 Poverty in America  Lack of means, material goods or other resources.  Moral and economical situation  Pauperism  Dependence on public assistance = moral failing  Elderly, Children and Disabled couldn’t help being poor  Working poor  people worked but their wages were too low to life them out of poverty  Poverty line  the minimum amount of income one would need to meet basic needs.

 An Invisible Class  At the end of the 1950’s 1 in 4 Americans lived under the poverty line  White middle class people are shocked by the numbers  Moving to the suburbs and being in their own world may have been a cause of not understanding the poverty crisis  Inexpensive clothing help hide poverty  Age: Children and Elderly made up the majority of the poor  Out of sight out of mind…  No political power  No legislation  No political parties

 Poverty in the land of Plenty Inner Cities  Poor moved into the cities  Came for manufacturing jobs  Black and Latino migrants and immigrants could not find nice apartments  Stuck in run down neighborhoods  overcrowded slums Housing Act of 1949  Goal was to provide “a decent home for every American family.”  Funded Urban Renewal programs  Demolished slums and replaced them with high-rise apartments, offices and civic buildings  Actually made poverty worse for people  Tried to provide low-income housing but they didn’t make enough housing units

 People of Poverty Living off the Land  Famers…  Agribusiness- Industry of food production in large corporations or wealthy individuals  Small farms can’t compete with this idea  Famers moved from the land to the cities to find work Mexican Braceros  Come to America  Suffer a great deal  One in three lived in poverty

 People of Poverty Appalachia  Area in the Southern Mountains  Can’t Farm  Coal Workers  Coal drops off after WWII  In the 1950’s 2 million people would leave this area  Those who couldn’t leave stayed and had a hard life well below the poverty line American Indians  Indians living on reservations were the poorest of the poor.  Government was responsible for them because of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act

 American Indians  After WWII government wanted out of the “partnership” mainly to save money  “Set the Indians Free”  Fear of loosing the land that they had  Termination Policy- Ended federal aid to tribes with drew federal land protections and distributed trial land among individuals  Voluntary Relocation Program- Encouraged American Indians to move to cities.  Provided transportation  Help find housing  Termination made American Indians lose over a 1 million acres in land and left 100 tribes or bands without resources