Statement to Newsweek Magazine on the Proposed Department of Urban Affairs
Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.
Date: February 26, 1962
Location: Atlanta, Ga.?
Genre: Article
Topic: Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views
Details
Five days after the United States House of Representatives voted against President Kennedy’s proposed Department of Urban Affairs, King sends the following statement to Newsweek.1 Given the controversy surrounding the appointment of Robert C. Weaver, an African American, to head the department, King warns that the black community could wield their political power to defeat politicians who “allowed the race question to sabotage” Weaver’s appointment.2 Excerpts from this statement were published a week later in an article on black perspectives on the role of race in the proposal’s failure.3
Many factors have conjoined to produce the smashing defeat of a Department of Urban Affairs that obstensibly would have placed a Negro in the government at Cabinet level. There is no gainsaying however, that the issue of race was one of the primal factors. Negroes cannot help but interpret this as a vote by Congress against the full acceptance of the Negro in American life. Negroes may use their political power at the polls this Fall to defeat Congressmen who allowed the race question to sabotage one of the most cherished dreams of the Negro community—a Negro in the Federal government at the cabinet level.
MLK Jr
1. Kennedy proposed the creation of the new Cabinet department in December 1960 to aid cities with transportation, housing, and urban renewal projects.
2. Weaver was the head of the Housing and Home Finance Agency and would have been the first African American to hold a cabinet position. A newspaper article also quoted King as saying he was “filled with disgust over the hypocrisy of the Republican Party,” and that the vote against the new department was a “vote against civil rights” (“Racism Tag Put on GOP Urban Affairs Vote,” Baltimore Afro-American, 3 February 1962). For more on Weaver, see King to Weaver, 13 February 1961, pp. 155–156 in this volume.
3. Newsweek quoted King’s last two sentences in “The Weaver Case: Negro Views,” Newsweek, 5 March 1962.
Source: MLKJP-GAMK, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers (Series I–IV), Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta, Ga.