The Radical Feminist Legacy of the National Welfare Rights Organization

• In Event: 1154 - Women of Color and Social Movements

Abstract

Inspired by the larger Black freedom movement which was transforming southern Jim Crow, and propelled by their own experience of exploitative jobs, poverty wages, and paternalistic, intrusive and stingy public programs, welfare activists in the 1960’s and 70’s took to the streets, welfare centers and courts alike with the aspiration that women’s lives would no longer be dictated by husbands, employers, government bureaucrats and clerks. In so doing they forged a radical feminist politics which remains under acknowledged and yet it is deeply relevant to today’s political landscape.

Existing interpretations of the movement’s objectives flattens out much of the more vibrant and poignant analyses welfare activists offered. In this paper we examine overlooked aspects of the welfare rights movement, particularly their demand for decoupling income from waged labor, and the importance of sexual autonomy. We have come to the conclusion not only that the historical record of the NWRO in incomplete, and that the robust theorization generated by this movement deserves a more central place in the cannon of radical feminist politics, but additionally, that these features provide important correctives to the short comings of many iterations of feminism that emerged in the ensuing years.

Authors

• Wilson Sherwin, CUNY Grad Center

• Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York