RICE UNIVERSITY A Grassroots War on Poverty; Community Action and Urban Politics in Houston, 1964-1976 by Wesley G. Phelps A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE Doctor of Philosophy APPROVED, 1 HESFS COMMITTEE: (ft I %fa~ Allen J. Matv/sow, Co-Chair W. G. Twyman Professor of History -At, Cxr6G*&~ Jolin B-: Boles, Co-Chair Willi^w P. Hobby Professor of History co. &JUJL tuQtuuuS) W, Caleb McDaniel Assistant Professor of History c^oiL^'n^ Chandler Davidson Research Professor of Sociology and Tsanoff Chair of Public Affairs Emeritus HOUSTON, TEXAS MAY 2010 UMI Number: 3421428 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT Dissertation Publishing UMI 3421428 Copyright 2010 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT A Grassroots War on Poverty: Community Action and Urban Politics in Houston, 1964-1976 by Wesley G. Phelps Grassroots studies of the implementation of the federal antipoverty initiatives of the 1960s and 1970s are showing that the War on Poverty did not operate in a vacuum; rather, it was profoundly shaped by a multifarious group of local actors that included public officials, local elites, grassroots antipoverty activists, program administrators, federal volunteers, civil rights activists, and poor people themselves. In Houston, grassroots activists created a local context in which to implement the War on Poverty that was much more diverse in its intellectual and political influences than the rather narrow confines of New Deal-Great Society liberalism. The moderate liberalism that motivated the architects of the federal War on Poverty certainly helped galvanize local antipoverty activists in Houston, but even more prominent in their antipoverty philosophy were Prophetic Christianity, radical civil rights activism, and the vision of participatory democracy and community organizing espoused by members of the New Left and iconoclastic figures like Saul Alinsky. This local context created a favorable environment for these activists to use the War on Poverty to advance an agenda of social change by empowering the poor and helping them engage in confrontations with the city's elite. By the same token, the diversity of ideas that fueled the implementation of the War on Poverty in Houston - and especially the small victories that grassroots activists were able to achieve in their quest to empower the city's poor - provoked a swift and powerful backlash from local public officials and conservative defenders of the status quo. In Houston, therefore, local political conditions and contests, even more than federal politics, determined how the War on Poverty was fought, and the interaction between the federal antipoverty program and a broad range of local ideas gave the War on Poverty a distinctive flavor in Houston that both created opportunities for grassroots activists to bring about social change and set limits on what those activists could accomplish. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is perhaps cliche by now to say that a scholarly work is never simply the product of an individual working alone, but I failed to understand the full meaning of this sentiment until I began writing my own dissertation. As much as we toil alone in the archives or in the confines of our solitary library carrels, historians rely on a vast network of support in order to complete our work. It therefore gives me great pleasure to acknowledge those who have provided the encouragement, resources, and academic stimulation I needed to finish this dissertation. Each member of my committee made unique contributions to my dissertation. Allen Matusow initially sparked my interest in the 1960s even before I arrived at Rice in 2005 and continually challenged me to think more critically about my subject. John Boles provided much needed encouragement when times got rough, and he is as good as it gets when it comes to academic professionalism and compassion. Caleb McDaniel brought a fresh perspective to my project, and our many conversations have helped me immensely in thinking about my dissertation more broadly. Chandler Davidson offered an interesting sociological perspective that will continue to benefit my work as a historian, and as a scholar-activist his work has helped me see the link between rigorous academic inquiry and progressive social change. I could not have completed this dissertation without the generous financial support of several institutions. An Albert J. Beveridge Grant for Research in the History of the Western Hemisphere from the American Historical Association and a Moody Research Grant from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation funded the necessary research trips as I began this project. Additionally, the Rice University History V Department generously funded research travel and provided significant institutional support for the completion of this dissertation. During each of their tenures as director of graduate studies, Ed Cox and Carl Caldwell unfailingly advocated for the graduate students and ensured we would be provided with the resources we needed to complete our work. Paula Piatt, Rachel Zepeda, Anita Smith, and Lisa Tate guided me through the bureaucratic requirements for finishing my degree and made my time at Rice thoroughly enjoyable. I would also like to thank Dean Paula Sanders and the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at Rice University for providing a generous dissertation completion fellowship. Many archivists and librarians helped me locate the materials I needed to complete my dissertation: Tab Lewis and Barbara Rust at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and Fort Worth, Texas; Tamara Jordan and Erin Norris at the Houston Public Library; Allen Fisher and Claudia Anderson at the LBJ Library; Ellen Brown at the Baylor University Library; and Lauren Meyers at the Woodson Research Center at Rice University. I would also like to thank Iris Ballew, John Wildenthal, and Earl Allen for sharing with me their memories about Houston in the 1960s. I had many opportunities to present portions of this dissertation at several academic conferences during the past three years, including the University of Virginia's Conference on the War on Poverty and Grassroots Struggles for Racial and Economic Justice, the Texas State Historical Association, the Urban History Association, Houston Area Southern Historians, the American Historical Association, and the University of South Carolina's Conference on Southern Student Activism in the 1960s and 1970s. My work has benefited from the many intriguing conversations I have had with individuals at vi these conferences, particularly Bob Bauman, Lisa Hazirjian, Rhonda Williams, Guian McKee, Tom Kiffmeyer, Marc Rodriguez, Bill Clayson, Susan Ashmore, Laurie Green, Anna Roberts, and Jenna Steward. Several individuals have read portions of my dissertation and have provided valuable comments and criticisms that I was able to incorporate into the finished product. Tom Jackson read an early version of a draft that eventually grew into several chapters and helped me conceptualize the project more coherently. Cary Wintz provided excellent comments on Chapter 3. Marty Wauck and Greg Eow gave me some feedback on the introduction. Kent Germany, Bill Bush, Annelise Orleck, Mel Piehl, and Randal Hall suggested improvements to Chapter 2, by far the most difficult section for me to write. In addition, I benefited greatly from my interactions with many Rice history professors both inside and outside the seminar room, including Lora Wildenthal, Cyrus Mody, Tom Haskell, Allison Sneider, Alex Lichtenstein, Carol Quillen, Daniel Cohen, and Richard Smith. My positive experiences as a graduate student in the Rice History Department will forever stay with me, and these were enhanced by several of my graduate school colleagues. My daily lunch conversations with Luke Harlow and Rusty Hawkins allowed me to test out new ideas on a sympathetic audience and forced me to temper some of my more tenuous claims. Several of my other graduate student colleagues never hesitated to engage in discussions with me about my project and challenged me to present my ideas more clearly and forcefully. In particular, Blake Ellis, Allison Madar, Jim Wainwright, Gale Kenny, Andy Lang, Ben Wright, and Joe Locke helped me think more critically about my project and played no small role in keeping me sane while in graduate school. vii I would also like to express my gratitude to the students who took my course titled, "American Biography: The 1960s," at Rice University during the fall 2009 semester. It was a sincere pleasure to teach such bright, inquisitive, and ambitious students, and they helped me see how my project fits more broadly into the history of the 1960s in America. When I was a student at the University of North Texas, Mike Campbell took me under his wing and shaped the kind of historian I would eventually become. Dr. Campbell encouraged me to explore more deeply the periods of history that had always fascinated me, even when they did not match up neatly with his own academic interests. Although I am certain to fall short, I strive to emulate him in so many ways ranging from his engaging teaching style to his genuine concern for the well being of his students. Thinking about Dr. Campbell, I am reminded of the day I received the phone call from Rice University telling me that I had been accepted into their graduate program in American history. I rushed to Dr. Campbell's office to tell him the good news, and with a smile on his face he replied, "Well, there you go, Wes.