Robert C. Weaver

Robert Clifton Weaver (December 29, 1907-July 17, 1997) served as the first United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (also known as HUD) from 1966 to 1968. Weaver was born in Washington, D.C., on December 29, 1907, and received a doctorate from Harvard University in 1934. He married Ella V. Haith in 1935, and they had one child.

Early Career

Weaver became an adviser to Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes in 1933, and in 1937 he joined the Housing Authority as a special assistant. He worked with the Housing Authority until 1940, when he joined the National Defense Advisory Commission. He held a number of positions dealing with black labor during World War II. After the war, Weaver held a number of teaching assignments and also worked with the John Hay Whitney Foundation. Weaver served as New York state rent commissioner under Governor W. Averell Harriman from 1955 to 1959, making him the first black state Cabinet member in New York. He then became administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency in 1961.

HUD Secretary

In 1966, the Department of Housing and Urban Development was created, and President Lyndon B. Johnson chose Weaver to become the first secretary of the new department. In addition, Weaver also became the first black to ever hold a cabinet post.

Later years

After leaving his cabinet post, Weaver became president of Bernard M. Baruch College in 1969, and the following year he became a professor of Urban Affairs at Hunter College in New York. He retired from that post in 1978.

Weaver died July 17, 1997, at the age of 89.

Books by Robert Weaver

Weaver wrote a number of books regarding black and urban housing, including:

Negro Labor: A National Problem (1946)
The Negro Ghetto (1948)
The Urban Complex: Human Values in Urban Life (1964)
Dilemmas of Urban America (1965)

References

“Weaver, Robert Clifton.” Infoplease. http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0851710.html