Welfare Warriors

Race, Gender, and U.S. Welfare History

The Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) program, a social welfare program providing federal benefits for low-income children, was created in 1935 as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Social Security Act. ADC was racialized from the beginning in part because it emerged from women's pensions programs, which overwhelmingly served white war widows. Further, many African Americans were denied ADC benefits due to legislative rules prohibiting domestic and seasonal agricultural laborers from receiving aid. After 1937, families of widows were moved from ADC to Social Security, leaving ADC to service the children of deserted, divorced, or never-married mothers.

This change marked the beginning of the stigmatization of the ADC program, evidenced by the lack of tangible resources invested in the program over the years and debates regarding the deservingness and moral worthiness of welfare mothers. As the total number of individuals that ADC served rose, particularly in African American communities, levels of support for the program decreased during the 1940s and 1950s, evidenced most clearly by welfare payment reductions and increased restrictions on welfare receipt. Simultaneously, stereotypes of morally deficient, promiscuous, lazy, black welfare mothers proliferated and began to gain credence. It is against this backdrop of punitive welfare policy changes and racially informed negative perceptions of welfare mothers that grassroots welfare rights movements emerged.

Birth of a Welfare Rights Movement

In response to the negative treatment welfare recipients regularly encountered, many mothers began to organize locally, creating forums where they could define and defend their rights and strategize for enacting change. Although those early organizations, overwhelmingly led by and comprised of women of color, tended to form in response to locally defined concerns and needs, they served as a training ground for future national leaders and formed the foundation on which the national welfare rights movement later developed. In an attempt to build and enhance coalitions between the many locally run welfare rights organizations across the United States, leaders from various welfare organizations began to plan in the spring of 1966 for a unified march and rally.

On June 30, 1966—generally regarded as the birth of the national welfare rights movement—over 2,000 people met 35 women and children who had marched from Cleveland to the state capitol steps in Columbus, Ohio. The culminating Rally for Decent Welfare in Columbus was replicated in 25 cities across the nation, bringing together approximately 6,000 welfare activists demanding improved benefits, services, and treatment. Just over a month later, representatives from 75 welfare rights organizations met to discuss the feasibility of creating a national organization. A year later, in 1967, the NWRO was officially formed, and Johnnie Tillmon, mother of six and founder of Aid to Needy Children-Mothers Anonymous in Los Angeles, was named its first chairwoman. George Wiley, a civil rights activist and professor of chemistry at Syracuse University, became the NWRO's first executive director.

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