Community Action Agencies

[4][5][6] Lyndon B. Johnson's landmark Economic Opportunity Act of 1964—drafted by former Peace Corps founding director Sargent Shriver—established Community Action Programs in Title II.

"[4][5][6][7][8] A controversial feature of the Act was the requirement for "maximum feasible participation" of the people directly affected (the poor, basically) in the decision-making about how federal funds would be spent on them, in their community.

The notion that the poor (largely minorities) should have a say in their affairs created some opposition at first, but was in keeping with America's civil rights and reform movements, and War on Poverty, in the 1960s and 1970s, and generally accepted, at least at first.

[11] One of the most dramatic episodes resulting from these clashes between CAA leaders and local governments occurred when, following cuts in funding for a summer youth CAP, black activist Charles Sizemore and thirty others barged into San Francisco Mayor John Shelley's office demanding resources and threatening that if the CAP was not funded once again, "this goddamn town's gonna blow.

[10][13] In 1967, conservative and establishment pressures brought two amendments to the Congressional funding bill for the OEO (Office of Economic Opportunity—overseer of the CAA/CAP programs): The net result was a halt to the citizen participation reform movement and a fundamental shift of power away from the nation's poor and minorities.

[4] One of the ways in which the CAAs were clearly effective in combatting poverty––and unexpectedly so––was by increasing the public's awareness of already existing welfare programs, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

[4][5][6][8][9] Nixon officials presided over CAP and CAA groups during the Relf v. Weinberger case which saw a pair of young black girls from Montgomery, Alabama surgically sterilized without their consent.

[16] The Relf case's revealed administrative attitudes of the era which suggest that forced sterilization was an acceptable tactic in Republican management of federal welfare.