Great Society Initiatives (1 gen 1964 anni – 1 gen 1968 anni)

Descrizione:

Great Society: President Lyndon B. Johnson’s domestic program, aimed at ending poverty, increasing individual opportunity, and enhancing national culture, which included civil rights legislation, antipoverty programs, medical insurance, aid to education, consumer protection, and aid to the arts and humanities.

Economic Opportunity Act: A 1964 law that was the centerpiece of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. It included programs such as Head Start (free nursery school), Job Corps (job training for young people), and regional development programs to spur economic growth.

Medicare:A health plan for the elderly passed in 1965 and funded by a surcharge on Social Security payroll taxes.
Medicaid: A health plan for the poor passed in 1965 and paid for by general tax revenues and administered by the states.

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s domestic program, aimed at ending poverty, increasing individual opportunity, and enhancing national culture, which included civil rights legislation, antipoverty programs, medical insurance, aid to education, consumer protection, and aid to the arts and humanities.

In many ways, Lyndon Johnson was the opposite of Kennedy. A seasoned Texas politician and longtime Senate leader, Johnson was most at home in the back rooms of power. He was a rough-edged character who had scrambled his way up, with few scruples, to wealth and political eminence. Even after he attained considerable power, LBJ never forgot his modest origins in the hill-country of Texas or lost his sympathy for the downtrodden. Johnson lacked his predecessor’s style and pedigree, but his astonishing energy and negotiating skills proved far more effective at getting legislation through Congress.

The Great Society

President Lyndon Johnson toured poverty-stricken regions of the country in 1964. Here he visits with Tom Fletcher, a father of eight children in Martin County, Kentucky. Johnson envisioned a dramatic expansion of liberal social programs, both to assist the needy and to strengthen the middle class, that he called the Great Society.

On assuming the presidency, Johnson promptly pushed for civil rights legislation, pitching the reforms as a memorial to his slain predecessor. His motives were complex. As a southerner who had previously opposed civil rights for African Americans, Johnson wanted to demonstrate that he would be the president for all the people. He also wanted to make a mark on history — a noble gesture but also one fed by Johnson’s considerable sense of self-importance. Politically, the move was risky. It would please the Democratic Party’s liberal wing, but as most northern African Americans already voted Democratic, few additional votes would be gained. In the South, many votes might be lost if conservative white Democrats revolted. Nationally, the drive for a civil rights act threatened to undermine party unity at a critical moment for the president’s broader agenda. But Johnson forged ahead, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act stands as a testament to the president’s political daring and the black freedom movement’s determination.

More than civil rights, Johnson’s political passion was a determination to “end poverty in our time.” In the midst of plenty, one-fifth of all Americans — hidden from most people’s sight in Appalachia, urban ghettos, migrant labor camps, and Indian reservations — lived in poverty. Johnson saw this privation as a national disgrace but not a permanent one. He declared, “for the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty.” The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, passed by congress at Johnson’s urging, created a series of programs to help the poorest Americans in what LBJ named “the War on Poverty.”

This legislation included several different initiatives. A program called Head Start provided free nursery schools to prepare disadvantaged preschoolers for kindergarten, while the Job Corps and Upward Bound provided young people with training and employment. Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), modeled on JFK’s Peace Corps, offered technical assistance to the urban and rural poor. An array of regional development programs focused on spurring economic growth in impoverished areas. Overall, the 1964 legislation did more to provide services to the poor than to create jobs, which led some critics to say it treated the symptoms of poverty rather than the underlying cause. Because of such limitations, the War on Poverty had an uneven legacy, but for the first time since the New Deal the federal government had made reducing poverty a national priority.

The 1964 Election
With the Civil Rights Act passed and his War on Poverty initiatives off the ground, Johnson turned his attention to the upcoming presidential election. Not content to deliver on the unfulfilled promise of JFK, he sought an electoral mandate of his own. Privately, Johnson saw himself as the heir not of Kennedy but Franklin Roosevelt and the expansive liberalism of the 1930s. He reminded his advisors never to forget “the meek and the humble and the lowly,” because “President Roosevelt never did.”

In the 1964 election, Johnson faced Republican senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. The archconservative Goldwater ran on an anticommunist, antigovernment platform. Positioning himself as an alternative to liberalism, Goldwater campaigned against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and promised a more vigorous Cold War foreign policy. Goldwater’s strident international outlook alienated many voters — he believed, for instance, that American generals and the NATO commander should have authorization to deploy nuclear weapons. “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” he had declared at the nominating convention. There remained strong national sentiment for Kennedy, and Johnson and his running mate Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota were happy to position themselves as fulfilling Kennedy’s legacy. Johnson and Humphrey won in a landslide, garnering more than 60 percent of the popular vote (Map 27.1). Although Goldwater was soundly defeated, his candidacy marked the beginning of a grassroots conservative revolt that would eventually transform the Republican Party. In the short run, however, Johnson’s sweeping victory gave him a mandate and congressional majorities that rivaled FDR’s in 1935 — just what he and liberal Democrats needed to push the Great Society forward (Table 27.1).

TABLE 27.1

Major Great Society Legislation
Civil Rights
1964

Twenty-fourth Amendment

Civil Rights Act

Outlawed poll tax in federal elections

Banned discrimination in employment and public accommodations on the basis of race, religion, sex, or national origin

1965

Voting Rights Act

Outlawed literacy tests for voting; provided federal supervision of registration in historically low-registration areas

Social Welfare
1964

Economic Opportunity Act

Created Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer War on Poverty programs such as Head Start, Job Corps, and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA)

1965

Medical Care Act

Provided medical care for the poor (Medicaid) and the elderly (Medicare)

1966

Minimum Wage Act

Raised hourly minimum wage from $1.25 to $1.60 and expanded coverage to new groups

Education
1965

Elementary and Secondary Education Act

National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities

Higher Education Act

Granted federal aid for education of poor children

Provided federal funding and support for artists and scholars

Provided federal scholarships for postsecondary education

Housing and Urban Development
1964

Urban Mass Transportation Act

Provided federal aid to urban mass transit

1965

Housing and Urban Development Act

Omnibus Housing Act

Created Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

Provided federal funds for public housing and rent subsidies for low-income families

1966

Metropolitan Area Redevelopment and Demonstration Cities Acts

Designated 150 “model cities” for combined programs of public housing, social services, and job training

Environment
1964

Wilderness Preservation Act

Designated 9.1 million acres of federal lands as “wilderness areas,” barring future roads, buildings, or commercial use

1965

Air and Water Quality Acts

Set tougher air quality standards; required states to enforce water quality standards for interstate waters

Miscellaneous
1964

Tax Reduction Act

Reduced personal and corporate income tax rates

1965

Immigration Act

Appalachian Regional Development Act

Abandoned national quotas of 1924 law, allowing more non-European immigration

Provided federal funding for roads, health clinics, and other public works projects in economically depressed regions

A color-coded United States map shows electoral, popular, and percent of popular votes received by the presidential candidates during the Presidential Election of 1964.
MAP 27.1 The Presidential Election of 1964

This map reveals how one-sided was the victory of Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater in 1964. Except for Arizona, his home state, Goldwater won only five states in the Deep South — not of much immediate consolation to him, but a sure indicator that the South was cutting its historic ties to the Democratic Party. Moreover, although soundly rejected in 1964, Goldwater’s far-right critique of “big government” laid the foundation for a Republican resurgence in the 1980s.


The map shows as follows.

Candidate: Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat):

Electoral Vote: 486; Popular Vote: 43,121,085; Percent of Popular Vote: 61.1

The states and seats won by him are as follows.

Washington: 9; Oregon: 6; California: 40; Montana: 4; Idaho: 4; Nevada: 3; North Dakota: 4; Wyoming: 3; Utah: 4; South Dakota: 4 ; Colorado: 6 ; Nebraska: 5; New Mexico: 4; Kansas: 7; Oklahoma: 8; Texas: 25; Minnesota: 10; Iowa: 9; Missouri: 12; Arkansas: 6; Wisconsin: 12; Illinois: 26; Michigan: 21; Indiana: 11; Kentucky: 9; Ohio: 25; West Virginia: 7; Virginia: 12; Tennessee: 11; North Carolina: 13; Florida: 14; Maine: 4; New Hampshire: 4; Vermont: 3; New York: 43; Pennsylvania: 29; Massachusetts: 4; Rhode Island: 14; Connecticut: 4; New Jersey: 8; Delaware: 17; Maryland: 3; Washington D. C. : 10;

Candidate: Barry M. Goldwater (Republican):

Electoral Vote: 52; Popular Vote: 27,145,161; Percent of Popular Vote: 38.5

The states and seats won by him are as follows.

Arizona: 5; Louisiana: 10; Alabama: 10; Mississippi: 7; Georgia: 12; and South Carolina: 8.

Great Society Initiatives
One of Johnson’s first successes after reelection was breaking a congressional deadlock on education and health care. Passed in April 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act authorized $1 billion in federal funds for teacher training and other educational programs. Standing in the Texas schoolhouse where he had once taught, Johnson said: “I believe no law I have signed or will ever sign means more to the future of America.” Six months later, Johnson signed the Higher Education Act, providing federal scholarships for college students. Johnson also had the votes he needed to achieve a form of national health insurance, which came later in the busy year of 1965 when he won passage of two new programs: Medicare, a health plan for the elderly funded by a surcharge on Social Security payroll taxes, and Medicaid, a health plan for the poor paid for by general tax revenues and administered by the states.

EXAM TIP
Evaluate the impact of federal legislation designed to address social and economic inequality.

The Great Society’s agenda included environmental reform as well: an expanded national park system, a cleanup of the nation’s air and water, protection for endangered species, stronger land-use planning, and highway beautification. Hardly pausing for breath, Johnson oversaw the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); won funding for hundreds of thousands of units of public housing; secured federal support for urban mass transportation, such as the new Washington, D.C. Metro and the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in San Francisco; ushered child safety and consumer protection laws through Congress; and helped create the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

There was even sufficient reform zeal to tackle the nation’s discriminatory immigration policy. The Immigration Act of 1965 dismantled the quota system that favored northern Europeans, replacing it with numerical limits that did not discriminate among nations of origin. To promote family reunification, the law also stipulated that close relatives of legal residents in the United States could be admitted outside those numerical limits, an exception that helped make Asian and Latin American immigrants a more prominent part of American society after 1965.

EXAM TIP
Evaluate the impact of Great Society programs on American identity and the power of the federal government.

Assessing the Great Society
The Great Society’s goals were too grand, and its scope too broad, to realize total success. But a number of positive changes occurred in the wake of the Great Society initiatives. The proportion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 20 percent to 13 percent between 1963 and 1968 (Figure 27.1). Millions of African Americans moved into the middle class, and the poverty rate among black people fell by half. Medicare and Medicaid, the most enduring of the Great Society programs, helped millions of elderly and poor citizens access necessary health care. Early education set up children for success. American society became more diverse, as did schools, workplaces, and the public sector. Liberals believed they were on the right track. Conservatives were skeptical. They attributed these positive changes to a booming economy rather than government initiatives and spending. Indeed, critics on the right accused Johnson and other liberals of trying to solve every social problem with a government program.

A line graph shows Americans in poverty over the period from 1959 to 2000.
FIGURE 27.1 Americans in Poverty, 1959–2000

Between 1959 and 1973 the poverty rate among American families dropped by more than half — from 23 percent to 11 percent. There was, however, sharp disagreement about the reasons for that notable decline. Liberals credited the War on Poverty, while conservatives favored the high-performing economy, with the significant poverty dip of 1965–1966 caused by military spending, not Johnson’s domestic programs.


The horizontal axis (x-axis)shows years ranging from 1959 to 1999 in increments of 2. The vertical axis (y-axis) shows percentage ranging from 5 to 50 in increments of 5. The approximate data from the graph are as follows.

The line begins at coordinates 1959, 22.5, and shows a negative slope which drops significantly at 1973, 11; and again rises a bit at 1983, 15 and finally ends at 11, 2000.

In the final analysis, the Great Society dramatically improved the financial situation of the elderly, reached millions of children, and increased the racial diversity of American society and workplaces. However, entrenched poverty remained, racial segregation in the largest cities worsened, and the national distribution of wealth remained highly skewed. In relative terms, the bottom 20 percent remained as far behind as ever. In these arenas, the Great Society made little progress.

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