American Dream

by Jason DeParle

  48 psychologist: Interviews with Angie Jobe, Rodger Scott, and Charity Scott.

  50 “Dear Diary” to “Little tiny feet”: Angie wrote these diary entries in 1983 and 1984 and read portions of them to me.

  52 switchblade: Interviews with Angie Jobe and Rodger Scott.

  53 Angie still had welfare: While the Chicago welfare office never asked Angie or Jewell to work or go to school, they did each enroll in a trade school on their own. Jewell signed up to be a dental hygienist, and Angie took a business school course. (“I got tired of working for chicken joints.”) Neither finished, and Jewell wound up with an unpaid student loan for which bill collectors were still chasing her ten years later.Terrance got twenty years: The long sentence, imposed by a federal judge in 1997, was required under mandatory sentencing laws, since Terrance had a prior drug conviction.

  55 Hattie Mae’s children: Mary, Gwen, and Jewell all became teen welfare mothers, but Mary quickly left the rolls. She worked her way through community college, eventually married, and landed a lower-lever managerial job at a Chicago hospital. In part, she credits her aspirations to the time she spent with Hattie Mae’s father, Robert Logan, who reconnected with the family during her adolescence. (Jewell, fourteen years younger, knew him much less well.) “His side of the family was different,” Mary said. “They were about education, schools, good jobs, having things.” She said her stepmother’s family, whom Jewell likewise didn’t know, played a similar role. Of Hattie Mae’s sons, Squeaky was murdered, Terry is mostly out of touch with the family, and Greg and Robert both went to prison for violent crimes. But her second son, Willie, works with computers at DePaul University and his daughter Twanda recently graduated from Illinois State University.

  55 police catching on: Arrests occurred on July 24, 1989, Nov. 30, 1989, Feb. 20, 1990, and Dec. 6, 1990.“His Tendency to Project Blame”: Notes of probation officer from Oct. 4, 1990, filed in People vs. Gregory Reed, case #91CR-16373, Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois.

  56 a wild shooting: The murder of fourteen-year-old Kathryn Miles is from interviews with Hattie Mae Crenshaw, Angie Jobe, and Jewell Reed, as well as the record in People vs. Reed, which includes the confessions of Greg Reed, Tony Nicholas, and David Washington.

  4. THE SURVIVORS: MILWAUKEE, 1991-199558 “Where Have All the Houses”: MJS, March 21, 1999.fifteen thousand drawing checks: Author’s communication with John Pawasarat, UW-M.

  Angie’s check rose: Angie’s total monthly benefits rose 26 percent, from $709 in Chicago to $896 in Milwaukee. (AFDC rose from $373 to $617, while food stamps fell from $336 to $279.) Jewell’s total package rose 41 percent, from $415 in Chicago to $586 in Milwaukee. (AFDC went from $286 to $496, in part due to a pregnancy allowance, while stamps fell from $147 to $90.)

  59 “only thing that has kept”: John Gurda, The Making of Milwaukee (Milwaukee: Milwaukee County Historical Society, 1999), 363.“Shame of Milwaukee”: Time, April 2, 1956.

  time limits on public housing: After leaving office in 1960, Frank Zeidler produced a 1,022-page typescript, which awaits some future historian of urban change. In it, he writes that he stepped down after three terms because the “issue of my being too friendly to Negroes was again going to be raised” and tells of Alderman Milton J. McGuire calling for time limits on public housing. Frank P. Zeidler, “A Liberal in City Government: My Experiences as Mayor of Milwaukee” (typescript, Milwaukee Public Library), ch. 2, 59; ch. 4, 417.

  60 blacks composed 3 percent: Gurda, The Making of Milwaukee, 361.benefits not much different: In 1951, Wisconsin’s average monthly benefit was slightly higher than that of its neighbors—$99 versus $96 in Illinois and $91 in Minnesota. (Social Security Bulletin, April 1951, table 13.) In 1967, it was lower: $175 in Wisconsin versus $178 in Minnesota and $195 in Illinois. (Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Public Assistance Statistics, June 1967, table 6.)

  60 if Wallace left Alabama: Frank A. Aukofer, City with a Chance: A Case History of the Civil Rights Revolution (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1968), 56.rock-throwing crowds: Ibid., 111-12.

  welfare battle in 1969: benefit cut: MJ, Sept. 14, 1969; occupation of the Capitol: MJ, Sept. 30, 1969; antifornication laws, 22 cents a meal: MJ, Sept. 18, 1969; gorillas: MJ, Sept. 30, 1969.

  61 benefits more than doubled: For a family of three, they rose from $184 in 1970 to $444 in 1980. 1993 Green Book, 667.Caseloads tripled: Excluding the small number of two-parent cases, the AFDC rolls rose from 23,000 cases in 1970 to 72,000 in 1980. Peter Tropman, “Wisconsin Works” (briefing paper for Gov. Anthony Earl, circa 1986).

  among the lower forty-eight: 1993 Green Book, 666-67.

  hedge against violence: In calling for the restoration of the 1969 cuts, the Madison newspaper warned, “Unless we can figure out an economic system that will eliminate hunger in one of the world’s most affluent nations, we are going to be faced with a radicalized poor who will demand a revolution.” The Capital Times, May 12, 1971.

  54 percent higher than Illinois: 1993 Green Book, 666-67.

  “relatively small,” nearly half: Wisconsin Expenditure Commission, “Report of the Welfare Magnet Study Committee,” Dec. 1986, 5, 104.

  21 percent of Milwaukee applicants: “Prior Residence of Wisconsin Newly Opened AFDC Cases” (computer printout, prepared by Ed Mason and Chuck Brassington, Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services, June 1991), copy provided by Gerald Whitburn. Of 695 new Milwaukee cases, 144 had come from out of state within the previous three months.

  fastest-growing ghetto: Interview with Paul A. Jargowsky.

  census tracts tripled: Paul A. Jargowsky, Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997), 225.

  from 1 percent to 10 percent: Data provided to author by Jargowsky.

  62 half the black population: Peter Tropman, “Wisconsin Works,” 2. Tropman, a state welfare official, reported that 42 percent of Milwaukee’s blacks were on AFDC and 7 percent on general relief, a state and local program.lost manufacturing jobs: Julie Boatright Wilson, “Milwaukee: Industrial Metropolis on the Lake” (working paper, Wiener Center, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, April 1995), section IV, 2.

  “Go back to Illinois”: Kenosha News, March 16, 1986.

  advisers to the Democratic governor: One of them, Peter Tropman, wanted to call the new program “Wisconsin Works,” as Tommy Thompson named his a decade later.

  62 “two-bit hack,” bra size: Matt Pommer, The Capital Times, July 13, 1998.“make Wisconsin like Mississippi”: Norman Atkins, NYTM, Jan. 15, 1995.

  64 “baby killer”: Milwaukee was the site of large antiabortion protests in 1992, with more than one thousand arrests in four months. Tina Burn-side, MS, Oct. 7, 1992.

  66 Angie reported the job: Caseworkers had access to the quarterly earnings reports that employers file with state labor departments. But the records could lag as much as six months from an employee’s starting date, and officials typically made criminal referrals for fraud only after discovering more than $3,000 of welfare or food stamp overpayments. Interview with Debra Bigler, Milwaukee County Department of Human Services. In practice, caseworkers sometimes ignored small amounts of unreported earnings, since recouping welfare overpayments could be a hassle.for every $100: In the six months after she reported the job, Angie earned an average of $986 a month. But her AFDC and food stamps fell by $599, and she paid $75 in payroll taxes. That is, she effectively kept about $312, or 32 percent. That does not add in tax credits, but it doesn’t subtract work expenses, either. Author’s calculation based on 1994 monthly earnings reports.

  68 Hattie Mae’s boyfriend, Wesley: Although she and Wesley are now married, Hattie Mae said of his relationship with her kids: “If Wesley had been the type of father, man, he should have been and helped me to raise them, maybe—I’m saying maybe—some of the things that happened - could have been prevented with Greg.” Wesley told me he traced his anger to growing up black in the Delta, where a whi
te boycott cost his father his dry-cleaning business after his father called for school desegregation. “I have a lot of hate and I’ll always have a lot of hate,” he said. “Hatred will not let you forget where you came from.”

  69 battery: Jewell, who had just turned eighteen, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year of supervision by the social services department.Tony’s drug problem; errant bullet: The presentencing report in the murder case says “he was snorting heroin and was spending up to $200 per day on the drug. . . . He did state . . . that he was under the influence of heroin at the time” of the shooting. A forensics expert identified the bullet as coming from Tony Nicholas’s gun. In his closing argument, the prosecutor highlighted Tony’s confession that he joined the plot after one of the coconspirators promised to fix his car: “He wanted used car parts to kill.” People vs. Antonio Nicholas, case #91CR-16373, Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois.

  70 self-efficacy: See also Toby Herr and Suzanne L. Wagner, “Self-Efficacy as a Welfare-to-Work Goal: Emphasizing Both Psychology and Economics in Program Design” (Chicago: Project Match, Feb. 2003).As bureaucratic runarounds go: Eight weeks after Jewell signed up for the course, her caseworker noted in the file that a letter had been sent, telling Jewell the course “has been placed on hold.” Jewell said she never got the letter.

  72 “tax-free cash income alone”: While the Reagan story is sometimes called “apocryphal,” he was referring to an actual case, albeit an atypical one whose known facts he exaggerated. The case involved a Chicago woman named Linda Taylor, whom an investigator initially described as having eighty aliases and a welfare income of $150,000; she was convicted of a more modest crime—using four aliases to steal $9,800. Reagan also told a New Hampshire audience that by moving to public housing in East Harlem, “you can get an apartment with eleven-foot ceilings, with a twenty-foot balcony, a swimming pool, laundry room, and play room.” “‘Welfare Queen’ Becomes Issue in Reagan Campaign,” NYT, Feb. 15, 1976; “Chicago Woman Sentenced in Welfare Fraud Cases,” NYT, May 13, 1977.

  73 “We have been studying”: McLanahan and Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent, 1-2.

  74 commit crimes: Cynthia Harper and Sara McLanahan, “Father Absence and Youth Incarceration,” Journal of Adolescence, forthcoming.Tony’s father: His presentencing report presents Tony Nicholas as another working mother’s son disadvantaged by the absence of a father: “Deft. said his father was a heavy drug and alcohol abuser. Antonio stated he did not have much contact with his father. . . . Defts mother works as a secretary.” People vs. Nicholas, case #91CR-16373, Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois.

  fatherhood in sharecropping society: In citing the disproportionate success she enjoyed, Virginia Caples, the university dean, cited two factors: her mother’s stress on education and the presence of a stable father in the home. “My father was the centerpiece of the extended family,” she said, in contrast to her uncles who “moved hither or yon—they would be lost for two, three years. . . . I’m not speaking in disparaging tones, but my father’s brothers, you know, if it’s a skirt tail they wanted to follow it. . . . They didn’t seem to have that sense that ‘I have five kids here and I need to do something for them.’ ” In tracing the Caples family history, I found many examples of hardworking mothers; this was a rare example I encountered of stable fatherhood.

  “Often there is no man”: Powdermaker, After Freedom, 146.

  “America’s biggest problem today”: Clinton, speech to National Governors Association, Feb. 2, 1993.

  75 “fantastic campaign issue,” one observer: DeParle, NYT, Oct. 20, 1994.

  75 reason to be skeptical: For the early Thompson record, see Michael Wiseman, “State Strategies for Welfare Reform: The Wisconsin Story,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 15, no. 4 (1996): 515-46.

  76 campaign driver: Tommy G. Thompson, Power to the People: An American State at Work (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 42.Learnfare failed to boost: John Pawasarat, Lois M. Quinn, and Frank Stetzer, “Evaluation of the Impact of Wisconsin’s Learnfare Experiment on the School Attendance of Teenagers Receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children” (Employment & Training Institute, UW-M, Feb. 1992). Some Learnfare critics warn the program can actually reduce parental control, since it gives rebellious teenagers power over their mothers’ checks.

  Thompson attacked researchers: Amy Rinard, MS, March 11, 1992.

  the new analysts found: LAB, “An Evaluation of the Learnfare Program: Final Report,” April 1997, 4.

  hand over work program data: Dave Daley, MJ, Sept. 24, 1992.

  published anyway: John Pawasarat and Lois M. Quinn, “Wisconsin Welfare Employment Experiments: An Evaluation of the WEJT and CWEP Programs” (Employment & Training Institute, UW-M, Sept. 1993). While Thompson accused the evaluators of slanting the data, an internal memo later surfaced arguing that the Thompson administration had done so itself. After collecting data on the program, a state researcher, Neil Gleason, complained the numbers in the state’s published report “were taken so out of context that their meaning was reversed.” Contrary to the state’s claims of success, he wrote, the program had made families “less likely to leave AFDC” and had “increased AFDC costs.” Memo from Neil Gleason to Fred Buhr, Aug. 18, 1988, provided to author by John Pawasarat. See also, Gregory D. Stanford, MJ, Oct. 13, 1993.

  White House event: It was held on April 10, 1992.

  point man on polling: Interview with Gerald Whitburn.

  77 percentage in welfare-to-work: 1994 Green Book, 357-59.pipeline to federal aid: See Wiseman, “State Strategies for Welfare Reform,” 524-25; Mark Greenberg, “Issues in Establishing a Distribution Formula for a Cash Assistance Block Grant” (CLASP, July 1995), 5-6. As Greenberg notes, if Wisconsin saved the feds money by cutting its grants to $517, imagine how much Mississippi saved by paying $120. Curious about the other $70 million, John Pawasarat of UW-M wrote federal officials asking how the figure was calculated. The response acknowledged they knew of no objective reason for giving Wisconsin the money: “No documentation can be found describing the basis for determining the specific amounts agreed upon.” (Letter from Laurence J. Love, Acting Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, HSS, July 21, 1993.)

  77 Norquist called for repealing: John O. Norquist, “The Future of America’s Cities” (lecture, New York City, Nov. 12, 1990).

  78 Riemer responded with a plea: My account of the Democrats’ dare to abolish AFDC is drawn from interviews with John Gard, Walter Kunicki, John Norquist, David Riemer, Antonio Riley, Tommy Thompson, and Gerald Whitburn, as well as extensive notes kept by Riemer.Thompson chewed out Whitburn: Interview with Gerald Whitburn.

  “a filet mignon”: DeParle, NYT, Oct. 20, 1994.

  79 “They trade food stamps” to “survival demands”: Carol Stack, All Our Kin (1974; repr., New York: Basic Books, 1997), 32, 43, 124.

  80 “Ms. Caples had minimal”: CHIPS, Wisconsin Circuit Court Children’s Division, March 13, 2000.investigator let the matter drop: Ibid.

  Robert knocked down Felmers Chaney: Interviews with Jewell Reed, Angie Jobe, and Felmers Chaney.

  5. THE ACCIDENTAL PROGRAM: WASHINGTON, 1935-199185 AFDC: The program became Aid to Families with Dependent Children because grants were extended to adults. That happened in 1952, though the name change followed a decade later. farmed them out: Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 256-57.

  86 Mothers’ pensions, “gilt-edged widows”: Winifred Bell, Aid to Dependent Children (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 3-12.“release from the wage-earning role”: 1935 Report of the Committee on Economic Security; quoted in Jonah Martin Edelman, “The Passage of the Family Support Act of 1988 and the Politics of Welfare Reform in the United States” (PhD dissertation, Balliol College, Oxford University, 1995), 24. Edelman’s unpublished dissertation is an especially rich source of information on the history and politics of AF
DC.

  “I can see the careworn”: Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled, 254-55.

  96 percent white: Bell, ADC, 9.

  Southern members of Congress: Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (1971; repr., New York: Vintage, 1993), 115-16; Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled, 284-85. Gordon writes, “the fate of ADC was defined by the Civil War and Reconstruction,” in that it was shaped by a Southern white political elite eager to preserve cheap black labor and hostile to federal authority.

  “No other federal”: Edwin Witte, “A Wild Dream or a Practical Plan?” in Robert J. Lampman, ed., Social Security Perspectives: Essays by Edwin E. Witte (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1962), 6-7; cited in Edelman, “Family Support Act,” 21.

  87 Negro quotas: Bell, ADC, 35.Myrdal wondered, “discrimination against Negroes”: Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944; repr., New York: Pantheon, 1972), 359-60.

  Mary S. Larabee: Bell, ADC, 34-35.

  covering about 2 percent: Vincent J. Burke and Vee Burke, Nixon’s Good Deed: Welfare Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 9.

  predominately white program: From 1937 to 1940, blacks composed 14 to 17 percent of the caseload. Bell, ADC, 34.