WEAVER, Robert Clifton

(b. 29 December 1907 in Washington, D.C.; d. 17 July 1997 in New York City), statesman, college professor, and economist who was the first African-American member of a New York State cabinet, the first African-American member of a presidential cabinet, and the first secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (1966–1968).

Weaver was the son of Mortimer Grover Weaver, a postal clerk, and Florence E. Freeman. His mother instilled in Weaver his love of learning, and he had a very strong work ethic and a notable independent streak in his personality that were manifested during his time at Dunbar High School in Washington. During his junior year he held a full-time job as an electrician; in his senior year he ran his own electrical repair service.

Weaver graduated from Dunbar High School in 1925 and entered Harvard University, where he majored in economics, graduating with a B.S. degree in 1929 and then continuing at Harvard to earn an M.S. degree in economics in 1931. From 1931 to 1932 he taught economics at the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, but he received a scholarship to continue his education at Harvard and returned there in 1932, receiving his Ph.D. in economics in 1934. By then he was already having an effect on the social policies of the U.S. federal government.

In 1933 the newly elected president Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited young, college-educated people to serve in his administration, and Weaver was among them. In 1934 he became an adviser to Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, developing special expertise in the economics of housing, redevelopment, and racial segregation. On 18 July 1935 Weaver married a college professor, Ella V. Haith. They adopted a son, who died in 1962. Although he was years away from being known to the general public, Weaver may well have been the most influential African American in Roosevelt's administration by the time the president formed the Federal Council on Negro Affairs in 1936, nicknamed the "Black Cabinet" by journalists. By the time he left his position with the Department of the Interior in 1938 to join the U.S. Housing Authority, Weaver was the man Roosevelt turned to first for advice on policies involving African Americans.

In 1940 Weaver joined the National Defense Advisory Commission; in 1942 he became chief of African-American employment affairs in the Office of Production Management; from 1942 to 1943 he focused on African-American labor issues for the War Production Board; and from 1943 to 1944 he was the director of the Negro Manpower Services for the War Manpower Commission. In 1940 Roosevelt was leaving New York City from Pennsylvania Station when his press secretary Stephen T. Early was blocked from entering the station by police officers. After Early angrily bowled over an African-American police officer to gain admittance, Roosevelt and those close to him worried about the effect the incident would have on African-American voters in an election year. As he had become accustomed, Roosevelt asked Weaver for advice, and Weaver sent a message to the president that resulted in the promotion of Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., who would become the first African-American general of the U.S. Army; the move also resulted in the appointment of William H. Hastie, the first African-American aide to the secretary of war; and the appointment of Campbell C. Johnson, the first African-American aide to the director of the Selective Service.

In 1946 Weaver served as a representative of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in the Ukraine. That same year his book Negro Labor: A National Problem was published, and as a result Weaver began to develop an influence outside government. His 1948 book The Negro Ghetto was a pioneering effort to analyze housing segregation, which Weaver believed to be at the root of all other forms of racial segregation. From 1947 to 1955 Weaver served in several academic positions, while writing numerous articles about economics.

In 1955 Weaver was appointed New York State's deputy rent commissioner, and in December 1955 New York governor W. Averell Harriman appointed him director of the State Rent Commission, making Weaver the first African American to become a member of the New York cabinet. He left the position in January 1959. In 1960 Weaver chaired the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). On 31 December 1960 President-elect John F. Kennedy announced the appointment of Weaver as director of the Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA); Weaver was officially sworn in on 11 February 1961.

In 1961 Weaver helped draft the Housing Act of 1961, which focused on creating public housing units for poor people and on revitalizing inner cities. That year Kennedy tried to create a new cabinet post and a new federal government department focusing on urban affairs, and he wanted Weaver to head the agency, but Congress refused to authorize the new department. During his years as director of the HHFA, Weaver tried to expand the federal government's role in providing housing for the poor, as well as to expand the government's influence on urban renewal projects, which he believed tended to ruin inner-city neighborhoods and to drive African Americans from their homes. In addition, he wanted the government to encourage the racial integration of suburbs. Weaver's book The Future of the American City was published in 1962; The Urban Complex: Human Values in Urban Life was published in 1964; and Dilemmas of Urban America was published in 1965. These books established Weaver as one of the foremost experts on the problems of U.S. cities.

In 1966 President Lyndon B. Johnson won congressional approval for the creation of a new federal department, Housing and Urban Development (HUD). On 13 January 1966 Johnson appointed Weaver as the secretary of HUD, making Weaver the first African American to be a member of a presidential cabinet. As secretary, Weaver sought to expand the department's powers and to have the federal government invest in housing in inner cities, winning a $2.5 billion congressional authorization for this purpose in 1966. Weaver left his cabinet post after Richard M. Nixon was elected president.

From 1969 to 1970 Weaver served as the first president of the new Bernard M. Baruch College, part of the New York University system. From 1971 to 1978 he was distinguished professor of urban affairs at Hunter College. Weaver died at the age of eighty-nine.

During his years of government service, Weaver helped open new economic opportunities for African Americans and guided the racial policies of three presidents. His books and essays helped give an authoritative foundation to efforts to improve life in America's cities, and his ideas and work helped reshape those cities during the 1960s.

Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue (1978), mentions Weaver's early career. Notable Black American Men, edited by Jessie Carney Smith (1999), offers fairly complete coverage of Weaver's career. The entry on Weaver in Current Biography Yearbook (1961) presents a detailed summary of his career to 1961. Obituaries are in the New York Times and Chicago Tribune (both 19 July 1997).

Kirk H. Beetz