Freedom Budget for all Americans and Economic Equality

Enrico BELTRAMINI

Abstract


Abstract. The Freedom Budget for All Americans, written under the supervision of Bayard Rustin and released in 1966 by the A. Philip Randolph Institute, was a well developed policy program to secure full economic citizenship for all Americans thanks to an unprecedented government investment. The program challenged the classic definition of civil rights and linked increased government spending to economic justice.  It never earned traction and remained at the margins of historical memory by the end of the Johnson Presidency. The recent literature on the Freedom Budget focuses on its ideological milieu and political implications and identifies the strategic errors in coalition building as the main cause of the Freedom Budget defeat. This paper concentrates on a specific element of the plan, the notion of economic equality, and states that the disagreement between radicals and liberals on such a notion ultimately caused the undoing of the coalition.

Keywords. Freedom Budget, Philip Randolph, Johnson Administration, economic equality.

JEL. B29, B31, B59.


Keywords


Freedom budget, Philip Randolph; Johnson administration; Economic equality.

Full Text:


References


Abram, M. (xxxx) Oral History Interview II, 5/3/84, by Michael L. Gillette, Lyndon B Johnson Library, Austin.

Abram, M. (xxxx), Oral History Interview I, 3/20/84, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, Lyndon B. Johnson Library.

Anderson, J.E., & Hazleton, J. (1986). Managing Macroeconomic Policy: The Johnson Presidency Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Chappell, D.L. (2008). Waking from the Dream, presented at the Historical Society Annual Meeting, June 5-8, Baltimore, Maryland.

Chappell, D.L. (2014). Waking from the Dream: the Battle over Martin Luther King's Legacy, New York: Random House.

Carson, C. (1991). The Eyes on the Prize: Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle, 1954-1990 , New York: Penguin Books.

City Commission on Human Rights of New York, (1963). Policy statement on the state of the negro today, Oct. 23, 1963, box 4, Haughton Papers; Draft: The Question of Morality, reel 24, CORE.

Dallek, R. (1998). Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973, New York: Oxford University Press.

D'Emilio, J. (2003). Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (New York: Free Press.

Goodwin, D.K. (1976). Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: St Martin’s Griffin, 1991 (1st edition 1976)).

Hamilton, D., & Hamilton, C.V. (1997). Dual Agenda: Race and Social Welfare Policies of Civil Rights Organizations, New York: Columbia University Press.

Jackson, T.F. (2007). From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Johnson, L.B. (1971). The Vintage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

King, Jr., M.L. (1967a). Foreword, in A “Freedom Budget” for all Americans, A Summary, ed. A. Philip Randolph Institute, New York: A. Philip Randolph Institute.

King, Jr., M.L. (1967b). Foreword. From: A Freedom Budget For All Americans. New York: A Philip Randolph Institute, January. (PDS) p.1. (Reprint of 10/26/66 statement.) Roy Wilkins Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C Box 66. 670100-000.

King, Jr., M.L. (1966a). Speech to the SCLC staff, Frogmore, S.C., November 14, p.19. SCLC papers, box 19, Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Social Change, Atlanta.

King, Jr., M.L. (1966b). Statement on Resolutions Passed at Annual Southern Christian Leadership Conference Board Meeting.” 4/14/66. Miami, FL. 3 pp. Martin Luther King Center: box 118. 660414-001.

Kotz, N. (2005). Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws That Changed America, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Le Blanc, P., & Yates, M.D. (2013). A Freedom Budget for All Americans: Recapturing the Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in the Struggle for Economic Justice Today, New York: Monthly Review Press.

Le Blanc, P. (2013). Freedom budget: The promise of the civil rights movement for economic justice, Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society, 16(3), 43–58. doi. 10.1111/wusa.12022

Letter Keyserling & Rustin, (1966) Bayard Rustin Papers, 1942-1987, February 9, Box 20, The Library of Congress.

Letter to the Editors of The Harvard Crimson, (1967). November 17, 1967, [Retrieved from]. Accessed June 30, 2014.

MacLean, N. (2006). Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Work Place, New York and Cambridge, MA.: Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard University Press.

Michelmore, M.C. (2012). Tax and Spend. The Welfare State, Tax Politics, and the Limits of American Liberalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

National Urban League, (xxxx). A Statement … Urging a Crash Program of Special Effort to Close the Gap between the Conditions of Negro and White Citizens, Series 3, Box 56, NUL.

Patterson, J.T. (1996). Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974, New York: Oxford University Press.

Randolph, A.P. Institute, (1959). The Civil Rights Revolution and Labor, address delivered before the NAACP convention, July 15.

Planning Conference, (1965). A. Phillip Randolph, Address, November 17, p.9 (microfilm) Civil Rights During The Johnson Administration, 1963-1969 Part IV: Records of the White House Conference on Civil Rights, 1965-1966, A Collection of The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin.

Randolph, A.P. Institute, (1966). A “Freedom Budget” for All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-1975, to Achieve Freedom from Want, New York: A. Philip Randolph Institute, 1966.

Rustin, B. (1966). From protest to politics: The future of the civil rights movement, Commentary, 39(2), 25-31.

Rustin, B. (1971). The Influence of the Left and Right in the Civil Rights Movement,” Paper Prepared for the Negro Leadership Conference, January 30-31. Reprinted in Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin. p.130. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.

Memorandum to Lee White, (1965). Assistant to President Johnson. From Bayard Rustin. October 7. A. Philip Randolph Papers, 1909-1979, The Library of Congress.

Silberman, C.E. (1964). Crisis in Black and White, New York: Random House, 1964.

Stone, I.F. (2006). The March on Washington, in The Best of I. F. Stone, K. Weber (Ed), (pp.189-190), Washington, DC: Public Affairs.

Young, W. (1964). To Be Equal , New York: McGraw-Hill.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1453/jest.v4i1.1213

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Journal of Economic and Social Thought - J. Econ. Soc. Thoug. - JEST - www.kspjournals.org

ISSN: 2149-0422

Editor: [email protected]   Secretarial: [email protected]   Istanbul - Turkey.

Copyright © KSP Library