Robert C. Weaver

United States economist and government official

Also known as: Robert Clifton Weaver

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Robert C. Weaver (born December 29, 1907, Washington, D.C., U.S.—died July 17, 1997, New York, New York) was a noted American economist who, as the first secretary (1966–68) of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, was the first African American appointed to a cabinet position in the U.S. government.

Weaver, the great-grandson of a slave, was educated (B.S., 1929; M.A., 1931; and Ph.D., 1934) at Harvard University. He held several positions in various agencies of the U.S. government for the next 10 years, starting as the first African American adviser on racial problems in the Department of the Interior. After World War II he served for a time in Chicago as executive director of the Mayor’s Committee on Race Relations, taught briefly at several universities, and wrote Negro Labor, a National Problem (1946) and The Negro Ghetto (1948). From 1949 to 1955 he directed the fellowship program of the John Hay Whitney Foundation, after which he became rent commissioner in New York state and, as such, a member of the governor’s cabinet. He was active in the civil rights movement and served for a year as national chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1960 Pres. John F. Kennedy appointed Weaver to head the federal Housing and Home Finance Agency. In 1966 Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson named him head of the new Department of Housing and Urban Development. Weaver held that post until December 1968, shortly before Johnson’s term ended.

In 1969 Weaver became president of Bernard Baruch College of the City University of New York, and from 1970 to 1978 he was professor of urban affairs at Hunter College. His other publications included The Urban Complex (1964) and Dilemmas of Urban America (1965).