The Queerly Disadvantaged and the Making of San Francisco's War on Poverty, 1964–1967

The sudden availability of funds through President Johnson's War on Poverty disrupted established social movements and urban politics; the very definition of minority changed as a result. In San Francisco, agitation for federal monies challenged existing understandings of who was or was not "disadvantaged" and hence eligible for assistance. Initially, the San Francisco Equal Opportunity Council defined disadvantage in terms of the ethnic minority status of certain neighborhoods, but organizers in the Tenderloin and South of Market areas fought for equal eligibility for their own constituencies, including white people disadvantaged by both poverty and their sexual orientation and gender identities. As a consequence, the geographic definition of minority groups was mapped anew. Among residents of these San Francisco neighborhoods, affinity groups who previously had not yet been considered minorities coalesced into a true minority constituency that for the first time was recognized as such by an entity of the state.