Free to Move? the Law and Politics of Internal Migration in Twentieth-Century America

Free to Move? The Law and Politics of Internal Migration in Twentieth-Century America The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Minoff, Elisa Martia Alvarez. 2013. Free to Move? The Law and Politics of Internal Migration in Twentieth-Century America. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:11095954 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Free to Move? The Law and Politics of Internal Migration in Twentieth-Century America A dissertation presented by Elisa Martia Alvarez Minoff to The Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2013 © 2013 Elisa Martia Alvarez Minoff All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Lizabeth Cohen Elisa Martia Alvarez Minoff Free to Move? The Law and Politics of Internal Migration in Twentieth-Century America Abstract The history of the United States in the mid-twentieth century is, in significant measure, a history of internal migration. Between 1930 and 1970, as national quota laws kept the nation’s foreign-born population at record low levels, the attention of journalists, lawmakers, jurists, social workers, civil rights activists, and the broader public turned to internal migration. The rapid pace of urbanization and the industrialization of agriculture made internal migration a pressing national question and a flashpoint in American politics. Migration was implicated in many of the seminal events of the era: from the Dust Bowl Migration to the Second Great Migration, the New Deal to the Great Society, the Bonus Army to the Watts Riots. Historians have largely overlooked this period of intense interest in internal migration and they have entirely neglected its significance. This dissertation offers the first historical appraisal of the law and politics of internal migration in the mid-twentieth century. Drawing on a broad source base—including federal and state court casefiles, the records of Congress and presidential administrations, personal and organizational papers, and contemporary published accounts—it explains how the debates over migration took shape and what their long-term effects were for policy and polity. During this period, a community of migrant advocates recommended fundamental reforms to social welfare and labor market policies. These social workers, legislators, public welfare officials, social scientists, and lawyers often faced indifference and resistance from lawmakers and the general public. They were not able to accomplish all that they hoped. But they convinced Congress and the Supreme Court to reform iii central pillars of the welfare state and redefine citizenship. At the beginning of the period, migrants, like all Americans, were defined by law and custom as local citizens, and local laws determined whether they could receive benefits or even move from one place to the next. By the end of the period, migrant advocates had convinced policymakers that the federal government bore some responsibility for migrants and that migrants, as national citizens, were entitled to the same rights and privileges as long-time residents. The contemporary welfare state and conception of national citizenship emerged out of these debates over internal migration. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 Part I Migration in the Great Depression 17 Chapter 1 Discovering Migration in the Great Depression 20 Chapter 2 Forging a New Deal Philosophy on Migration 66 Chapter 3 Challenging the New Deal Philosophy on Migration 115 Chapter 4 Legislating a National Migration Policy 138 Chapter 5 Litigating a National Migration Policy 178 Interregnum: The War Years 234 Part II Migration in The Affluent Society 248 Chapter 6 Rediscovering Migration in the Affluent Society: Migrant Farmworkers 251 Chapter 7 Rediscovering Migration in the Affluent Society: Urban Migrants 271 Chapter 8 An Initial Push for Federal Legislation 309 Chapter 9 The War on Poverty Takes on Migration 354 Chapter 10 Debating a National Migration Policy 392 Chapter 11 The Migration Policy We Got 437 Epilogue 495 Bibliography 506 v For Minnie Harrell vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Minnie Harrell was an American migrant. In 1966, she left her home in Suffolk County, New York to move to Washington, D.C. She had recently separated from her husband and been diagnosed with cancer. Her sister and brothers lived in Washington, and she wanted her three daughters to have their support as she underwent radiation treatment. Harrell was among the millions of Americans who left home to improve their circumstances in the twentieth century. Like many, her transition was not easy. Harrell’s struggles after relocating attracted the attention of migrant advocates—social workers and lawyers who helped migrants access the benefits and services they needed to establish themselves in unfamiliar environments. She worked with these advocates to ensure that future migrants would not experience the same difficulties she had. This dissertation is dedicated to Minnie Harrell and other Americans who picked up and moved and then faced problems along the way. It is about their advocates, who brought their stories to public attention and worked to change policy. Many people have helped me tell this story. Early conversations with lawyers, researchers, and activists pointed me to important events and uncatalogued sources. Alan Houseman, Norman Dorsen, Henry Freedman, Rob Williams, Lee Reno, Susan Sechler, Mickey Kantor, Evelyn Ganzglass, Neil Ridley and Moises Lopez each took time out of their busy schedules to answer my questions and talk about their own experiences. Dee Filichia at California Rural Legal Assistance, Henry Freedmen at the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, and Alan Houseman and Elizabeth Lower-Basch at the Center for Law and Social Policy dug deep into their files to show me the memos and reports that are not yet in any archive. Mark Greenberg and Jodie Levin-Epstein have spent hours discussing more recent vii history with me and providing much-needed intellectual and emotional support here in Washington. Conversations with participants and observers helped me sketch the outlines of this project, but the dissertation rests on sources hidden away in archives. I could never have found them without the help of dedicated staff who believe that the knowledge they protect should be shared. Dave Klaassen and Linnea Andersen at the Social Welfare History Archives wracked their brains to think of relevant sources and spent weeks pulling files for me. Allen Fisher at the LBJ Library pointed me toward the work of commissions that proved crucial to the story. Archivists at the California Historical Society, the Ford Foundation, the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Nixon Library, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives in Washington and College Park have gone out of their way to find material for me, at a time when staffing and budgets were tight and providing such personalized assistance was difficult. Generous grants from the University of Minnesota, the American Historical Association, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Project on Justice and Welfare and Economics, and the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University made it possible to travel to these archives and others, and write up what I found. In Cambridge, a supportive community of scholars and friends nurtured this project. I first happened upon the subject as a second-year graduate student researching a paper for Lizabeth Cohen’s Twentieth-Century United States seminar. Liz has since taken me on as a student and provided the tough-minded encouragement I needed to see this project through to completion. Since reading A Consumer’s Republic as a bright-eyed undergraduate, I Liz has been a model for me of how to be an engaged scholar. She believes that history should be accessible as well as rigorous, and she has fostered a community of twentieth-century Americanists at viii Harvard who share that vision. The conversations with professors and graduate students in her Twentieth Century Dissertation Group have given me faith that academics can be relevant. Two participants in the group deserve special thanks. Brian Goldstein and Sam Rosenfeld, like me, arrived in Cambridge in September 2007 after working in Washington. They have become close friends as well as colleagues, and I could not ask for better critics of my work, or cheerleaders of my progress. At Harvard many very busy people have spent hours batting around ideas and responding to drafts of this project. I especially want to thank Jim Kloppenberg, who introduced me to legal history and enthusiastically supported this project from the beginning; Lisa McGirr, who asked incisive questions and helped me make new connections; and Rachel St. John, who pointed me to the relevant secondary literature and told me to watch Harvest of Shame. Willy Forbath, whether in Cambridge, Austin, or somewhere in between, has always been willing to meet over coffee to discuss my work. Many of the ideas here originated in those conversations. I entered graduate school thinking that I would study the history of migration in central Europe. I owe thanks to David Blackbourn, who did not blink when I explained my shift in focus, and to the History Department, for making the switch simple and unbureaucratic. When I found the isolation of research and writing most difficult, my family stood by me, cheering me on. My parents, Karen Alvarez and Iles Minoff, know what it is like to write a dissertation and have helped me put minor stumbling blocks in perspective. My Athai and Uncle, Thangam and V.P. Nagarajan, encouraged me from afar and sent packages of homemade food that sustained me as I finished writing.

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