The Achievement
On January 18, 1966, Robert Clifton Weaver was sworn in as the first Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, making him the first Black member of a U.S. presidential cabinet. President Lyndon B. Johnson had pushed Congress to create HUD as a cabinet-level department partly because he wanted to appoint Weaver to lead it. The appointment represented the highest executive-branch position ever held by a Black American at that time.
Weaver was not a symbolic choice. He was arguably the most qualified housing policy expert in the country, with three decades of experience in housing, labor, and urban affairs at the federal, state, and local levels. His appointment was the culmination of a career spent studying and fighting the racial segregation of American cities.
Early Life and Education
Weaver was born on December 29, 1907, in Washington, D.C. His family was part of the city's Black middle class. His grandfather, Robert Tanner Freeman, had been the first Black person to earn a dental degree in the United States, graduating from Harvard Dental School in 1869. Academic achievement was a family tradition, not an aspiration.
Weaver attended Dunbar High School, an elite public school for Black students in Washington that produced an extraordinary number of prominent Black professionals during the first half of the 20th century. From Dunbar, he went to Harvard University, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1929, his master's in 1931, and his PhD in economics in 1934.
His doctoral research focused on the economics of race and labor markets, a field that barely existed at the time. Weaver was interested in how racial discrimination distorted housing markets, employment patterns, and urban development. This academic work would shape his entire career in public service.
Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet"
In 1933, at age 25, Weaver joined President Franklin Roosevelt's administration as an advisor on Black economic issues. He became part of an informal group of Black advisors known as the "Black Cabinet" or the "Federal Council of Negro Affairs." Led by Mary McLeod Bethune, this group pressed the Roosevelt administration to include Black Americans in New Deal programs.
Weaver worked in several New Deal agencies, focusing on ensuring that Black workers received fair treatment in federal housing and employment programs. He saw firsthand how federal housing policies, particularly those of the Federal Housing Administration, systematically excluded Black families from mortgage lending and new suburban developments. This experience turned him into one of the country's foremost experts on housing discrimination.
In 1948, Weaver published "The Negro Ghetto," a landmark study of residential segregation in American cities. The book documented how a combination of government policies, private lending practices, and restrictive covenants created and maintained racially segregated neighborhoods. It was one of the first serious academic works to explain how housing segregation was not a natural market outcome but a deliberate construction.
State and Local Service
After leaving the federal government in the early 1940s, Weaver held a series of positions in housing and urban affairs. He served as executive director of the Mayor's Committee on Race Relations in Chicago. He worked as director of the John Hay Whitney Foundation's Opportunity Fellowships program. He became the New York State Rent Administrator under Governor Averell Harriman in the 1950s.
In 1960, he became chairman of the board of the NAACP, the country's oldest and most prominent civil rights organization. He held this position while simultaneously being considered for federal appointments by the incoming Kennedy administration.
Leading HUD
When Kennedy took office in 1961, he appointed Weaver to lead the Housing and Home Finance Agency, the precursor to HUD. Weaver ran the agency for five years, building a track record that made his appointment as HUD Secretary a natural progression when the department was finally created.
As HUD Secretary, Weaver oversaw the implementation of fair housing initiatives and urban renewal programs. He worked to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in federally funded programs. He also managed the early stages of the Model Cities program, which directed federal resources to blighted urban neighborhoods.
Weaver's tenure at HUD was complicated by the same urban crises he had spent his career studying. The mid-to-late 1960s saw waves of urban unrest in cities across the country, driven by the very conditions of segregation, poverty, and disinvestment that Weaver had documented in his scholarly work. The gap between what he knew needed to happen and what was politically possible was a source of frustration throughout his time in the cabinet.
He resigned from HUD in December 1968 when President Johnson left office. He went on to become president of Baruch College in New York City, then a professor of urban affairs at Hunter College, where he taught until his retirement.
The Significance
Weaver's appointment to the cabinet was more than a racial milestone. It represented the arrival of housing policy as a national priority and the recognition that the federal government bore responsibility for the condition of American cities. The fact that the country's leading expert on housing discrimination happened to be a Black man was not a coincidence. The experience of being Black in America had given Weaver an understanding of urban inequality that no white housing official could match.
After Weaver, Black cabinet members became increasingly common, though not routine. Patricia Roberts Harris became the second Black cabinet member (and first Black woman) when she was appointed HUD Secretary by President Carter in 1977. By the 21st century, every president appointed at least one Black cabinet member.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was the first Black cabinet member?
Robert C. Weaver became the first Black cabinet member on January 18, 1966, when he was sworn in as the first Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Lyndon B. Johnson.
What department did Robert Weaver lead?
Weaver led the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which was a newly created cabinet-level agency established in 1965 to address housing policy and urban issues.
Did Robert Weaver have a PhD?
Yes. Robert Weaver earned a PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1934, making him one of the first Black Americans to earn a doctorate from Harvard in that field.