In the early 1960s, city manager Joseph McDowell Mitchell and the council attracted nationwide attention and the admiration of political conservatives when they attempted to require welfare recipients to pick up their payments at police headquarters. Mitchell later announced a program aimed largely at Blacks and African Americans on welfare, whom many in the community blamed for its economic problems. The program would have denied welfare payments to all after three months except the aged, the blind and the handicapped. Those affected would have largely been single mothers of young children, the only category in which blacks were predominant. After opposition by both state and federal officials, the program created a national controversy and never went into effect. Along with the failed urban renewal, the mid to late 1960s in Newburgh were also marked by race riots and other tensions.