1. Helfgot, Joseph H., Professional Reforming: Mobilization for Youth and the Failure of Social Science (Lexington, Mass., 1981), 29–31Google Scholar; Knapp, Daniel and Polk, Kenneth, Scouting the War on Poverty: Social Reform Politics in the Kennedy Administration (Lexington, Mass., 1971), 4–5Google Scholar; Marris, Peter and Rein, Martin, Dilemmas of Social Reform: Poverty and Community Action in the United States, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1982), 14–25Google Scholar; Laub, John H., Criminology in the Making: An Oral History (Boston, 1983), 212.Google Scholar

2. Helfgot, Professional Reforming, 16–18; Rolander, Judith Ann, Professionalism and Social Change: From the Settlement House Movement to Neighborhood Centers, 1886 to the Present (New York, 1987), 167.Google Scholar

3. Moynihan, Daniel P., Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty (New York, 1969).Google Scholar Helfgot, Professional Reforming; Marris and Rein, Dilemmas of Social Reform; Horwitt, Sanford D., Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky—His Life and Legacy (New York, 1989).Google Scholar Conference Proceedings, “Poverty and Public Policy. The 1973 Group Discussion of the Kennedy Administration Urban Poverty Program and Policies,” vol. 1, John F. Kennedy Library. Ohlin, 61–61a.

Lloyd Ohlin, the first head of the Office of Juvenile Delinquency of the President's Committee recalled that he and James McCarthy, the action director of Mobilization for Youth, met with Alinsky in Chicago for an eight-hour conversation.

4. This article provides the early historical background of a larger study of the use of social science experts and community participation in precursors to the War on Poverty. The goal of that project is to explore the potential and limitations of the use of social science experts in the promotion of resident participation in community reform initiatives.

5. For an example of historical research using his approach, see Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change, chap. 7, “Settlement Houses Lose Influence: The Sociological Attack,” 139–57. It is also important to note how, despite their periodic conflicts in Chicago, these different categories of social experts shared common roots in the “Chicago School” of sociology.

6. Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change. Trolander treats the conflict between social science experts and settlement house workers as central to the evolution of antipoverty strategies and to the use of professionals in their planning and execution. This approach is consistent with what Alford, Robert R. and Friedland, Roger, in Powers of Theory: Capitalism, the State, and Democracy (Cambridge, 1985), refer to as “the managerial perspective.” In contrast to the pluralist view of the power structure, the managerial or competingelite perspective stresses the importance of power and conflict in public-policy formation and implementation. It does not assume this process to be either objective or rational. Instead, it is seen as being dominated by various competing groups of elites and the important organizations they control.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Conference Proceedings, “Poverty and Public Policy,” vol. 2, John F. Kennedy Library, 407. The term “social experts” is used by Francis Fox Piven to refer to social scientists. Here it refers to social scientists, social service providers, professional community organizers, and others who specialize in social issues.

8. Perrett, Geoffrey, Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph: The American People, 1939–1945 (New York, 1973).Google Scholar

9. Ehrenreich, John H., The Altruistic Imagination: A History of Social Work and Social Policy in the United States (Ithaca, N.Y., 1985), 122.Google Scholar

10. Bulmer, Martin, The Chicago School of Sociology: Institutionalization, Diversity, and the Rise of Sociology Research (Chicago, 1984);Google Scholar Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change.

11. Bulmer, The Chicago School of Sociology. In addition, the largely male University of Chicago sociologists and the mostly female social workers were still experiencing the “chill” associated with the polarization of these professions into separate departments and schools. Faris, Robert E. L., Chicago Sociology: 1920–1932 (San Francisco, 1967), 13.Google Scholar See also Rosenberg's, RosalindBeyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism (New Haven, 1982), 50.Google Scholar

12. Snodgrass, Jon, “The American Criminological Tradition: Portraits of the Men and Ideology in a Discipline” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1972).Google Scholar

13. Sorrentino, Anthony, “The Chicago Area Project After 25 Years,” Federal Probation (June 1959): 40–45.Google Scholar

14. Taylor to Oscar G. Mayer, 11 February 1939, Box 27, Folder 5, Clifford R. Shaw Papers, Chicago Area Project Records, Chicago Historical Society (hereafter Clifford Shaw Papers).

15. Ibid., 1, 5.

16. Ibid., 1.

17. Ibid.

18. Scholars of the War on Poverty and its forerunners have suggested that the emergence of the professionalization of reform, which eventually entailed a shift from a traditional scientific to a more activist applied model of social science expertise, was a key factor in making these initiatives possible. Knapp and Polk, Scouting the War on Poverty, trace the beginning of the professional reform movement back to the New Deal. They explain the movement from the greater emphasis on scientific expertise in the 1930s to that of democratic participation characteristic of the 1960s as the result of an intentional “constituency shift” of the federal government toward the urban poor. As compared to the more traditional model of scientific expertise, the professional-reformer approach was more likely to advocate activist social science as a way of promoting greater indigenous resident participation in community programs (5).

19. Taylor to Mayer, 11 February 1934, Clifford Shaw Papers, 1.

20. Ibid., 3.

21. Ibid., 6–7.

22. Hasseltine Byrd Taylor, “The Chicago Area Project As Seen By a Social Worker,” Box 27, Folder 4, Clifford Shaw Papers. As a result, the letter provided less information as to the specific incidents that sparked the controversy. In its sanitized version, the new document appeared to be a reasonably objective social work critique of a new social reform initiative.

23. Hasseltine Report, Anthony Sorrentino, Box 27, Folder 4, Clifford Shaw Papers, 1.

24. Ibid., 1.

25. Ibid., 1–2.

26. Ibid., 2–3.

27. Ibid., 4. For Sorrentino's account of this controversy, see Sorrentino, Anthony, Organising Against Crime (New York, 1977), 89–90. Sorrentino discusses meetings where he says Taylor attempted to organize other social workers against the CAP.Google Scholar

28. McCallum, Malcolm to Montgomery, A. G., 16 March 1939, Box 27, Folder 5, Clifford Shaw Papers, 5.Google Scholar

29. Jacobs, Jesse A. to Sudler, Carroll H., Jr., 3 April 1939, Box 27, Folder 5, Clifford Shaw Papers. In his summation of the impact of her attack, Jesse Jacobs wrote an apparent supporter that it “seems to have done the Area Project a great deal of good. In fact, it turned out to be the best sort of publicity.”Google Scholar

30. Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel, 53–54.

31. Snodgrass, Jon, “Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay: Chicago Criminologists,” The British Journal of Criminology 16 (January 1976): 16. According to Snodgrass, as early as 1935 Shaw concluded that the CAP did not adequately address the problems of the poor. Snodgrass states that because of its close ties to industry (e.g., its board composition and funding sources), “the CAP was cosmetic rather than surgical; the approach was almost trivial in the face of the realities of Chicago politics and economics.” (For responses to Snodgrass's assertion, see the Sorrentino and Puntil interviews in the appendix to Laub's Criminology in the Making.) While the CAP was able to go further in its focus on the immediate environment than the approach of traditional social work, neither was able to address the serious social and economic dislocations cities faced as a result of rapid industrialization.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32. See Finks, David P., The Radical Vision of Saul Alinsky (New York, 1984), 20.Google Scholar

33. Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel, 68.

34. Ibid., 102, and Finks, The Radical Vision of Saul Alinsky, 23.

35. Glueck, Sheldon to Shaw, Clifford, 23 July 1943, Box 15, Folder 14, Clifford Shaw Papers.Google Scholar

36. Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel, 68.

37. , Shaw to , Glueck, 6 August 1942, Box 15, Folder 14, Clifford Shaw Papers.Google Scholar

38. In Professionalism and Social Change, Trolander (29) states that settlement house workers were attacked for being paternalistic and nondemocratic outsiders whose primary function was social control.

39. Ibid., 139–57.

40. Byron, William F. to Wirth, Louis, 18 February 1942, Box 241, Folder 7, Welfare Council of Metropolitan Chicago Records, Chicago Historical Society (hereafter Welfare Council Records).Google Scholar

41. In Let Them Call Me Rebel, Horwitt (135) also notes that the source of social workers’ concern was the same as that of the earlier Taylor attack on the CAP—a feeling that social work professionals were being shut out of solutions to the problems of lower-class communities in the nation's industrialized cities.

42. , Byron to , Alinsky, 25 January 1942, Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records.Google Scholar

43. , Byron to , Wirth, 18 February 1942, Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records. “Proposal for the Study of the Significance of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council,” Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records.Google Scholar

44. “Proposal for the Study of the Significance of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council,” Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records.

45. Arthur Hillman Vita, Arthur Hillman Papers, Box 1, Vita, Articles, The University of Minnesota Social Welfare History Archives. Hillman completed his doctoral work in sociology and social service administration at the University of Chicago in 1940.

46. Arthur Hillman, “Principles of Community Organization” (tentative statement for consideration by a committee of the Council of Social Agencies of Chicago), Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records.

47. “Preliminary Report for Discussion by Executive Committee. General Principles of Community Organization and a Statement on the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. By a Committee of the Division on Education—Recreation. Council of Social Agencies of Chicago,” Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records.

Hillman noted, however, that community organization could go beyond traditional social work practice, as was the case in the field of social action, where the social worker emphasized his or her role as citizen. In the final version of this document, the specific reference to the cooperative activity of councils of social agencies and Community Chests was deleted.

48. Ibid., 7.

49. “Preliminary Report for Discussion by Executive Committee,” Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records, 7. Reitzes, Donald C. and Reitzes, Dietrich C. argue in The Alinsky Legacy: Alive and Kicking (Greenwich, Conn., 1987) that Alinsky was heavily influenced in his thinking about community organizing by University of Chicago sociologist Robert Park's observation that communities are not self-sufficient and autonomous entities that can be understood independent of broader societal changes occurring outside their borders.Google Scholar

50. Alinsky to Byron, 12 April 1943, Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records, 4.

51. Ibid., 3.

52. Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change.

53. Alinsky to Byron, 12 April 1943, Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records, 2. The committee saw BYNC's claim to uniqueness as being based on an indigenous neighborhood movement, as well as on its comprehensiveness and its recognition of the role of external national forces. In contrast, traditional social agencies focused on a single problem and treated their target areas as isolated and self-contained communities. Minutes of Meeting of the Committee on the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, 6 April 1942, Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records. Alinsky also identified the BYNC's inclusion of all organizations within a community, its emphasis on the rights of community residents, its partisan nature, and its use of conflict tactics as characteristics that distinguished it from the traditional social work approach to community organization. Minutes of Meeting of the Committee to Study the Significance of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, 29 April 1942, Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records. See also Alinsky's, Saul “Community Analysis and Organization,” American Journal of Sociology 46 (1941): 41–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54. Minutes of Meeting of the Committee to Study the Significance of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, 29 April 1942, Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records, 4.

55. “Preliminary Report for Discussion by Executive Committee,” Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records.

56. Hillman, “Principles of Community Organization,” Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records.

57. Ibid., 2.

58. On the one hand, the committee questioned whether Alinsky's role in the BYNC was, to use rhetoric he used while employed in the CAP, “superimposed” as merely an extension of traditional social work practice. On the other hand, the committee charged that Alinsky and the BYNC executive director, Joseph B. Meegan, were not indigenous leaders; Alinsky because he was not a “Back of the Yards” resident and Meegan because of the resources available to him as head of an area recreation center. “Preliminary Report for Discussion by Executive Committee,” Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records, 7–8.

59. “Proposal for the Study of the Significance of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council,” Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records.

60. , Alinsky to , Byron, 12 April 1943, Box 251, Folder 7, Welfare Council Records.Google Scholar

61. See McMillen, Wayne, “The Content of Professional Courses in Community Organizations,” The Social Service Review 9 (1935): 68–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar