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Not Your Father’s Dreams
Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer
This “victory for color-blindness” was of a “historic nature,” “an indication of how far we’ve come” on the issue of race. A prominent politician declared, “It matters not the color of a man’s skin. What does matter is the commitment to the cause of his country and his capacity to rise to the challenge.” Quotations plucked from the adulation surrounding Barack Obama’s election? In fact, the prominent politician was a former president: Lyndon Baines Johnson speaking in 1966 upon the appointment of Robert Clifton Weaver as the first secretary of the newly created Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the first African American elected to a cabinet position.
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