Weaver, Robert Clifton, Dr.

(1907–97), economist; “Black Cabinet” leader; administrator and minority affairs adviser in various New Deal agencies (1933–40), including adviser to Secretary of Interior Harold L. Ickes (1933–37); special asst. to Nathan Strauss, administrator, Housing Authority (1937–40); administrative asst. to Sidney Hillman, NDAC (1940); chief of Negro Employment and Training Branch, Labor Division, OPM and WPB (1942–43); hired Mitchell as field assistant (May 1941); asst. to dir. of operations, WMC (1942); chief of Negro Manpower Service, WMC (1943–44); director of community services, ACRR (1945–48); director, Opportunity Fellowships program, John Hay Whitney Foundation (1949–55); New York State rent commissioner (1955–59); chair, NAACP National Board of Directors (1960–61); appointed administrator, HHFA (1961), highest federal administrative position then assigned to a black; appointed first secretary of HUD by President Johnson (1966)—first black in cabinet post. He assisted the NAACP in its push against segregated housing. Author of Negro Labor: A National Problem (1946), The Negro Ghetto (1948), The Urban Complex: Human Values in Urban Life (1964), Dilemmas of Urban America (1965). Born in D.C. PhD (economics), Harvard (1934).