Weaver, Robert C. (Robert Clifton), 1907-1997

Robert Clifton Weaver (December 29, 1907 – July 17, 1997) was an American economist, academic, and political administrator who served as the first United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from 1966 to 1968, when the department was newly established by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Weaver was the first African American to be appointed to a US cabinet-level position.

Born in Washington, D.C., Weaver attended the M Street High School, now known as the Dunbar High School, there before going on to Harvard University, where he earned B.S., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees. In 1934, Weaver was appointed as an aide to United States Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. In 1938, he became special assistant to the US Housing Authority. In 1942, he became administrative assistant to the National Defense Advisory Commission, the War Manpower Commission (1942), and director of Negro Manpower Service. With a reputation for knowledge about housing issues, in 1934 the young Weaver was invited to join President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Black Cabinet. Weaver drafted the U.S Housing Program under Roosevelt, which was established in 1937. In 1944, Weaver became director of the Commission on Race Relations in the Office of the Mayor of Chicago. In 1945, he became director of community services for the Chicago-based American Council on Race Relations through 1948. In 1949, Weaver become director of fellowship opportunities for the John Hay Whitney Foundation. In 1955, Weaver the first Black State Cabinet member in New York when he became New York State Rent Commissioner under Governor W. Averell Harriman. In 1960, he became vice chairman of the New York City Housing and Redevelopment Board.

In 1961, Weaver became administrator of the United States Housing and Home Financing Agency (HHFA). After Congress approved the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), a new cabinet department, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Weaver to be its secretary. HUD absorbed HHFA, so many of Weaver's responsibilities carried over from his former post. After assuming the responsibilities as HUD secretary, Weaver promoted the Metropolitan Development Act in November of 1966 and the Demonstration Cities Program. Weaver was an opponent to suggestions opposing the promotion of homeownership among the poor, believing that the poor could not meet the demands of paying a mortgage or keeping up a home; instead, he supported expanding funding for existing housing programs. Still, Weaver was a proponent of the Johnson administration's open housing bill, believing it would help the nation's policy against discrimination. He ran into problems in 1966 when Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff and Senator Robert F. Kennedy criticized his federal urban renewal efforts.

Despite the success of individual programs, Weaver's initiatives had failed to stop the growth of urban decay. Weaver resigned his post on January 1, 1969. Later that year, he became president of Bernard Baruch College, but he left that post in 1971 to become professor of urban affairs at Hunter College. Robert Weaver died in New York City on July 17, 1997.