This Week in Poverty: The Invisibles in Mississippi and the US
http://www.thenation.com/blog/170222/week-poverty-invisibles-mississippi-and-us
Before there was Clinton-Gingrich Welfare Reform in 1996 there was Mississippi Governor Kirk Fordices Work First pilot program in 1995.
That year, the Clinton administration granted the Republican governor a waiver to implement a new work requirement in six counties that Fordice claimed would result in 50 percent of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients getting off welfare and into jobs within three years.
One of the targeted counties was Harrison County, where Reverend Carol Burnett was running a literacy program for low-income women in east Biloxi. Burnettone of the first women United Methodist ministers in Mississippiwould later serve as director of the states Department of Human Services (DHS) Office of Children and Youth in a Democratic administration.
The women in this program were just trying to learn basic literacy skills, hoping they would be able to continue their education and get decent jobs in the future, Burnett tells me. Under the first President Bush women were allowed to pursue education while receiving welfare support. But the Mississippi pilot program changed that.