Session 3: Social services, civil rights, and poverty

The grave economic situation of black families described by the preceding papers leads to the question of what has happened to "the quest for economic opportunity, the enduring theme of the black civil rights movement" and subject ofthe Hamilton paper, as described by Peter Eisinger, its discussant. At an evening round-table session Lester Thurow reminded conference participants that the War on Poverty was born amid civil disorders that threatened to tear American society apart. We have since learned that our society has a greater stability than we had feared, he stated. Yet the forces of racism and discrimination apparently continue to erode the condition of minorities. To what extent have these forces been contained or redirected by the civil rights, welfare rights, and legal rights movements of past years'? The papers in this session separately addressed those issues, one by gauging the influence of black civil rights organizations on social policies, the other by assessing the effect of the legal rights movement on the evolution of our welfare system.