albany: State University of New York Press
, 2003), 1-6, 71, 95, 129.
5.
James C. Scott has shown that this kind of social-engineering ethos drove progressive elites across the globe and the gamut of political ideologies in the twentieth century in their attempt to reorder society by harnessing the “masses” according to their utopian visions.
James C. Scott
, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (
New Haven: Yale University Press
, 1998).
6.
Peniel E. Joseph
, Waiting `Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (
New York: Henry Holt
, 2006);
Nikhil Pal Singh
, Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (
Cambridge, Harvard University Press
, 2004), 134-211;
Matthew Countryman
, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (
Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press
, 2005);
Martha Biondi
, To Stand and Fight: the Struggle for Civil Rights in PostwarNew York City
(
Cambridge: Harvard University Press
, 2003), 250-287; Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940-1980, eds.
Jeanne Theoharis
and
Komozi Woodard
(
New York: Palgrave MacMillan
, 2003);
Robert Self
, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (
Princeton: Princeton University Press
, 2003), 177-255.
7.
Singh, 187.
8.
Alice O'Connor Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History
(
Princeton : Princeton UP
, 2001);
Alice O'Connor
, “
Community Action, Urban Reform, and the Fight Against Poverty: The Ford Foundation's Gray Areas Program
,” Journal of Urban History, 22,
5
(July 1996): On the Ford Foundation's policy role in postwar liberalism, see
Gregory K. Raynor
, “
Engineering Social Reform: The Rise of the Ford Foundation and Cold War Liberalism, 1908-1959
,” (PhD Dissertation,
New York University
, 2000).
9.
Henry Yu
, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (
New York: Oxford UP
, 2001);
Dean E. Robinson
, Black Nationalism in American Politics and Thought, (
New York: Cambridge University Press
, 2001);
Daryl Michael Scott
, Contempt and Pity: Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880-1996 (
Chapel Hill: UNC Press
, 1997);
Kevin Mumford
, Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century. (
New York: Columbia University Press
, 1997);
Kevin Gaines
, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
, 1996).
10.
Roelofs
, Foundations and Public Policy, 2.
11.
O'Connor
, Poverty Knowledge , 45-54.
12.
Allen
, Black Awakening in Capitalist America, 1-17.
13.
Adolph Reed
, Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era (
Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press
, 1999), 17.
14.
Roelofs, 2.
15.
John Herbers
, “
Rights Hearing Focuses on Negro Ghetto in North
,” New York Times, April 4, 1966.
16.
Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Hearing Held in Cleveland, Ohio, April 1-7, 1966 (
Washington : GPO
, 1966); For the most complete historical examination of these dynamics, see
Thomas Sugrue
, The Origins of the Urban Crisis (
Princeton: Princeton University Press
, 1996).
17.
Leonard N. Moore
, Carl B. Stokes and the Rise of Black Political Power (
Urbana: University of Illinois Press
, 2002), 26-60.
18.
Martin Arnold
, “
Rights Leaders Hold Unity Talks; Map Effort to Ease Tension in Cleveland
,” New York Times , June 15, 1967.
19.
James Farmer
quoted in
William Van Deburg
, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975 (
Chicago: University of Chicago Press
, 1992), 133. On community organization, see
Meier
and
Rudwick
, CORE, 306-307, 315, 359-360.
20.
For Turner's career with CORE, see
Meier
and
Rudwick
, CORE, 225, 242, 249, 290, 292, 293, 301, 305, 393, 405-7.
21.
Ruth Turner
quoted in
Meier
and
Rudwick
, CORE, 315-6. See also, Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, 622.
22.
Postwar black activists in New York City, for example, underwent similar ideological and tactical shifts in the wake of bitter experience.
Biondi
, To Stand and Fight , 261-2, 272-3.
23.
Ruth Turner quoted in Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 405.
24.
Ibid, 416.
25.
Ibid, 319-20.
26.
Ibid, 416.
27.
Charles V. Hamilton
, The Black Experience in American Politics, (
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons
, 1973), 67.
28.
Ibid, 68.
29.
Singh
, Black is a Country , 53.
30.
Biondi, To Stand
and
Fight
, 273. See also, Dona Cooper Hamilton and Charles V. Hamilton, The Dual Agenda: Race and Social Welfare Policies of Civil Rights Organizations (
New York
: Columbia
University Press
, 1997).
31.
McKissick
, Three-Fifths of a Man (
London: MacMillan
, 1969), 43.
32.
Floyd B.McKissick to the Editor
, New York Times, July 18, 1967.
33.
McKissick
, Three-Fifths of a Man, 140-1.
34.
Floyd B. McKissick to the Editor.
35.
The notion of black working-class cultural deprivation had deep roots in the thinking of post-Reconstruction progressive African American elites for whom radical visions of egalitarian social transformation often comfortably coexisted with “developmental uplift ideology” that focused on the “psychocultural” deficiencies of the black poor. This ideological framework received a legitimating boost in the high-modern context of postwar American social science and policymaking. See
Gaines
, Uplifting the Race, 256;
Scott
, Contempt and Pity.
36.
“Minutes—Steering Committee Meeting,” August 25-27, 1967, reel 10, Congress of Racial Equality Papers Addendum [hereinafter CORE Papers], (
Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of America
, 1981).
37.
Congress of Racial Equality Special Purpose Fund
, “The Urban Ghetto Crisis: A Proposal For Change ,” ca. March 1967, R-1864, 67-446, Section 4, Ford Foundation Archives [hereinafter FF], 1.
38.
Ruth Turner to Kenneth Marshall, September 15, 1967, Grant 67-446, Section 4, Reel R-1864; S. M. Miller to J. R. Coleman, June 26, 1967, R-1864, 67-446, Section 4, FF.
39.
Congress of Racial Equality Special Purpose Fund
, “ The Urban Ghetto Crisis,” 3.
40.
Alvin Ward
, “
To Rebuild Minds of People in Ghettos is Main Interest
,”[
Cleveland
] Call & Post, April 29, 1967.
41.
Floyd B. McKissick to McGeorge Bundy, June 25, 1968, R-1864, 67-446, Section 1, FF.
42.
Roy Innis
quoted in
Charles H. Loeb
, “
Core Speakers Urge `Separation
,'” Call and Post, May 25, 1968.
43.
Ford Foundation, Division of National Affairs
, “ Cleveland CORE—Target City: An Assessment of the Foundation's Grants to the CORE Special Purpose Fund,” August 1969, FF, 6.
44.
“A Proposal for Urban Leadership Training,” February 1, 1968, R-1864, 67-446, Section 4, FF.
45.
Ibid.
46.
Floyd B. McKissick to the Editor.
47.
Hamilton
, Black Experience in American Politics, xx.
48.
“Minutes, National Action Council,” October 13-15,1967, Reel 10, CORE Papers.
49.
“Black Leadership, CORE National Convention,” 1967, reel 9, CORE Papers.
50.
“CORE Target City Cleveland Project,” ca. January 1968, R-1864, 67-446, Section 5, FF.
51.
Alice O'Connor
, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (
Princeton : Princeton UP
, 2001), 125.
52.
Ruth Turner
to
Kenneth Marshall .The Office of Economic Opportunity saw the Rand Corporation as a model it adopted in a variety of ways to administer the War on Poverty.
O'Connor
, Poverty Knowledge, 173-6, 228.
53.
“Minutes of the NAC Meeting, Cleveland, Ohio” April 22-23, 1967, Reel 9, CORE Papers.
54.
Scott
, Contempt and Pity , 148-150.
55.
Memo from Edward J. Meade, Jr., to Frank Bowles, August 10, 1966, Office of the President, Records of McGeorge Bundy, Series 2, Box 17, FF.
56.
Hamilton
and
Hamilton
, The Dual Agenda , 147-53.
57.
“Minutes of NAC Meeting in Lexington Kentucky, May 20, 1967,” Reel 10, CORE Papers.
58.
Michael Latham
, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and `Nation Building' in the Kennedy Era (
Chapel Hill: UNC Press
, 2000), 21, 40, 53-54; O'Connor Poverty Knowledge 102-9, 130-2.
59.
The Ford Foundation, “Action for Equal Opportunity,” ca. August 2, 1966, R-1863, 67-431, Section 5, FF.
60.
Kai Bird
, The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy: Brothers in Arms (
New York: Simon and Schuster
, 1998), 379-80.
61.
Raynor
, “ Engineering Social Reform,” xiii.
62.
Ibid, 98-110.
63.
“Public Affairs Program Planning Budget Request for Fiscal 1967-1968-1969,” June 1966, Budget Papers, [April 1966-June 1968], Box 6, FF, 2.
64.
Division of National Affairs, “Proposed Budget: Fiscal Year 1970,” June 1968, Box 8, Budget Papers (June 1969-September 1970), FF, 24.
65.
Eugene S. Staples to McGeorge Bundy, September 27, 1966, Office of the President, Records of McGeorge Bundy, Series 2, Box 17, FF.
66.
“Public Affairs Program Planning Budget Request for Fiscal 1967-1968-1969,” 3.
67.
“Summary of December 23rd [1965] Meeting of Domestic Program Directors.” Attachment to Clarence Faust to McGeorge Bundy, March 17, 1966, Office of the President, Records of McGeorge Bundy, Series 2, Box 17, FF.
68.
Division of National Affairs, “Proposed Budget: Fiscal Year 1970,” 10.
69.
Christopher F. Edley to John R. Coleman, Attachment A, January 18, 1967, R-1831, 67-152, Section 4, FF. Jeanne Theoharis points out that the pathologizing of northern blacks allowed officials and journalists to discount African American self-assertion outside of the South. Jeanne Theoharis, “Introduction,” Freedom North,7.
70.
Daniel J. Walkowitz
, Working With Class: Social Workers and the Politics of Middle-Class Identity (
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
, 1999), 258, 256-264.
71.
George Lipsitz
, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (
Philadelphia : Temple University Press
, 1998), 1-23.
72.
The canonical work on black cultural pathology is
Daniel Patrick Moynihan's
, “ The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.”
Lee Rainwater
and
William L. Yancey
, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (
Cambridge: MIT Press
, 1967). For negative comparisons of African Americans to white ethnics see
Nathan Glazer
and
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City (
New York: MIT Press
and
Harvard University Press
, 1964).
73.
Division of Education and Research, “Program Budget Request, Fiscal Year 1968,” June 1967, Budget Papers, [April 1966-June 1967], Box 6, FF, 6.
74.
David E. Bell to McGeorge Bundy, July 10, 1967, Series, VI, Box 36, David Bell Papers, FF.
75.
Michael E. Latham
, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and `Nation Building' in the Kennedy Era (
Chapel Hill: UNC Press
, 2000), 147.
76.
Eugene S. Staples to McGeorge Bundy.
77.
Seth Taft quoted in Ford Foundation, Division of National Affairs, “Cleveland CORE—Target City,” 17.
78.
Allen
, Black Awakening in Capitalist America, 124.
79.
Nils Gilman
, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
, 2003), 47-56.
80.
Robert Booth Fowler
, Believing Skeptics: American Political Intellectuals, 1945-1964 (
Westport: Greenwood Press
, 1978), 176-214.
81.
John R. Coleman to David E. Bell, May 22, 1967, Series VI, Box 35, David Bell Papers, FF.
82.
Ibid.
83.
Richard C. Sheldon to David E. Bell, May 24, 1967, Series VI, Box 35, David Bell Papers.
84.
John R. Coleman to David E. Bell.
85.
Memorandum from James W. Armsey to McGeorge Bundy, May 25, 1966, Office of the President, Records of McGeorge Bundy, Series 2, Box 17, FF.
86.
“Summary of December 23rd [1965] Meeting of Domestic Program Directors.”
87.
James V. Cunningham to S. M. Miller, March 14, 1967, R-1864, 67-446, Section 5, FF.
88.
John R. Coleman to McGeorge Bundy, April 26, 1967, Office of the President, Records of McGeorge Bundy, Series 1, Box 31, FF.
89.
Philip Carter
quoted in, “
New `Black Program' Is Aim of $175,000 CORE Study
,” The Plain Dealer, December 11, 1967.
90.
James V. Cunningham to S. M. Miller, December 6, 1967, R-1864, 67-446, Section 4, FF.
91.
S. M. Miller, “Cleveland Escapes a Riot,” November 26, 1967, R-1864, 67-446, Section 4, FF.
92.
Ford Foundation, Division of National Affairs
, “Cleveland CORE—Target City,” 21.
93.
Arnold
, “
Rights Leaders Hold Unity Talks”; “Ford Fund Aiding Projects in Slums
,” New York Times, August 7, 1968 .
94.
Neither Carl Stokes, in his memoir, nor Leonard Moore, in his exhaustive history of Carl Stokes's political career, even mention CORE as having been involved in the coordinated voter registration campaign key to his electoral triumph. Stokes, Promises of Power; Moore, Carl B. Stokes.
95.
Ford Foundation, Division of National Affairs
, “
Cleveland CORE—Target City
,”
48
,
49-50
;
Donald Jansen
, “
Cleveland CORE Project Denounced and Lauded
,” New York Times, February 24, 1968. “
CORE to Begin Youth Leadership Training
,” Call & Post, December 16, 1967;
Allen
,
Black Awakening in Capitalist America
,
125
.
96.
“
CORE Target City Poll Gives Nod to Lou Stokes Chas. Lucas, Sen. Lausch
,” Call and Post, April 27, 1968;
Alvin Ward
, “
Clevelanders Eye Negro Congressional District
,” Call & Post, January 13, 1968;
CORE Target City Cleveland Project
, “CORE Conference on Black Community Development,” March 7-8, 1969, [printed program], Hayti Cultural Center, Durham, NC; “
Glenville CORE Parley to Hear Georgia's Bond
, The Plain Dealer, January 10, 1968;
Charles H. Loeb
, “
Core Speakers Urge `Separation
,'” Call and Post, May 25, 1968.
97.
“
CORE Offers Economic Package to the City
,” Call and Post, April 20, 1968”; Jim Cunningham to Mike Miller, June 14, 1968, Grant 67-446, Section 4, Reel R-1864, FF.
98.
Black Peace Rally is Nationalist Meet
,” Call and Post, August 10, 1968; Moore, Carl B. Stokes, 79-87.
99.
Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 380. Innis's explicitly masculinist views marked a real shift for CORE. Before Innis's ascendancy to National Director CORE simply shared the patriarchal underpinnings of other civil rights organizations, and indeed American institutional life in general, without developing any kind of gender ideology to accompany its nationalism.
100.
Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 380;
CORE Target City Cleveland Project
, “CORE Conference on Black Community Development”; “
Negro Business Promotion Considered the `In' Thing
,” Call and Post, August 17, 1968.
101.
Jim Cunningham to S. M. Miller, August 8, 1967, R-1864, 67-446, Section 5, FF.
102.
Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 420-5.
103.
Ford Foundation
, “Community Development Corporations: A Strategy for Depressed Urban and Rural Areas (A Ford Foundation Policy Paper),”
New York: Ford Foundation
, 1973, 27.
104.
In 1967, Franklin Thomas, Columbia University law school graduate and deputy police commissioner for New York City, was appointed president of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, a Brooklyn community development corporation that was the first one funded by the Ford Foundation. He remained in that position until 1976 and became the president of the Ford Foundation in 1979.
Orde Coombs
, “
Fear and Trembling at the Ford Foundation
, New York Magazine, September 28, 1981,
30
.
