Civil Service Spotlight: Robert C. Weaver

Robert C. Weaver circa 1966, photo courtesy of the LBJ Presidential Library Archives.

Outside the federal family, Robert C. Weaver does not have a lot of name recognition. But this DC native was one of many barrier-breaking, professional civil servants who changed the face of America during the early fight for civil rights.

The site of Robert C. Weaver’s childhood home in Northeast DC, a stop along the District’s African American Heritage Trail. The original home was replaced in 1973.

When Robert Clifton Weaver was born in 1907 in Washington, DC, public service and academic excellence were already part of his family tree. His father, Mortimer, worked for the postal service, and his mother Florence, née Freeman, was the daughter of Robert Tanner Freeman, the first African-American to earn a dental degree in the United States. After attending the M Street School, now known as Dunbar High School, Weaver followed in his grandfather’s footsteps, attending Harvard and receiving a BS, an MA, and a PhD over the course of his academic career. 

A gifted economist, policy maker, and bureaucrat, Weaver was first appointed as an aide to Harold Ickes, FDR’s choice to run the Department of the Interior, in 1933. This frequently put him in the room where critical decisions on implementing Roosevelt’s signature New Deal policies were made. Weaver was still completing his PhD in economics while simultaneously working for Ickes, so between his studies and his work he was well-versed in the economic and policy issues of the day. Weaver was subsequently appointed to the Federal Council of Negro Affairs or, as fellow council member and career civil servant Mary McLeod Bethune called it, “The Black Cabinet.” This informal and often overlooked group of high-ranking, Black civil servants are credited with laying the groundwork for nondiscrimination policies and the Civil Rights Movement that followed.

Twenty members of FDR’s “Black Cabinet,” including Robert C. Weaver and Mary McLeod Bethune, photo taken in the early 1930s.

Between 1933 and 1944, Weaver would go on to tackle a variety of prominent and influential federal assignments: addressing wage discrimination in the National Recovery Administration and the Public Works Administration, serving as aide to the Director of the US Housing Authority (a precursor to the Department of Housing and Urban Development), serving as chief of the newly created Negro Employment and Training Branch of the National Defense Advisory Commission, serving as a member of the Committee on Fair Employment Practices, and serving as chief of the Minority Groups Service in the War Manpower Commission.

Doctor Robert C. Weaver was Chief of the Minority Groups, Bureau of Placement, War Manpower Commission, until February 1944, when he went to Chicago to become codirector of the mayor's interracial committee on racial relations, established following the Detroit riots. Shown here with a secretary, Miss Mary Pipes, of the War Manpower Commission, Bureau of Placement.

These positions meant he was frequently working at the intersection of labor policy, housing policy, and equity — a specialization that would serve him well throughout his career. It also provided the lens through which he understood the issue of race in America: rooted in certain universal economic challenges, but uniquely influenced by patterns of behavior, assumptions, and history around race that dictated limited and “othering” solutions. Frequently called on as a mediator between groups, Weaver would spend his career pushing for inclusive policies that addressed everyone’s needs. He also authored several books, taught at Columbia University and Hunter College, and advised the NAACP.

Weaver and President Lyndon Johnson at the Rose Garden signing ceremony for the law that created the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1965.

A common Weaver mantra was: ''Fight hard and legally, and don't blow your top.'' Apt words that ring true for decades of civil servants. In 1961 Weaver would return to federal service as part of the Kennedy Administration, specifically as head of the Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA). The HHFA was a loose conglomeration of authorities that would eventually become the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Despite his qualifications, there was significant push-back against the idea of a cabinet-level office for housing and development issues and Weaver was considered too extreme a choice to hold it. Public opinion was slow to change, but just a few years later, Lyndon B. Johnson would go on to officially elevate HUD to a cabinet-level agency, winning support from members of Congress who had previously opposed both the agency and Weaver. Given his time as the head of the HHFA and his previous service, Weaver was uniquely qualified to lead HUD as its first secretary and, in doing so, became the first Black man to serve in any administration as a cabinet secretary. Today, HUD headquarters in DC bears his name as a testament to the impact he had on our country. Much of the federal government’s progress toward housing and labor equity has its roots in the work of Robert C. Weaver — an extraordinary civil servant.

A photo of the Robert C. Weaver Headquarters Building in Washington. Courtesy of HUD.

To learn more about Robert C. Weaver’s role in setting the groundwork for civil rights through policy, visit Prologue Magazine at the National Archives.  

To learn more about Weaver’s journey as a civil servant, you can read Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City by Wendell E. Pritchett.

For more information on members of “The Black Cabinet” and their accomplishments, check out The Black Cabinet by Jill Watts. 

For a historic look at red-lining, residential segregation, and the role that government played in creating our cities, check out The Color Of Law by Richard Rothstein.