The Robert Clifton Weaver Papers primarily concern Weaver's professional activities and development from his entry into government service in to Material prior to relates to the Weaver family. However, this represented only one of a series of important posts in federal, state and municipal governments as well as private foundations, organizations and universities held by Weaver during his long and illustrious career.
As economist, public administrator, educator and author, Weaver devoted himself to the multifaceted issues of minority labor and urban problems. In , Weaver was one of a number of young men drawn to Washington by the New Deal administration, where he received a succession of assignments as adviser on minority problems to various agency administrators. Court of Appeals Judge William H. Hastie and N. Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins.
After World War II, Weaver left the federal government to teach and write on the problems of urban living. There Weaver tried to stimulate a more aesthetic environment in public housing and to improve relocation policies by increasing funds available to small businessmen displaced by urban renewal. He ensured that the Housing Act of included grants for recreational and scenic areas and pushed through the controversial Section d3, giving non-profit corporations cut-rate mortgage loans to provide housing for displaced families of low and moderate income.
Weaver was born and raised in Washington, D. His father, Mortimer Grover Weaver was a U. Weaver's maternal grandfather, Dr. Robert Tanner Freeman, the first black in the United States to earn a doctoral degree in dentistry, graduated from Harvard's dental school with its first class in Mortimer Weaver, who graduated from Williams College and Harvard University, was an assistant professor of English at Howard University at the time of his death in at the age of twenty-three.
The Robert Clifton Weaver Papers, , , document the varied career of a major figure in the field of urban affairs. The collection primarily concerns Weaver's professional activities and development from his entry into the federal service in until his return to the government under the Kennedy administration in Material prior to relates largely to the Weaver family.
