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Widely recognized as one of America's most thoughtful and provocative commentators on America's social welfare system, Frances Fox Piven, political scientist, activist, and educator, was born in Calgary, Alberta in 1932. She came to the U.S. in 1933 and was naturalized in 1953, the same year she received her B.A. in City Planning from the University of Chicago. She also received her M.A. (1956) and Ph.D. (1962) from the University of Chicago. While married to Herman Piven, she had a daughter, Sarah. After a brief stint in New York as a city planner, she became a research associate at one of the country's first anti-poverty agencies, Mobilization for Youth -- a comprehensive, community-based service organization on New York City's Lower East Side. At its height the organization coordinated more than fifty experimental programs designed to reduce poverty and crime. A 1965 paper entitled "Mobilizing the Poor: How It Can Be Done," launched Piven and her co-author, Columbia University professor Richard Cloward, into an ongoing national conversation on the welfare state. Piven and Cloward's collaborative work came to influence both careers, and the two eventually married. Their early work together provided a theoretical base for the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), the first in a long line of grass-roots organizations in which Piven acted as founder, advisor, and/or planner. Piven taught in the Columbia University School of Social Work from 1966 to 1972. From 1972 to 1982 she was a professor of political science at Boston University. In 1982 she joined the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She has co-authored with Richard Cloward
Piven is known equally for her contributions to social theory and for her social activism. Over the course of her career, she has served on the boards of the ACLU and the Democratic Socialists of America, and has also held offices in several professional associations, including the American Political Science Association and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. In the 1960s, Piven worked with welfare-rights groups to expand benefits; in the eighties and nineties she campaigned relentlessly against welfare cutbacks. A veteran of the war on poverty and subsequent welfare-rights protests both in New York City and on the national stage, she has been instrumental in formulating the theoretical underpinnings of those movements. In
In corollary activity, Piven's study of voter registration and participation patterns found fruition in the 1983 founding of the HumanSERVE (Human Service Employees Registration and Voter Education) Campaign. The Campaign's registration reform effort culminated in the 1994 passage of the National Voter Registration Act, or the "Motor-Voter" bill, designed to increase voter registration, especially among low-income groups.
Michael Harrington, whose book The Other America helped focus the nation's attention on poverty in the early 1960s, has said that Piven is "one of the few academics who bridge the world of scholarship and the world of activism." Of this mix, Piven herself has said: "One informs the other, energizes the other . . . There are dimensions of political life that can't be seen if you stay on the sidelines or close to the top . . ." The larger significance of both activism and academics in Piven's life can be gleaned from her remark that such work "also has to do with comradeship and friendship, . . . with being part of the social world in which you live and trying to make some imprint on it, . . . with the real satisfaction of throwing in with the ordinary people who have always been the force for humanitarian social change."
The Frances Fox Piven Papers (circa 1957-), extending 72 linear feet, are primarily professional, though they also contain some personal materials.
The collection consists of correspondence with colleagues, editors and publishers, students and friends; teaching materials; organization and subject files; and speeches and writings, reflecting her work as both an academic and activist in the areas of urban social welfare, poverty, and public policy. Taken together, Piven's papers offer a comprehensive critique of the welfare state, from Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty to the present, and ongoing efforts, acute in the late 1990s, to reform it. Other important and related subject areas illuminated throughout her papers include voting and voter registration (see especially SERIES IV. COMMUNITY SERVICE-HumanSERVE); community development (largely in New York City); working-class political activity; housing rights, reform, and homelessness in New York City (see especially course files in SERIES III. TEACHING; SERIES V. WRITING; and SERIES VII. SUBJECTS); campus politics (especially regarding Columbia University, Boston University, and the City University of New York); civil rights; and United States social and economic policies. Papers throughout the collection also pertain to Piven's co-author and husband, Columbia University School of Social Work Professor Richard A. Cloward. Substantial material documents Piven and Cloward's role in the founding and development of Mobilization for Youth and HumanSERVE (see SERIES IV. COMMUNITY SERVICE). Several correspondents are significant both for the extent of their correspondence with Piven and for their prominence on the national stage. These include poet June Jordan, scholars and activists Howard Zinn and Rosalyn Feldberg, and Senator Paul Wellstone. Other correspondence with significant figures throughout the social sciences and national social policy forums is scattered throughout the collection, and includes Chester Hartman, Sam Bass Warner, S.M. Miller, Herbert Gans, Ira Katznelson, Frank Reissman, Todd Gitlin, Nancy Chodorow, Donna Shalala, and Michael Lipsky.
This collection is organized into eight series:
Restricted Access: permission is required from the donor to use this collection.
New, unprocessed accessions are closed until processed; Piven's personal correspondence is closed for fifty years from its date of creation; and letters of reference are closed for twenty years from their date of creation.
The Sophia Smith Collection owns copyright to Frances Fox Piven's papers. Copyright to materials created by others may be owned by those individuals or their heirs or assigns. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights. Permission must be obtained from the Sophia Smith Collection to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use."
Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:
Frances Fox Piven Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Selections from the Frances Fox Piven Papers can be viewed in the Web exhibit
Periodic additions to collection are expected.
Frances Fox Piven began donating her papers to the Sophia Smith Collection in 1988 and will continue to add to the collection.
Processed by Marla Miller, 1998.
Recent additions to this collection are unprocessed and are not reflected in the finding aid.
See also the
Additional interviews are in the Columbia University Oral History Archives, War on Poverty Project.
The following articles are located in Series V. Writings, arranged chronologically.
This series includes mainly clippings documenting Piven's roles as a public figure and activist/academic. Articles gathered here report specifically on Piven's activities or record her views on the issues and events at hand. Also included are interviews with Piven, occasionally accompanied by Richard Cloward. These materials provide insight into and some overview of the main activities in which Piven was involved over the course of her career, from the 1960s work of the Poverty/Rights Action Center and NWRO to academe's response to the 1996 Personal Responsibility Act (Additional interviews can be found in SERIES VIII. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS.)
This series spans Piven's entire professional career. Letters between Piven and the editors of scholarly and popular publications, colleagues throughout the U.S. and abroad, and present and former students illustrate Piven's broad influence on the fields of sociology, urban planning, and political science. Some portion of this correspondence is addressed to both Piven and Richard A. Cloward, and some was initially addressed to Cloward and subsequently referred to Piven, shedding some light on the evolution and character of their collaboration. In addition to Cloward, this series contains correspondence with other significant figures throughout the social sciences. Correspondents include national political figures and commentators such as Ira Glasser (Executive Director of the ACLU), Donna Shalala, and Barbara Ehrenreich (see also SERIES IV. COMMUNITY SERVICE--Campaign for Media Fairness in Welfare). Other significant signatories include Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Tom Hayden, Joseph P. Kennedy II, and Milton Friedman.
The materials contained herein, which include letters both to and from Piven as well as clippings, writings, and reports attached to the correspondence, are divided into three subseries: General, Individuals, and Personal. The General correspondence, comprising the bulk of these materials, is arranged chronologically. Letters of reference, boxed separately, are closed for twenty years from their date of creation. The subseries devoted to Individuals, arranged alphabetically, contains correspondence that is significant both for its duration and extent, and for the prominence of the correspondent on the national stage. Correspondents here include poet June Jordan (see also SERIES V. WRITING, regarding Piven's 1974 paper, "Planning for Women in the Central City" and SERIES IV. COMMUNITY SERVICE--Mobilization for Youth, for what appears to be Jordan, then June Meyer), scholars and activists Howard Zinn and Rosalyn Feldberg, and Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN). (For other material pertaining to Wellstone, see SERIES IV. COMMUNITY SERVICE--Campaign for Media Fairness on Welfare). Three items from Michael Harrington are also located here. (Piven's correspondence with Susan Tichanuk is closed until Tichanuk's death).
The Personal correspondence is largely correspondence between Piven and members of her family. Much of this material is from Piven's niece, Sarah Keller. One folder contains correspondence from Piven's daughter, Sarah Piven. There appears to be little if any correspondence from Piven's sister, noted MIT Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science Evelyn Fox Keller.
Additional correspondence is distributed throughout the collection: e.g., for correspondence pertaining to her employment at Columbia University see SERIES III. TEACHING; for correspondence pertaining to her work with the American Civil Liberties Union, see SERIES IV. COMMUNITY SERVICE.
Piven usually clipped together sets of related documents and brief exchanges of letters, and that arrangement has been retained throughout the correspondence, filed by the most recent date. Correspondence for which the date could only be identified or approximated to the calendar year is placed at the end of that calendar year.
This series consists of correspondence, reports, memoranda, and course materials (including lecture notes, syllabi, clippings, etc) from Piven's positions at a wide variety of institutions, including Columbia University, Boston University, Brooklyn College, LaGuardia Community College, New York University Law School, the University of Amsterdam, the University of California, the Institute of Advanced Studies in Vienna, the University of Bologna, and the City University of New York. It is arranged in four subseries: Columbia University (1965-1972), Boston University (1972-1982), the City University of New York (1982-present), and a final subseries devoted to her Visiting professorships. Each subseries includes administrative files, correspondence, and course materials, and is arranged by type of material or subject. Course materials, which includes syllabi, exams, lecture notes, reading lists, and clipping files, record Piven's pedagogical approach to subjects from "Big City Politics" and "Movements of the Poor" to "The Future of American Housing Policy" and "The Politics of Social Welfare." These materials served in part as research files for Piven on these subjects as well. There is also a set of unpublished papers, written by Columbia University students circa 1971 under Piven's supervision, pertaining to "squatters" and New York City housing. Administrative files illuminate aspects of academic life in the late twentieth century, especially student unrest on college campuses, including the 1968 "Siege of Columbia" and 1990s student activism at CUNY (see also SERIES IV. COMMUNITY SERVICE--National Student Action Union, and SERIES VIII. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS, for a circa 1996 videocassette about student activism at CUNY); academic freedom (see also SERIES V. WRITINGS, for Piven's 1982 paper, "The Myth of Academic Freedom"); and university politics.
Arranged alphabetically.
This series, the largest in the Piven papers, documents the host of advisory and editorial boards on which Piven served, the organizations she helped to found and direct, and the public forums in which she appeared. That she described these activities as "community service" itself sheds some light on the way in which she viewed the application of her scholarly work. The series is arranged alphabetically, and documents her contributions to dozens of projects, conferences, programs, and organizations, from the American Political Science Association to the Yale Law and Policy Review. Piven's level of participation in these organizations varied, from the review of a single grant proposal to active, longterm involvement on boards and committees. In the latter case, several boxes of materials each document Piven's work in the Mobilization for Youth project (MFY), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), HumanSERVE, and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Mobilization for Youth was conceived at a 1957 board meeting of the prestigious Henry Street Settlement House when members planned an "overall attack" on juvenile delinquency. For the next four years organizers drafted reports and proposals, seeking short- and long-term funding, which MFY ultimately secured from the National Institute for Mental Health, the President's committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime, the City of New York, and the Ford Foundation. By the summer of 1963, MFY was poised to become a model for U.S. service organizations. However, following the organization's support of rent strikes and its alleged role in the "race riots" of 1964, MFY came under close and hostile scrutiny, accused of fiscal mismanagement and the subversive infiltration of its staff. Piven's files, which contain several drafts of proposals in the late 1950s and early 1960s, record those two phases in the life of the organization: the early forging of the MFY's plan of operation and its response to attacks by its critics, as well as the outcome of investigations into its staff and operations. Additional materials regarding MFY can be found in the papers of Dorothy Kenyon, also housed in the Sophia Smith Collection.
Piven's work with the MFY was closely related to her involvement in the welfare rights movement, though at present, researchers interested in the National Welfare Rights Organization and the Poverty/Action Center will find comparatively little material. Four folders in SERIES IV. COMMUNITY SERVICE document the work of the NWRO between 1966 and 1972, while one folder contains reports and publicity materials from the Poverty/Rights Action center, circa 1966. A memoranda from the founder of both organizations, George Wiley, regarding Piven's 1966 article "Desegregation: How the Ghetto Pays for the Reformer's Ideal," can be found in SERIES V. WRITINGS. Researchers may also wish to consult a folder of "Miscellaneous writings on the welfare rights movement," 1967, filed also in SERIES V, WRITINGS.
In the 1970s and 80s, Piven served as an at-large member of the ACLU Board of Directors and chaired two working committees -- Poverty and Civil Liberties, and Poverty and Constitutional Rights, both of which aimed to develop and implement ACLU policy on economic issues and rights. Though this subseries contains correspondence and memoranda from Piven's tenure on the Board of Directors, the bulk of the material pertains to the committee work. These files, arranged chronologically within committees, include administrative memoranda as well as reports and research materials on subjects studied by the committees, from homelessness to Medicaid to Reagan Administration budget cuts.
In the 1980s Piven also sat on the National Executive Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America, a national coalition of feminist, labor, civil rights, and peace activists seeking to promote a democratic socialist society. Toward that end, the DSA sponsors conferences, publishes literature, and works in and with a variety of issue-oriented and electoral campaigns. The materials Piven collected as a board member largely illuminate the internal administrative affairs of the DSA (co-chaired by Michael Harrington and Barbara Ehrenreich), from finances to membership to board and committee procedures, as well as the many programs administered and/or supported by the DSA. Issues on the table during these years include U.S. presence in Central America, arms control, immigration, poverty, and racism. Over time, concern turned toward national health care, reproductive rights, and social welfare policies. These folders, dating from 1983 to 1993, are generally arranged chronologically.
The papers pertaining to HumanSERVE, which Piven helped found in 1983, include correspondence; memoranda; and several folders of clippings, articles, reports, and other data pertaining to voter registration and turnout. The purpose of HumanSERVE was to dramatically open the political system by making voter registration available through thousands of public and voluntary agencies. The national board of HumanSERVE circulated newspaper clippings, reports, studies, proposals, and memoranda pertaining to voter registration and participation among board members, and Piven, as one of the organization's founders, also gathered similar data for her own research and writing. When possible, packets of such materials sent together in preparation, for example, for national board meetings, have been preserved, with the remainder filed in general files by date. Research materials -- largely reports, clippings, and memoranda - are distributed throughout the HumanSERVE files and track voter registration and participation from 1982 through 1989. In 1984, HumanSERVE joined the "Campaign for Full Political Participation," a larger effort toward universal enfranchisement, chaired by Lani Guinier, staff counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. This effort brought together several groups in which Piven was involved, including the Association for Community Activism Now (ACORN) and the ACLU. Several of these files relate to an 1986 lawsuit against the State of California contending that local officials must seek to remedy, with aggressive outreach programs, unequal registration rates between demographic groups.
Studies, reports and proposals produced by numerous professional, scholarly, activist, commercial, and/or service organizations are scattered throughout the series. They are about issues such as voter turnout in the 1980s elections, "Building a Feminist Economic Program," and "The Law and Sexual Freedom." Professional conference materials are filed by the name of the sponsoring organization. Of special interest are several folders of materials surrounding the founding of two contemporary welfare-rights advocacy initiatives, the Campaign for Media Fairness on Welfare (1991-) and the Committee of 100 (1995-), as well as several folders of material documenting other welfare reform lobbying activities in response to the Personal Responsibility Act (filed as "Welfare reform--lobbying activity"). Piven also commented on several scripts for documentaries, the proposals and text of which, along with Piven's commentary, are filed under the production company. One box contains material related to Piven's work in the mid-1980s with "Policy Alternatives for the Caribbean and Central America" (PACCA), a group which monitored and worked to shape U.S. foreign policy.
In some instances, researchers are directed to related material in separate series. For example, the 1989 CUNY conference on Popular Power in Post-Industrial Society resulted in the publication of Labor-Parties in Post-Industrial Societies. Correspondence, memoranda, and budgetary material pertaining to the conference is found in this series, as well as drafts of conference papers submitted by participants, along with Piven's commentary. Subsequent drafts of the conference papers, as they were being edited for publication by Piven, as well as her editorial correspondence with the authors, are found in SERIES V. WRITINGS. Similarly, correspondence pertaining to Piven's radio and television appearances are generally filed in this series, while video and audio cassette tapes of these appearances can be found in SERIES VIII. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIAL.
This series contains two subseries: Books, unpublished and published; and Articles and papers. Both published and unpublished work are arranged chronologically, beginning with Piven's unpublished doctoral dissertation. Both subseries include correspondence, drafts, offprints, reviews, publicity materials, and in many instances the publications themselves. The first subseries contains materials pertaining to book-length manuscript entitled "Urban Fiscal Crisis," including correspondence, research materials and funding proposals generated by a collaborative project with Roger Friedland and Robert Alford on urban fiscal crisis as well. The second subseries contains articles and conference papers written between 1962 and the present. These are arranged chronologically, and, in some cases, with accompanying correspondence attached. An >appendix to this finding aid lists these writings by topic.
[for full citations of published work see SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL; a list of Piven's articles organized by subject appears in an >appendix to this finding aid]
This series includes correspondence, printed matter, travel receipts, publicity materials, notes, and texts pertaining to Piven's public speaking. These more extemporaneous talks are distinguished from Piven's more formal and usually published conference papers, generally located in SERIES V. WRITINGS. In general Piven clipped together all material that related to a particular public appearance. That arrangement has been retained; the materials are arranged chronologically according to the date of the speaking engagement.
This series contains material from Piven's public appearances for notable political and professional organizations including: American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Democratic Action, American Jewish Congress, American Political Science Association, American Sociological Association, Berkshire Forum, Bertha Capen Reynolds Society, Child Study Association of America, Democratic Socialists of America, HumanSERVE, Institute for Policy Studies, Junior League of New York City, Lawyers' Guild, League for Industrial Democracy, League of Women Voters, NAACP Legal Defense Fund., Inc., National Association of Social Workers, National Coalition for the Homeless, National Feminist Majority, National Organizers' Alliance, National Organization for Women, National Welfare Rights Organization, New Party, Planned Parenthood, Society for the Study of Social Problems, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, Women Strike for Peace, and the YWCA. [For additional material on the ACLU, APSA, and other organizations with which Piven was most closely involved, see also SERIES IV. COMMUNITY SERVICE.]
The series contains correspondence from several notable signatories including: Illinois Senator Paul Douglas (1968); New York Secretary of State March Fong Eu (1989); Lani Guinier (1987); Jesse Jackson (1995); Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1968); Vermont Congressmen Bernard Sanders (1995); Eleanor Smeal (1996); historian Louise Tilly (1991); and sociologist William Julius Wilson (1989).
This comparatively small series contains primarily published and printed materials collected by Piven. The bulk of this material pertains to welfare rights, welfare reform, housing rights, and housing reform. Additional files reflect Piven's interest in other subjects, from Cuba under Castro to urban unrest to educational segregation. These files are arranged alphabetically by topic.
This series is arranged in two subseries: Videotapes and Audiotapes. The Videotapes are grouped by subject (welfare reform, voter registration, and general topics) and then arranged chronologically. They record Piven's television appearances in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of these programs were produced by CUNY-TV or other local access stations in New York. More than half capture Piven in debate with others interested in welfare reform, while the remainder record her assessment of electoral politics and voter participation, as well as her views on more general topics like "The American Dream," family values and political culture, and the work ethic in American life. The Audiotapes document similar events. Six record sessions at the 1989 conference Popular Power in Post-Industrial Society. The remainder, organized chronologically, record other conference sessions, classroom presentations, and more of Piven's appearances on talk shows, largely to debate welfare reform initiatives.
[See also: SERIES IV. COMMUNITY SERVICE--HumanSERVE--General, 1986]
(closed for 20 years after the date of creation)
(closed until Tichanuk's death)
(closed for 50 years after the date of creation)
[see also SERIES VIII, AUDIOVISUAL--audiotapes, and SERIES V. WRITINGS, for manuscripts eventually published as Labor Parties in Post-Industrial Society]
[see SERIES VIII, AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS, for video cassette]
(see SERIES IV, COMMUNITY SERVICE-Institute for Policy Studies)
This series is arranged in two subseries: Videotapes and Audiotapes. The Videotapes are grouped by subject (welfare reform, voter registration, and general topics) and then arranged chronologically. They record Piven's television appearances in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of these programs were produced by CUNY-TV or other local access stations in New York. More than half capture Piven in debate with others interested in welfare reform, while the remainder record her assessment of electoral politics and voter participation, as well as her views on more general topics like "The American Dream," family values and political culture, and the work ethic in American life. The Audiotapes document similar events. Six record sessions at the 1989 conference Popular Power in Post-Industrial Society. The remainder, organized chronologically, record other conference sessions, classroom presentations, and more of Piven's appearances on talk shows, largely to debate welfare reform initiatives.