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Robert Weaver was born on December 29, 1907, in Washington, District of Columbia, United States, into the family of Mortimer G. and Florence (Freeman) Weaver. He was raised in a middle-class family. His parents were Morgan Weaver and Margaret Freeman; they encouraged the boy in his academic studies.
Robert nrolled at Harvard after graduation from Dunbar High School. At Harvard he majored in economics and graduated cum laude in 1929. Two years later he received a master's from Harvard. After teaching economics one year at the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, Weaver returned to Harvard in 1932 on a scholarship and pursued a PhD in economics conferred in 1934.
In Robert's early career, he served as an aide to Interior Secretary Harold Ickes. Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Weaver was a member of the “Black Cabinet,” an informal group of African Americans that the president consulted on urban issues. During World War II he served as an administrative assistant for the War Planning Board. In 1949 he joined the J.H. Whitney Foundation in New York City as director of opportunity fellowships. He left the post to become the deputy commissioner of housing and rent-control administrator for the State of New York in 1955. His post as rent commissioner was the first New York State cabinet position given to an African American.
From 1959 to 1960 Weaver was a consultant to the Ford Foundation, then became vice chairperson of the Housing and Redevelopment Board until 1961. From 1961 to 1966 he served the U.S. Government as administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency. President John F. Kennedy had sought to make the position part of his cabinet, but he ran into staunch opposition from the South. By the time Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency, the civil rights movement had made great strides for equality and the president was able to appoint Weaver to secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
In 1969 Weaver became president of the Bernard M. Baruch College of Business and Public Administration, where he stayed until 1970 when he accepted a post as distinguished professor of Urban Affairs at Hunter College. He remained at Hunter until his retirement. During his career, Weaver also served as national chairperson of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and as a member of the School of Urban and Public Affairs’ visiting committee at Carnegie-Mellon University. He also found time to write books.
Remembered for his work in human rights causes, Weaver was the first African American to be named to a presidential cabinet post when Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him as secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Weaver’s name became the first of any African American to grace a cabinet building in the capitol.
Robert adhered to the values of Democratic Party.
Weaver had expressed his concerns about African Americans’ housing issue before 1930. He noted there was a great difference between the income of most African Americans and the cost of living; African Americans did not have enough housing supply because of many social factors, including the long economic decline of rural areas in the South. He suggested a government housing program to enable all the African Americans the chance to buy or rent their house.
Even after his retirement, Weaver was famous for never wasting time and always working.
Weaver married Ella V. Haith in 1935. They adopted a son Robert, who died in 1962.
