Weaver, Robert Clifton, 1907–97, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (1966–68), b. Washington, D.C., grad. Harvard (B.S., 1929; M.A., 1931; Ph.D., 1934). An African American, he was successively adviser to the Secretary of the Interior (1933–37), special assistant with the Housing Authority (1937–40), and an administrative assistant with the National Defense Advisory Commission (1940). During World War II he held several offices concerned with mobilizing black labor. After holding various teaching assignments and working with the John Hay Whitney Foundation, Weaver was (1955–59) New York state rent commissioner. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the post of administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him head of the newly created Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); he was the first African American to hold a cabinet post. After leaving HUD he was (1969–70) president of Bernard M. Baruch College and professor of Urban Affairs at Hunter College (1970–78). His works include Negro Labor: A National Problem (1946), The Negro Ghetto (1948), The Urban Complex: Human Values in Urban Life (1964), and Dilemmas of Urban America (1965).
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