| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Mary Poole. The Segregated Origins of Social Security: African Americans and the Welfare State. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2006. Pp. xi, 258. Cloth $59.95, paper $22.50.
This analysis of the racial history of the Social Security Act (SSA) investigates why the major welfare program to emerge from the New Deal effectively discriminated against African Americans. Mary Poole challenges the "solid South" interpretation of New Deal history that credits southerners in Congress with the discriminatory aspects of New Deal legislation. She posits that racial politics during the New Deal cannot be understood solely as the diametric opposition of two regionally centered parties. Even though it was drafted by people who could appropriately be described as liberals, the Act excluded the predominant occupations of blacks and other racial minorities. The conflicting agendas of Franklin D. Roosevelt's advisers, the staff of the Children's Bureau, and southern and northern Senators and Representatives all contributed to this omission.	1
Poole explores the processes through which racial discrimination was embedded into the Social Security Act. She investigates the perspectives of black and interracial pressure groups, Congress, University of Wisconsin alumni in the Committee of Economic Security, and white female social workers in the Children's Bureau. The Social Security Act reflected the beliefs of John Commons's former students, who dominated the Committee on Economic Security (CES). They believed that unemployment insurance for industrial workers could redress the balance between labor and capital and rescue the American economic system.	. . .

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