Frances Harriet Williams: Unsung Social Equity Pioneer

• Author: Susan T. Gooden
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12788
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Date: 01 September 2017

Frances Harriet Williams: Unsung Social Equity Pioneer 777

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 5, pp. 777–783. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12788.

Susan T. Gooden is professor of

public administration and policy in the L.

Douglas Wilder School of Government and

Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth

University. Her most recent book is

Race

and Social Equity

:

A Nervous Area of

Government.

She received her PhD from the

Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public

Affairs at Syracuse University. She is the

2016–17 president of the American Society

for Public Administration and a fellow of the

National Academy of Public Administration.

Email: stgooden@vcu.edu

Administrative

Prof‌i le

Abstract: Frances Harriet Williams was an unsung social equity pioneer in the field of public administration. Long

before the Minnowbrook I Conference convened in the 1960s to discuss the importance of fairness in the provision of

public services, Williams successfully promoted values of social equity and racial fairness within public administration

scholarly and practitioner communities. Raised by progressive parents in the South, Williams was the only high-

ranking African-American woman in the federal government during President Franklin D. Roosevelt ’ s administration.

She was directly involved in leading the Office of Price Administration to a staff that was at least 13 percent black

when the rest of government was no more than 1 percent black. This work was the focus of her 1947 article in Public

Administration Review, the first publication on racial equity to appear in the field ’ s flagship journal. Her efforts

and accomplishments undergird many of the ideals and practices that constitute the concept of social equity in public

administration today.

W. Henry Lambright, Editor

Susan T. Gooden

Virginia Commonwealth University

Frances Harriet Williams: Unsung Social Equity Pioneer

T he concept of social equity in public

administration is fundamentally concerned

with fairness and justice in the provision of

public services. It is embedded in the democratic

value of equality, formally entrenched in the

Declaration of Independence, which proclaims the

self-evident truth that all men are created equal

(Gooden 2015a , 2015b ). Within the field of public

administration, scholarship on the origins of social

equity predominantly includes some variation of

the following narrative: during the Minnowbrook

I Conference of 1968, against the broader context

of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, aspiring

scholars in public administration became aware

that “the results of governmental policy and the

work of public administrators

implementing those policies

were much better for some

citizens than for others”

(Frederickson 2005 , 31). Many

scholars commonly discuss the

origins of social equity in public

administration with respect to

Minnowbrook and New Public

Administration (see, e.g., Frederickson 1980, 2005 ,

2010 ; Gooden 2014 ; Gooden and Portillo 2011 ;

Guy and McCandless 2012 Wooldridge and Gooden

2009 ).

However, more than two decades before the

Minnowbrook conference, Frances Harriet Williams

conveyed the value of social equity as a foundation

of the field of public administration in a 1947 Public

Administration Review ( PAR ) article. Her work as a

practitioner was pioneering because she paved the

way in articulating the importance of impartiality and

fairness in the public sector. Williams not only wrote

on the importance of fairness and impartiality in the

provision of public services in PA R but also served on

its Editorial Board (around 1951).

A few social equity scholars (Candler, Johnson, and

Anderson 2009 ; Gooden 2015a , 2015b ) have briefly

referenced Williams ’ s PAR article, “Minority Groups

and OPA.” However, the legacy of Williams ’ s efforts

and accomplishments as a social equity pioneer in

our field has not been previously documented and

disseminated. Her strides

relative to racial equity in

the federal government were

significant. Following a brief

discussion of the concept

of social equity, this article

introduces and discusses this

unsung heroine of social equity

in public administration, with

a focus on her critical social equity work in federal

government in the Office of Price Administration

(OPA). This article is the culmination of more

than two years of archival research, drawing on

material including audio transcripts, unpublished

dissertations, newspaper articles, speeches, personal

correspondence, and manuscript reading room

records from the Library of Congress.

Her work as a practitioner was

pioneering because she paved

the way in articulating the

importance of impartiality and

fairness in the public sector.