From Slavery to Poverty

The racially charged stereotype of 'welfare queen' - an allegedly promiscuous waster who uses her children as meal tickets funded by tax-payers - is a familiar figure in modern America, but as Gunja SenGupta reveals in "From Slavery to Poverty", her historical roots run deep. By exploring the language and institutions of 'welfare' in nineteenth-century New York, SenGupta shows that they became forums for contests over urban 'underclass' identity. Mining a broad array of sources on six New York City institutions for the destitute, SenGupta reveals that the city's interlocking network of private benevolence and municipal relief promoted a racialized and gendered definition of poverty and citizenship. The illuminating snapshots of New York relief and reform agencies in "From Slavery to Poverty" show that long before the advent of the twentieth-century welfare state, the discourse of welfare in its nineteenth-century incarnation, created a space to talk about community, race and nation, about what it meant to be 'American' who belonged, and who did not.