'We’ve Got Black Power and That’s Gonna Go a Long Way:’ Ruth Jefferson and the National Welfare Rights Organization in Dallas.

hands reaching out
Fellow Project Academic Year
2023

 “‘We’ve Got Black Power and That’s Gonna Go a Long Way:’ Ruth Jefferson and the National Welfare Rights Organization in Dallas.” This journal article will tell the story of black welfare rights activist Ruth Jefferson of the National Welfare Rights Organization in Dallas, who successfully altered welfare practices in Texas when she filed suit against the Department of Public Welfare for violating federal law when the state lowered welfare benefits for Aid to Families with Dependent Children beneficiaries. She also organized against the growing carceral state by creating a multiracial coalition supporters who would later establish a decade-long alliance against police brutality beginning in the early 1970s.

Fellow Project Principal Investigator
Katherine Bynum

Katherine Bynum | Assistant Professor, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies