History professor and chair of the Jewish Studies program Annelise Orleck discussed the struggle that poor black mothers faced after large welfare cuts were enacted in late-1960s Las Vegas.
Wednesday night's lecture, titled "What if poor mothers ran the world? Some lessons from Las Vegas," dealt with themes from Orleck's book, "Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought their Own War on Poverty."
The professor opened by touching on her view of the public's opinion toward the impoverished groups.
"The poor are despised wherever they live," she said. "But in this country we reserve a special note of derision for the poor."
Orleck then emphasized the burden borne specifically by mothers on welfare.
"Poor women, and particularly poor mothers, occupy an especially bad place in our country," Orleck said.
"I think that for the most part this [discriminatory attitude] has been accepted by Democrats as well as Republicans."
Orleck proceeded to stress the importance of impoverished mothers' struggle.
"Today I'm going to try to shake free some of those notions of poor mothers," she said. "I'd like to argue that poor mothers' activism, past and present, has been a revitalizing force in our country's democracy."
The lecture focused on a group of impoverished black mothers who, led by activist Ruby Duncan, used grass-roots activism in west Las Vegas to change public policy.
"Outbreaks of democracy at the grass-roots [level] tend to be infectious," Orleck said. "Sometimes they change the course of a nation's history."
Orleck then explained how Duncan and other mothers, once organized, decided to take political action.
The women stormed Caesars Palace and organized protest marches featuring celebrities such as actress Jane Fonda and Dr. Benjamin Spock.
The movement received considerable media attention, which the mothers used to gather support for welfare programs specific to single=mother families.
The women founded Operation Life, an organization providing services to mothers such as children's health care, day care and job services. The mothers themselves ran this government-funded program, which gained steam until the Reagan administration dismantled it because of the uneducated mothers' questionable qualifications.
Orleck outlined the discrimination and the unfair labor market faced by blacks in the western United States during that period.
"Las Vegas was every bit as Jim Crow as the Mississippi delta from which they came," she said. "Black people made very good service workers, as long as you didn't have to see them."
A question and answer session followed the speech, during which the professor focused on the persistent need for responsible public policy regarding single mothers.
"Over 80 percent of the poor now are single mothers and their families," she said.
The lecture took place in Filene Auditorium in Moore Hall. The Rockefeller Center sponsored the event as part of the College's ongoing Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations and the Rockefeller Center's public policy lecture series.
