The Great Society in two minutes
- Michael Harrington's The Other America (1962) described about 40 million poor Americans, and in 1964 Johnson declared war on poverty and Congress created the Office of Economic Opportunity.
- In 1965 Congress passed Medicare for older Americans, Medicaid for the poor, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act, and Head Start opened that summer.
- The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended the national-origins quotas of the 1920s and favored family ties and skills, and in later decades most immigrants came from Latin America and Asia.
- The Supreme Court under Earl Warren also expanded individual rights, banning school-sponsored prayer (Engel, 1962), guaranteeing lawyers to poor defendants (Gideon, 1963) and requiring police warnings to suspects (Miranda, 1966).
- The official poverty rate fell from about 19 percent in 1964 to about 11 percent in 1973, helped by a growing economy, though the programs never received funding equal to their promise.
- The Vietnam War drew money and attention away, Republicans gained 47 House seats in the 1966 elections, and on March 31, 1968 Johnson announced he would not run again.
- On the exam: Questions compare the Great Society with the New Deal, ask whether it expanded the role of the federal government, and trace its effects on poverty, health, education and immigration.
Topic 8.9 key terms
- Appalachia
The mountain region of the eastern United States, running from southern New York down into Alabama. In the early 1960s its coal counties, in eastern Kentucky and West Virginia especially, had some of the highest poverty rates in the country.
- Poverty rate
The share of people whose family cash income falls below a set federal line. That line was built in the mid-1960s, so the Census worked out 1964's rate afterward, and the official rate counts cash income, not hospital bills or food aid.
- War on Poverty
Johnson's name for the federal anti-poverty effort he declared in his January 1964 State of the Union. The Economic Opportunity Act, signed that August, created an Office of Economic Opportunity to run programs such as Job Corps and Community Action.
- The Other America (1962)
Michael Harrington's book arguing that about 40 million Americans lived in poverty that the rest of the country rarely saw, in the middle of postwar prosperity. It helped make poverty a national political problem.
- Poverty line
The income below which a family counts as poor. Mollie Orshansky built it from the cost of a minimal food budget times three. The Census Bureau still uses it, adjusted each year for inflation.
- Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Title I)
The 1965 law that gave federal money to public schools. Title I sent the most help to districts with many low-income students. It was the first large federal aid program for K–12 schools.
- Head Start
A federal preschool program for children from low-income families, begun in the summer of 1965 under the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. It was a program of the Office of Economic Opportunity, not a separate law.
- Equality of opportunity vs. equality of result
Equality of opportunity means the same legal rights and the same chance at the start. Equality of result means people end up in similar places. At Howard, Johnson said opening the gates was not enough. Critics feared the government would judge by outcomes.
- Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
The cabinet department Congress created in September 1965 to run federal housing and city programs. Its first secretary, Robert C. Weaver, was the first Black member of a president's cabinet.
- Higher Education Act of 1965
The 1965 law that created federal scholarships, low-interest student loans and work-study money to help low- and middle-income students go to college.
- Medicare
Health insurance for people 65 and older, passed in 1965 as an amendment to Social Security. Part A pays hospital bills through a payroll tax. That plan came from the King–Anderson bill. Part B is voluntary insurance for doctor bills, from John Byrnes's Bettercare proposal. In 1966 a worker paid about $1.50 a month toward Part A, and the employer paid the same.
- Medicaid
A program in the same 1965 law, for people with very low incomes, including children and people with disabilities. States run it. Washington shares the cost. It grew out of the Kerr–Mills program of 1960 and out of the doctors' Eldercare plan, a means test run by the states.
- Social Security Amendments of 1965
Public Law 89-97, signed July 30, 1965. One law created Medicare and Medicaid and raised Social Security cash benefits.
- Title VI
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars race discrimination in any program that receives federal money. When Medicare payments began on July 1, 1966, a hospital had to follow that rule to be paid.
- National-origins quotas
Caps set by the Immigration Act of 1924 and kept by the McCarran–Walter Act (1952). Large shares of the visas went to Northern and Western Europe. Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa got small ones. The number turned on where a person was from, not on a skill or a relative.
- Hart–Celler Act
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Public Law 89-236, signed October 3, 1965. It ended national-origins quotas. People were admitted by family ties, job skills, and refugee status, under hemisphere ceilings. Also called the Immigration Act of 1965.
- Family reunification
The 1965 order of visas: relatives of citizens and of legal residents came before workers, and refugees had a share too. Immediate relatives of citizens stood outside the numerical ceiling. That rule, more than the signing day, is what later changed who came.
- Bracero program
A 1942–1964 program that admitted Mexican farmworkers on temporary contracts. Congress let it end on December 31, 1964. A legal way in closed. Entries without papers grew.
- Refugee
A person admitted because of persecution, or because they were leaving a communist state. The 1965 law gave refugees one preference inside the ceiling. Cubans, and later people from Indochina, also came through laws written just for them.
- Office of Economic Opportunity
The agency the 1964 poverty act set up to run Job Corps, VISTA, Head Start, and Community Action. Over about ten years it disbursed $12.5 billion. One year of the Vietnam War, fiscal 1968, cost about twice that.
- Guns and butter
Journalists' name for funding a war and domestic programs at the same time. Johnson tried not to make the country choose. Prices were already rising. In June 1968 Congress passed a 10 percent tax surcharge.
- Community Action Program
Local agencies, paid by the poverty office, that were supposed to let the people they served help run the programs. Mayors fought that. Edith Green's 1967 amendment let a state or a city take an agency over.
- Poor People's Campaign
SCLC's 1968 plan to bring poor people to Washington to demand work, income, and a decent place to live. Ralph Abernathy led it after King was killed. The camp on the Mall, Resurrection City, stood from May 13 until police cleared it on June 24.
- Resurrection City
The plywood camp the Poor People's Campaign built on the National Mall, May 13 to June 24, 1968. It rained. A few thousand people lived there. On June 24 the police cleared what was left.
- Food Stamp Act
The 1964 law that let low-income households buy food with stamps. Still law. In 2008 the program was renamed SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
The Porch
April 24, 1964
Key terms: Appalachia, Poverty rate, War on Poverty
April 24, 1964 Inez, Kentucky
Helicopters follow Route 3 up the hollow. The president has come to show Congress what poverty looks like.
The President of the United States sits down on a pile of lumber.
Tom Fletcher, thirty-eight, worked the railroad, the mines and a sawmill. The work closed up. He and his wife have eight children.
He told reporters he earned about four hundred dollars last year. He had a second-grade education. The house cost about a hundred dollars.
No tape of the porch is known. Johnson's 1971 memoir says Fletcher's greatest regret was that his two oldest children had left school.
By the Census's later count, thirty-six million Americans were poor. One in five, in the richest nation on earth.
He had declared the war in January. This afternoon was the picture.
What lasted, and what stopped it?
The Other America
1962–January 1964
Key terms: The Other America (1962), Poverty line, War on Poverty
In 1962, most Americans were doing well.
Michael Harrington's 1962 book began with the America you could see from the highway. Then it turned to the one you couldn't: about 40 million people.
Appalachia. The rural South. Indian reservations. City blocks. And everywhere, people over 65.
No official line said who was poor. Mollie Orshansky, at Social Security, drew one.
She took the Agriculture Department's economy food plan and multiplied it by three. A 1955 survey had found families spent about a third of their income on food.
The government still uses her rule, adjusted for prices. Applied backward, it finds 22.2 percent poor in 1960. By 1964: 19.0 percent, 36.1 million people.
At twenty, Johnson taught Mexican American children in Cotulla, Texas. He would tell Congress about it in 1965.
He had run the New Deal's National Youth Administration in Texas, then got power lines built across the Hill Country.
Lyndon B. Johnson
This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.
Lyndon B. Johnson
The richest Nation on earth can afford to win it.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope — some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both.
Johnson phoned Sargent Shriver to tell him about the press conference.
R. Sargent Shriver
What press conference?
Lyndon B. Johnson
This afternoon.
R. Sargent Shriver
Oh, God.
Shriver already ran the Peace Corps. He got the poverty job before he had a plan. Johnson had his announcement. He did not yet have the votes for everything else.
Miss Kate
spring–summer 1965
Key terms: Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Title I), Head Start, Equality of opportunity vs. equality of result, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Higher Education Act of 1965
Palm Sunday, 1965. The president goes back to school.
Lyndon B. Johnson
My Attorney General tells me that it is legal and constitutional to sign this act on Sunday, even on Palm Sunday.
His minister agreed the Lord's day would survive.
Lyndon B. Johnson
They tell me, Miss Kate, that I recited my first lessons while sitting on your lap.
The law sent federal money to schools in poor districts: about $1.3 billion.
Lyndon B. Johnson
I believe deeply no law I have signed or will ever sign means more to the future of America.
The Times reported one pen. He gave it to Miss Kate, and she left it on the table.
Johnson liked to sign a law where the picture would be good.
Some of his Cotulla students were there.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Few of them could speak English, and I couldn't speak much Spanish.
Lyndon B. Johnson
My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast, hungry.
Lyndon B. Johnson
They knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice.
Head Start began that summer. Many classrooms were church basements.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Some 2,000 child development centers serving as many as possibly a half million children.
Lyndon B. Johnson
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race
Lyndon B. Johnson
and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity.
Lyndon B. Johnson
All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.
He meant a door is no use without the means to walk through it. Critics heard a government that would grade the results.
In 1966 Robert Weaver became the first Black cabinet member, running the new housing department.
That September, a national foundation for the arts and the humanities.
San Marcos, Texas November 8, 1965 · Higher Education Act
In November he signed the Higher Education Act at his old college.
General Motors had Ralph Nader followed. In 1966 Congress passed a car safety law.
Lady Bird Johnson's highway beautification law came a year after the Wilderness Act. The bigger environmental laws come later.
You watched those get won. They were part of this same program.
The Card
July 1965
Key terms: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security Amendments of 1965, Title VI
A television, on a Wednesday.
Lyndon B. Johnson
I have today ordered to Viet-Nam the Air Mobile Division and certain other forces which will raise our fighting strength from 75,000 to 125,000 men almost immediately.
On Wednesday he raised the number of soldiers in Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000. On Friday he flew to Missouri.
On November 19, 1945, Truman asked Congress for national health insurance. He lost. In 1961 the doctors hired Ronald Reagan to say what they feared. You will meet him again.
Wilbur Mills asked Wilbur Cohen to put three plans into one bill. Hospitals for the old. Doctor bills if you signed up. Care for the poor.
Open three folders. See who each program was for.
When payments began, a hospital had to obey the Civil Rights Act to be paid.
By July 1, 1966, hospitals with ninety-two percent of the nation's beds had agreed. A few hundred Southern hospitals refused the money and stayed segregated.
Harry S. Truman
I am glad to have lived this long and to witness today the signing of the Medicare bill.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Well, today, Mr. President, and my fellow Americans, we are taking such action—twenty years later.
Seventy-two pens. The first two went to Harry and Bess. The first card went to Truman. More than eighteen million were over sixty-five. About a dollar fifty a month from a worker, for hospital insurance.
The Truman Library. He wanted Truman in the picture.
The Quota Book
1952–1975, centered on October 3, 1965
Key terms: National-origins quotas, Hart–Celler Act, Family reunification, Bracero program, Refugee
In 1924, Congress set quotas by national origin.
Harry S. Truman
The idea behind this discriminatory policy was, to put it baldly, that Americans with English or Irish names
Harry S. Truman
were better people and better citizens than Americans with Italian or Greek or Polish names.
In 1952 the Senate overrode Truman, 57 to 26, and Senator Johnson voted yes.
Emanuel Celler
Since the peoples of Africa and Asia have very few relatives here, comparatively few could immigrate from those countries.
Lyndon B. Johnson
That issue is, to what congressional district does Liberty Island really belong—Congressman Farbstein or Congressman Gallagher?
Lyndon B. Johnson
It will be settled by whoever of the two can walk first to the top of the Statue of Liberty.
Lyndon B. Johnson
This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill.
Lyndon B. Johnson
It does not affect the lives of millions.
Lyndon B. Johnson
For it does repair a very deep and painful flaw in the fabric of American justice.
He credited Celler's and McCormack's maiden speeches.
Edward M. Kennedy
First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually.
Edward M. Kennedy
Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.
He was answering unions worried about wages, and people who wanted the quotas kept. He was also wrong about the numbers.
The 1965 law ended national-origins quotas. Family, then skills, then refugees. The old quotas phased out by July 1968. Congress capped the Western Hemisphere at 120,000.
People still came for a job, a family, or a way out. The law changed who was allowed to try.
About 14,000 Cuban children flew alone. Father Bryan O. Walsh arranged the flights. The missile crisis stopped the flights. They did not know when they would see their parents.
Cubans admitted or paroled after January 1959, here two years, could become residents. The same liberalism that fought communism abroad opened a door to people leaving it.
In 1972 José Ruvalcaba came from Mexico to work at Lake Tahoe. He told the story himself in 1992.
On May 23, 1975, Congress funded resettlement for refugees from Indochina. Julia Taft ran it. Many towns did not want them. The helicopters come later.
The Philippines card is for nurses. Medicare's hospitals would need them.
Guns and Butter
1966–March 31, 1968
Key terms: Office of Economic Opportunity, Guns and butter, Community Action Program
The war had a price.
The two stacks did not match.
In 1968 the war cost about $26 billion. The poverty office, across ten years, spent about half of that.
His January 1967 budget put Southeast Asia at $19.9 billion that year and $22.4 billion the next. He tried not to make the country choose. Journalists called it guns and butter.
November 8, 1966 Midterm elections
Democrats lost 47 House seats and 3 Senate seats. They still ran Congress. The two-thirds margin was gone.
Mayor Richard Daley wanted the money through city hall. He was not alone. Edith Green's 1967 amendment let local governments take over a community action agency.
A program written so the poor could challenge city hall was handed back to city hall.
The programs had never been funded at the size of the promise. King said the war was taking the money.
August 1965 Watts, Los Angeles
In August 1965, Watts burned. You have already seen why.
March 12, 1968 New Hampshire primary
McCarthy took about 42 percent. Johnson, a write-in, took about 49. Robert Kennedy entered on March 16.
Reporters called the distance between the briefings and the war a credibility gap.
Lyndon B. Johnson
I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.
What he had signed was still law. Whether it would stay funded was now someone else's fight.
What Lasted
March–June 1968, and after
Key terms: Poor People's Campaign, Resurrection City, Office of Economic Opportunity, Food Stamp Act
Five days before that speech, King's staff met.
March 26, Atlanta. The memo assigns the march. It quotes no one.
April 4, 1968
King was shot and killed in Memphis, where he had gone for a sanitation strike.
Abernathy had been with King since Montgomery. He led the campaign on. The campaign asked for jobs, income, and housing. The camp stood from May 13 to June 24.
The boom did part of the drop. In this period, 1973 is the bottom.
The rate counts cash, not hospital bills. For the elderly, Social Security did more than Medicare. Medicare changed the bills.
Congress renamed the poverty office in 1975 and shut it in 1981. The New Deal answered a collapse. The Great Society answered poverty that a boom had not fixed.
By his account, a roadside-cleaning job for unemployed fathers. It did not last. Then mechanic training, sickness, and a disability check. He did not become secure.
The president's visit was the worst thing that ever happened to the family.
Since then we've had nothing but people wanting to talk about that day and taking photos of this house.