Community Action
"Poverty is the fundamental deficiency that intensifies all other weaknesses in our society. Poverty perpetuates poor education, inadequate health standards, and disgraceful housing. Poverty makes discrimination easier because its victims are usually isolated from a hostile society. Poverty cripples the spirit. The poor become hopeless or angry; the affluent become uneasy and defensive. Neither group understands or communicates one with the other." Harrison A. Williams, Jr., Crossroads U.S.A., 1968.
A major emphasis of Great Society programs was the so-called War on Poverty. A principal vehicle for anti-poverty initiatives was the community action agency. Such an agency, founded on the principle of self-help, was locally formed and operated, using federal funds in part to implement programs identified by community members as appropriate for their circumstances, including education and training, legal services, health care, and economic development. Included here are examples, taken from Williams's state of New Jersey, of the agencies founded in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Cover of An Outline of Poverty in Middlesex County, N.J., by Georgina M. Smith, publication of the Middlesex County Economic Opportunities Corporation, July 1967.
The report reminded its readers that a dry statistic—8% of the county’s population was poor—was actually “people,” 44,000 of them without “enough money for adequate food, shelter, clothing or education.” The report also confronted misperceptions of the racial dimensions of poverty by emphasizing that about 90% of the county’s poor were white, not African-American or Latino.
Center pages from Annual Report 1971, Community Action - Plainfield, Inc.
Programs included daycare and various forms of education and training programs, including on-the-job, Head Start, youth development, and others. (Report designed by James J. Graves. Photos by Youth Development Program.)
BPUM Impact Corporation in Brief, ca. 1980.
Economic development efforts by Black Peoples Unity Movement-Economic Development Corporation (BPUM-EDC) of Camden.