Cover
story
Harringtons 1962 classic inspired war on
poverty
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff
Thirty-seven years ago a single book helped jar the nation into
political action on behalf of the poor. It was The Other America: Poverty in
the United States by Catholic social critic Michael Harrington.
Former Catholic Worker associate editor Harrington packed
his 200-page 1962 book with povertys facts -- often from firsthand
reporting on urban and rural poor, black and white poor, Native American and
migrant poor.
The Other America deeply influenced both Presidents John F.
Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Harrington also served as an integral part of
the initial working group when Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver launched,
at Johnsons request, the Office of Economic Opportunity, better known as
the war on poverty.
Harrington twice revised The Other America, each time
noting that while there had been some gains, by the 1980s the slippage had
begun. The poor are always the same people, he said, the aged, the
migrant workers, the industrial rejects, children, families with a female head,
people of low education.
Something else remains fairly constant, too, he wrote -- American
society always prefers to underestimate the numbers in poverty. St.Louis-born
Harrington, who was educated at Holy Cross, Yale and the University of Chicago,
was chair of the League for Industrial Democracy and a member of the Socialist
Party. He died in 1989 at age 61.
National Catholic Reporter, April 30,
1999
|