The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (also known in abbreviated form as Joint Center) is an American public policy think tank headquartered in
Washington, DC
)
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. According to its mission statement, the Joint Center, through research, policy roundtables, and publications, produces innovative, high-impact ideas, research, and policy solutions that have a positive impact on people and communities of color. Ranking at #50 on the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
's 2017 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report, the Joint Center served as the intellectual hub for a generation of post-Civil Rights era black thinkers, including
Maynard Jackson
Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr. (March 23, 1938 – June 23, 2003) was an American politician and attorney from Georgia. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected in 1973 at the age of 35 as the first black mayor of Atlanta, Georgia and of ...
,
Mary Frances Berry
Mary Frances Berry (born February 17, 1938) is an American historian, writer, lawyer, activist and professor who focuses on U.S. constitutional and legal, African-American history. Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Tho ...
,
William Julius Wilson
William Julius Wilson (born December 20, 1935) is an American sociologist. He is a professor at Harvard University and author of works on urban sociology, race and class issues. Laureate of the National Medal of Science, he served as the 80th P ...
,
Shirley Chisholm
Shirley Anita Chisholm ( ; ; November 30, 1924 – January 1, 2005) was an American politician who, in 1968, became the first black woman to be elected to the United States Congress. Chisholm represented New York's 12th congressional distr ...
and
John Hope Franklin
John Hope Franklin (January 2, 1915 – March 25, 2009) was an American historian of the United States and former president of Phi Beta Kappa, the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Southern Histo ...
. Originally founded in 1970 to provide training and technical assistance to newly elected African American officials, the Joint Center has since expanded its portfolio to include a range of public policy issues of concern to
African-Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of enslav ...
Latinos
Hispanic and Latino Americans ( es, Estadounidenses hispanos y latinos; pt, Estadunidenses hispânicos e latinos) are Americans of Spaniards, Spanish and/or Latin Americans, Latin American ancestry. More broadly, these demographics include a ...
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
, more and more blacks were being elected to public office. Many of these new black elected officials, or "BEOs", knew little about the ropes of their new jobs, such as political networking or even day-to-day administration. What's more, they couldn't count on help from their more experienced and better-connected white colleagues.
At two national conferences --
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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in 1967 and
Washington DC
)
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in 1969—BEOs expressed a need for a new organization, one that would provide new BEOs training and assistance that would give them a foothold in the mainstream American political process.
In April 1970 The Joint Center for Political Studies (its original name) was begun with a two-year $860,000 grant from
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...
.
Howard University
Howard University (Howard) is a Private university, private, University charter#Federal, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classifie ...
law professor Frank Reeves served as the center's first executive director. The first board chairman was Louis (“Louie”) Martin, a newspaper editor who would later serve in the
Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1 ...
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
's Center for Policy Study, became the Joint Center's new president. Williams' varied background—he was a former journalist and staff assistant in both the U.S. Senate U.S. Department of State—positioned him to forge the center into a full-fledged think tank, one that would "identify public policy issues that have implications for lack Americans... to be both a center for intellectual discovery and a wellspring of practical knowledge."
Williams expanded the staff, increased the amount and scope of the center's publication, and organized conferences around the country to aid BEOs. Joint Center data and research began to garner attention from legislative and judicial arenas.
In anticipation of the 1976 general elections, the Joint Center formed the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation (now an independent coalition of 80 organizations), which increased voter registration and turnout during a campaign season that put Carter the
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...
by a slim margin. In October of the same year, the Joint Center became completely independent from
Howard University
Howard University (Howard) is a Private university, private, University charter#Federal, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classifie ...
and the Metropolitan Applied Research Center, which had had joint oversight since the Joint Center's birth.
As the number of BEOs grew, the center's role changed. The Joint Center helped form the
National Conference of Black Mayors
The National Conference of Black Mayors (NCBM) was incorporated in 1974 and was originally organized as the Southern Conference of Black Mayors (SCBM) forty years ago. The thirteen mayors who founded the group were elected after the enactment o ...
Margaret Simms
Margaret Constance Simms (born 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a 21st century American economist whose work focuses on the economic well being of African Americans.
She earned her BA in economics from Carleton College in 1967. She earned her ...
, who served as president from 1986 to 2007, realigned the Joint Center’ mission to serve as a full-fledged black think tank for scholarly research on social and economic issues; they believed that the civil rights movement had outgrown reliance on the charismatic leadership of a few individuals,. Through that decade and into the next, the Joint Center published extensive research on bars to minority voting and the effects of redistricting on black political power, and increased ties with non-black minority groups.
By the 1990s the Joint Center's research into a range of economic issues – expanding income gaps, the increased role of blacks in the U.S. economy, the condition of young black males and children, the accuracy of the U.S. Census, and the North American Free Trade Agreement – prompted the change to the group's current name. But the group has continued to engage in some political assistance activities, such as providing training to
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
’s new post-
Apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
In 2002, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation gave the Joint Center a $7 million grant to establish the Health Policy Institute, which, Joint Center representatives said, will
* improve the health of black Americans and other minorities and "expand their effective participation in the political and public policy arenas around health issues."
* "identify and promote effective solutions to the problem of health disparities."
* "inform members of Congress and national organizations on ealthissues."
In February 2014, the Joint Center appointed
Spencer Overton
Spencer A. Overton (born August 11, 1968) is an American lawyer, President of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and law professor at George Washington University Law School. He is a leading election law scholar, and is a te ...
, a George Washington University Law Professor, as interim president and chief executive officer.
Spencer Overton
Spencer A. Overton (born August 11, 1968) is an American lawyer, President of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and law professor at George Washington University Law School. He is a leading election law scholar, and is a te ...