America's first undeserving and deserving poor : beneficiaries of the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil War veterans' pensions -- White security : the birth of the American welfare state -- Assault on white privilege : civil rights and the great society -- Path bends : retrenchment from Nixon to Reagan-Bush -- Racially charged policy making : crime and welfare reform in the Clinton years -- Addressing "America's constant curse" : the politics of civil rights in the Clinton years -- Whose welfare system is it anyway? : the three tracks of social citizenship and racial inequality -- "Problem of race" : American social policy at the dawn of a new century.