Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
organization
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, originally the Joint Center for Political Studies and also known in abbreviated form as Joint Center, is an American public policy think tank headquartered in Washington, DC. Founded in 1970, the Joint Center was initially formed to provide training and technical assistance to newly elected Black officials. It is now widely recognized as the “oldest” and “premier” Black think tank. Since its inception, the organization has expanded to address a range of public policy and economic issues that are of concern to Black, AAPI, Latine, and Indigenous communities.
History, achievements, major initiatives
Origins
Following the Voting Rights Act, Black politicians began to enter the political sphere. However, they came into their elected positions at a disadvantage: their white counterparts had an existing network of support, access to university-level research, and knowledge shared within their party, meanwhile many of these new black elected officials, or "BEOs", knew little about the ropes of their new jobs, such as political networking or even standard administration. What's more, they couldn't count on help from their more experienced and better-connected white colleagues to guide them on the formal procedures or unwritten rules.
At two national conferences -- Chicago in 1967 and Washington DC 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 response to the concerns voiced at the conference, President of the Metropolitan Applied Research Center (MARC) Kenneth B. Clark, presidential advisor and “Godfather of Black Politics” Louis E. Martin, and Howard University law professor Frank D. Reeves led a committee in submitting a grant proposal to the Ford Foundation. And their efforts were not in vain: 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 Center’s name is a reflection of the “joint” efforts of two entities: MARC and Howard University.
“Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies” enters the record as organization. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Joint, Center and Political can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6269123. VIAF identifies the subject as 152204041. The Library of Congress control number is no90022649. Authority coordinates are 38.893, -77.020. 5 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1970, 1967 and 1969.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.