Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Unheeded Warning About the Collapse of the Black Family

The most consequential analysis of the black family over the past century was published 60 years ago this month. The Moynihan report was written in 1965 and published while Daniel Patrick Moynihan served as assistant secretary of labor under President Lyndon Johnson.

The report, formally titled “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” is best known for its warnings about the breakdown of the black family. But Moynihan’s motivation for writing it was his concern that the gains in civil rights for black Americans — punctuated by the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — would not translate into social equality.

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About the Author

Delano Squires

Delano Squires is a research fellow in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at the Heritage Foundation.

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The most consequential analysis of the black family over the past century was published 60 years ago this month. The Moynihan report was written in 1965 and published while Daniel Patrick Moynihan served as assistant secretary of labor under President Lyndon Johnson.

The report, formally titled “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” is best known for its warnings about the breakdown of the black family. But Moynihan’s motivation for writing it was his concern that the gains in civil rights for black Americans — punctuated by the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — would not translate into social equality.