“We’ve Got Black Power and That’s Gonna Go a Long Way”: Ruth Jefferson of the Dallas NWRO and the Origins of a Multiracial Coalition in Dallas

Authors

• Katherine Bynum Chávez, Arizona State University

Abstract

This article examines how welfare rights activism helped forge a Black–Brown coalition in Dallas in the late 1960s. Centering Black welfare organizer Ruth Jefferson, it traces her role in transforming struggles over public assistance into demands for community control and political power. Although Dallas’s racial order fostered competition between Black and Mexican American communities, activists recognized shared grievances, particularly police violence and state repression. Linking welfare rights, Black Power, Chicana/o activism, and the War on Poverty, the article argues that the coalition emerged through deliberate organizing against institutions that had long worked to keep these communities apart. Katherine

Recommended Citation

Chávez, Katherine Bynum (2026) "“We’ve Got Black Power and That’s Gonna Go a Long Way”: Ruth Jefferson of the Dallas NWRO and the Origins of a Multiracial Coalition in Dallas," Journal of Texas History: Vol. 2: No. 2, Article 4.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32855/3069-1052.1065
Available at: https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/journaltexashistory/vol2/iss2/4