Weaver, Robert Clifton

Impact on the world

Appointed the first Secretary of Housing and Urban Development by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966, becoming the first African American ever to serve in a presidential cabinet; his confirmation followed years of congressional resistance, including an earlier rejection of President Kennedy's plan to create the department once it became clear a Black official would lead it.

Life & background

The great-grandson of an enslaved person, Weaver was raised in segregated Washington, D.C. and earned three degrees, including a doctorate in economics, from Harvard University. He joined President Franklin Roosevelt's informal 'Black Cabinet' of 45 prominent African American policy advisers in the 1930s, drafting federal housing programs and advising on racial issues during the New Deal, and later worked under Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. When Congress resisted creating a new Department of Housing and Urban Development for President Kennedy in 1961, an obstruction widely understood at the time as resistance to Kennedy's intention to make Weaver its secretary, the department's creation stalled until President Johnson succeeded in establishing it in 1965. The Senate confirmed Weaver as its first secretary in January 1966, making him the first African American to hold a U.S. cabinet position, where he championed the 1968 Fair Housing Act prohibiting housing discrimination; he later served as president of Baruch College and as a professor of urban affairs.

Sources

1. Encyclopædia Britannica; TIME; National Constitution Center; White House Historical Association