23 feb 1968 & etta horn

#OTD Friday 23 February 1968 Etta Horn, chair of the Citywide Welfare Alliance (CWA), wrote a letter to women-led organizations requesting their presence at an upcoming meeting to strategize how to overturn the newly passed amendments to the Social Security Act.

Horn, a parent and activist who received welfare, and other CWA members denounced the new amendments for 1) mandating work and job-training; 2) not providing adequate funds for day care; 3) increasing state power to remove children from their homes; and 4) regulating their personal lives.

CWA sought support to "reverse these totalitarian and--probably unconstitutional--amendments"  from "the League of Women Voters, the American Association of University Women, the National Association of Social Workers, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, United Church Women, the National Council of Negro Women, the National Council of Catholic Women, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Society of Friends, the Urban League and the National Council of Christians and Jews." 

At the meeting, CWA members shared that their caseworkers threatened to take away their benefits if they continued to be activists. 

Please comment below. Did you know Etta Horn? Do you have photos of Etta Horn and other members of the CWA? Were you a member of the Citywide Welfare Alliance? Were you a member of one of the other organizations? You may comment privately here.

Photo source: Courtesy Anacostia Community Museum via Smithsonian Collections Search Center
Drawing by Phillip Ratner
Anne M. Valk, Radical Sisters: Second-Wave Feminism and Black Liberation in Washington, DC 2010.
Carolyn Lewis, " Welfare Alliance Cries 'Coercion'," Washington Post 2 March 1968.