Great Society National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities

Political program launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65

Pens used by President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign Great Society legislation

The Bang-up Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The term was starting time coined during a 1964 commencement accost by President Lyndon B. Johnson at Ohio Academy^[1] and came to represent his domestic agenda.^[ii] The main goal was the total elimination of poverty and racial injustice.

New major spending programs that addressed teaching, medical care, urban bug, rural poverty, and transportation were launched during this period. The program and its initiatives were subsequently promoted by him and swain Democrats in Congress in the 1960s and years following. The Neat Guild in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic calendar of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Some Great Club proposals were stalled initiatives from John F. Kennedy's New Frontier.^[3] Johnson'southward success depended on his skills of persuasion, coupled with the Autonomous landslide victory in the 1964 elections that brought in many new liberals to Congress, making the House of Representatives in 1965 the most liberal House since 1938.^[4] ^[3] In the 88th Congress it was estimated that there were 56 liberals and 44 conservatives in the Senate, and 224 liberals and 211 conservatives in the Business firm. In the 89th Congress it was estimated that there were 59 liberals and 41 conservatives in the Senate, and 267 liberals and 168 conservatives in the Business firm.^[5]

Anti-state of war Democrats complained that spending on the Vietnam State of war choked off the Great Guild. While some of the programs take been eliminated or had their funding reduced, many of them, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Older Americans Act and federal education funding, go on to the present. The Swell Social club'due south programs expanded nether the administrations of Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.^[half-dozen]

Economic and social weather condition [edit]

Unlike the old New Deal, which was a response to a severe fiscal and economic calamity, the Cracking Society initiatives came during a menstruation of rapid economic growth. Kennedy proposed an across-the-board taxation cut lowering the top marginal income tax rate in the United States by 20%, from 91% to 71%, which was enacted in February 1964, 3 months after Kennedy'due south assassination, under Johnson. The taxation cut also significantly reduced marginal rates in the lower brackets likewise equally for corporations. The gross national production rose x% in the showtime yr of the tax cut, and economic growth averaged a rate of iv.v% from 1961 to 1968.^[7]

GNP increased by seven% in 1964, 8% in 1965, and nine% in 1966. The unemployment charge per unit fell beneath five%, and by 1966 the number of families with incomes of $vii,000 a twelvemonth or more than had reached 55%, compared with 22% in 1950. In 1968, when John Kenneth Galbraith published a new edition of The Affluent Social club, the boilerplate income of the American family stood at $8,000, double what it had been a decade earlier.^[8]

Johnson's speeches in Ohio and Michigan [edit]

Johnson'south first public reference to the "Great Society" took place during a oral communication to students on May 7, 1964, at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio:

And with your courage and with your compassion and your desire, we will build a Great Society. It is a social club where no kid will become unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled.^[9]

He later formally presented his specific goals for the Great Order in another speech communication at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 22, 1964.

We are going to get together the best thought and broadest knowledge from all over the earth to find these answers. I intend to establish working groups to fix a serial of conferences and meetings—on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. From these studies, we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.^[x]

Presidential chore forces [edit]

Well-nigh immediately later the Ann Arbor speech, 14 separate task forces began studying nigh all major aspects of Us society under the guidance of presidential assistants Bill Moyers and Richard North. Goodwin.^[11] In his employ of job forces to provide adept communication on policy, Johnson was following Kennedy's case, but unlike Kennedy, Johnson directed his task forces to piece of work in secret.^[11] His intent was to prevent his program from beingness batty by public criticism of proposals that had non all the same been reviewed.^[12] The boilerplate task force had five to seven members and mostly was equanimous of governmental experts and academics.^[thirteen]

Subsequently the task force reports were submitted to the White House, Moyers began a second round of review. The recommendations were circulated amidst the agencies concerned, and strategies were developed for getting the proposed legislation through Congress.^[14] On January 4, 1965, Johnson appear much of his proposed programme in his Land of the Spousal relationship Accost.

The election of 1964 [edit]

With the exception of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,^[15] the Great Gild calendar was not a widely discussed outcome during the 1964 presidential ballot campaign. Johnson won the election with 61% of the vote, and he carried all but six states. Democrats gained enough seats to control more two-thirds of each chamber in the Eighty-ninth Congress, with a 68–32 margin in the Senate and a 295–140 margin in the House of Representatives.^[8]

Johnson won a big majority of the Jewish vote, a liberal constituency that gave strong back up to the Neat Lodge.^[xvi]

The two sessions of the Lxxx-9th Congress [edit]

The political realignment immune House leaders to alter rules that had allowed Southern Democrats to kill New Frontier and civil rights legislation in committee, which aided efforts to pass Great Society legislation. In 1965, the outset session of the Eighty-9th Congress created the core of the Great Society. It began by enacting long-stalled legislation such as Medicare and federal help to education so moved into other areas, including high-speed mass transit, rental supplements, truth in packaging, environmental safety legislation, new provisions for mental health facilities, the Teacher Corps, manpower grooming, the Caput Get-go program, aid to urban mass transit, a sit-in cities program, a housing act that included rental subsidies, and an act for higher education.^[8] The Johnson Administration submitted 87 bills to Congress, and Johnson signed 84, or 96%, arguably the nearly successful legislative agenda in US congressional history.^[17]

The major policy areas [edit]

Privacy [edit]

The Naked Society is a 1964 book on privacy by Vance Packard. The volume argues that changes in technology are encroaching on privacy and could create a order in the hereafter with radically different privacy standards. Packard criticized advertisers' unfettered use of private data to create marketing schemes. He compared a recent Great Club initiative by then-president Lyndon B. Johnson, the National Data Banking concern, to the employ of information by advertisers and argued for increased data privacy measures to ensure that information did non find its fashion into the wrong hands. The essay led Congress to create the Special Subcommittee on the Invasion of Privacy and inspired privacy advocates such as Neil Gallagher and Sam Ervin to fight what they perceived equally Johnson'southward flagrant disregard for consumer privacy. Ervin criticized Johnson's domestic calendar every bit invasive and claimed that the unfiltered database of consumers' data as a sign of presidential abuse of power. Ervin warned that "The reckoner never forgets".^[eighteen] Jerry M. Rosenberg dedicated a chapter of his 1969 book The Death of Privacy to the National Information Bank.^[19]

Civil rights [edit]

Historian Alan Brinkley has suggested that the nearly important domestic achievement of the Great Society may have been its success in translating some of the demands of the ceremonious rights movement into law.^[xx] Four civil rights acts were passed, including three laws in the kickoff two years of Johnson's presidency. The Civil Rights Deed of 1964^[15] forbade job discrimination and the segregation of public accommodations.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 bodacious minority registration and voting. It suspended employ of literacy or other voter-qualification tests that had sometimes served to go on African-Americans off voting lists and provided for federal court lawsuits to stop discriminatory poll taxes. It also reinforced the Civil Rights Deed of 1964^[15] by authorizing the appointment of federal voting examiners in areas that did not see voter-participation requirements. The Immigration and Nationality Services Human activity of 1965 abolished the national-origin quotas in immigration law. The Civil Rights Human activity of 1968 banned housing discrimination and extended constitutional protections to Native Americans on reservations.

Johnson recognized the benefits and costs of passing ceremonious rights legislation. His support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act was despite his personal opinions on racial matters, as Johnson regularly articulated thoughts and disparaging language confronting racial minorities, including confronting African-Americans and Asians.^[21] Scholar and biographer Robert Caro suggested that Johnson used racially charged language to appease legislators in an endeavour to pass civil rights laws, including adapting how he said the word 'negro' based upon where the legislator's commune was located.^[21]

The "War On Poverty" [edit]

The August 1964 signing of the Poverty Bill

The well-nigh aggressive and controversial part of the Great Society was its initiative to end poverty. The Kennedy Assistants had been contemplating a federal endeavor against poverty. Johnson, who, every bit a teacher, had observed extreme poverty in Texas among Mexican-Americans, launched an "unconditional war on poverty" in the commencement months of his presidency with the goal of eliminating hunger, illiteracy, and unemployment from American life. The centerpiece of the War on Poverty was the Economic Opportunity Deed of 1964, which created an Office of Economical Opportunity (OEO) to oversee a diversity of community-based antipoverty programs.

Federal funds were provided for special education schemes in slum areas, including help in paying for books and ship, while fiscal assist was besides provided for slum clearances and rebuilding urban center areas. In add-on, the Appalachian Regional Development Human action of 1965 created jobs in one of the most impoverished regions of the country.^{[ citation needed ]} The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 provided various methods through which young people from poor homes could receive task training and college education.^[22]

The OEO reflected a delicate consensus among policymakers that the best way to bargain with poverty was not simply to raise the incomes of the poor but to aid them better themselves through education, job preparation, and customs evolution. Central to its mission was the thought of "customs action", the participation of the poor in framing and administering the programs designed to help them.

Programs [edit]

The War on Poverty began with a $ane billion appropriation in 1964 and spent another $2 billion in the following ii years. It gave rising to dozens of programs, among them the Task Corps, whose purpose was to help disadvantaged youth develop marketable skills; the Neighborhood Youth Corps, established to give poor urban youths work experience and to encourage them to stay in school; Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), a domestic version of the Peace Corps, which placed concerned citizens with customs-based agencies to work towards empowerment of the poor; the Model Cities Program for urban redevelopment; Up Bound, which assisted poor high school students entering higher; legal services for the poor; and the Food Postage Act of 1964 (which expanded the federal food postage stamp program).^[23]

Programs included the Community Activity Program, which initiated local Community Activeness Agencies charged with helping the poor get cocky-sufficient; and Projection Head Start, which offered preschool didactics for poor children. In addition, funding was provided for the establishment of community health centers to expand access to health intendance,^[24] while major amendments were made to Social Security in 1965 and 1967 which significantly increased benefits, expanded coverage, and established new programs to gainsay poverty and enhance living standards.^[25] In addition, average AFDC payments were 35% college in 1968 than in 1960, only remained insufficient and uneven.^[26]

Education [edit]

The most of import educational component of the Keen Order was the Unproblematic and Secondary Education Act of 1965, designed by Commissioner of Instruction Francis Keppel. It was signed into law on April 11, 1965, less than three months after it was introduced. It ended a long-continuing political taboo by providing pregnant federal aid to public instruction, initially allocating more than than $1 billion to help schools purchase materials and beginning special education programs to schools with a loftier concentration of low-income children. During its first yr of operation, the Act authorized a $1.1 billion program of grants to states, for allocations to school districts with large numbers of children of low-income families, funds to utilize community facilities for pedagogy within the unabridged customs, funds to improve educational research and to strengthen state departments of education, and grants for the purchase of books and library materials.^[27] The Act also established Head Get-go, which had originally been started by the Office of Economic Opportunity as an eight-week summer programme, as a permanent plan.

The Higher Didactics Facilities Act of 1963, which was signed into law by Johnson a month after condign president,^[28] authorized several times more college assistance within a 5-yr period than had been appropriated nether the Land Grant Higher in a century. It provided better higher libraries, ten to twenty new graduate centers, several new technical institutes, classrooms for several hundred thousand students, and twenty-five to xxx new community colleges a year.^[29]

This major slice of legislation was followed by the Higher Education Act of 1965, which increased federal money given to universities, created scholarships and low-involvement loans for students, and established a national Teacher Corps to provide teachers to poverty-stricken areas of the Usa. The Act as well began a transition from federally funded institutional assistance to individual student aid.

In 1964, basic improvements in the National Defence force Education Act were accomplished, and total funds available to educational institutions were increased. The yearly limit on loans to graduate and professional students was raised from $1,000 to $2,500, and the aggregate limit was raised from $five,000 to $ten,000. The program was extended to include geography, history, reading, English language, and civics, and guidance and counseling programs were extended to unproblematic and public junior high schools.^[23]

The Bilingual Education Human activity of 1968 offered federal aid to local school districts in assisting them to address the needs of children with limited English language-speaking power until information technology expired in 2002.^[30]

The Great Society programs too provided support for postgraduate clinical grooming for both nurses and physicians committed to piece of work with disadvantaged patients in rural and urban health clinics.^[31]

Health [edit]

Medicare [edit]

President Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965.

The Social Security Act of 1965 authorized Medicare and provided federal funding for many of the medical costs of older Americans.^[32] The legislation overcame the biting resistance, particularly from the American Medical Association, to the thought of publicly funded wellness care or "socialized medicine" past making its benefits available to anybody over threescore-five, regardless of need, and by linking payments to the existing individual insurance system.

Medicaid [edit]

In 1966 welfare recipients of all ages received medical care through the Medicaid program. Medicaid was created on July 30, 1965 under Title Xix of the Social Security Deed of 1965. Each state administers its own Medicaid programme while the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) monitors the state-run programs and establishes requirements for service commitment, quality, funding, and eligibility standards.

Welfare [edit]

A number of improvements were made to the Social Security program in terms of both coverage and adequacy of benefits. The Tax Aligning Act of 1966 included a provision for special payments nether the social security program to certain uninsured individuals aged 72 and over. The Social Security Amendments of 1965 included a 7% increment in cash benefits, a liberalization of the definition of disability, a liberalization of the corporeality a person can earn and all the same get full benefits (the so-called retirement test), payment of benefits to eligible children aged 18–21 who are attending school, payment of benefits to widows at historic period 60 on an actuarially reduced footing, coverage of cocky-employed physicians, coverage of tips as wages, liberalization of insured-status requirements for persons already aged 72 or over, an increase to $6,600 the amount of earnings counted for contribution and benefit purposes (the contribution and benefit base), and an increase in the contribution rate schedule.^[25]

The Social Security Amendments of 1967 included a 13% increase in sometime-age, survivors, and inability insurance benefits, with a minimum monthly benefit of $55 for a person retiring at or afterwards age-65 (or receiving disability benefits), an increase from $35 to $forty in the special age-72 payments, an increase from $1,500 to $1,680 in the amount a person may earn in a year and withal go full benefits for that year, monthly greenbacks benefits for disabled widows and disabled dependent widowers at age l at reduced rates, a liberalization of the eligibility requirements for benefits for dependents and Survivors of women workers, and an alternative insured-condition test for workers disabled earlier historic period 31.^[25]

Additionally, new guidelines for determining eligibility for disability insurance benefits, additional non-contributory wage credits for servicemen, broadened coverage of clergy and members of religious orders who have not taken a vow of poverty, and an increase in the contribution and benefit base from $6,600 to $7,800, beginning in 1968. In addition, the Social Security Amendments of 1967 provided the showtime major amendments of Medicare. These social security amendments extended the coverage of the program to include certain services previously excluded, simplified reimbursement procedures under both the hospital and medical insurance plans, and facilitated the administrative procedures concerning general enrollment periods.^[25]

The Nutrient Postage Act of 1964 made the program permanent, while the Social Security Amendments of 1967 specified that at least 6% of monies for maternal and child health should exist spent on family planning. By 1967, the federal government began requiring state health departments to make contraceptives available to all adults who were poor. Meal programs for depression-income senior citizens began in 1965, with the federal government providing funding for "congregate meals" and "dwelling-delivered meals."^[33] The Child Nutrition Act, passed in 1966, made improvements to nutritional aid to children such as in the introduction of the School Breakfast Programme.^[34]

The arts and cultural institutions [edit]

Johnson promoted the arts in terms of social betterment, not creative creativity. He typically emphasized qualitative and quantitative goals, specially the ability of the arts to improve the quality of life of ordinary Americans and to reduce the inequalities between the haves and the accept-nots. Karen Patricia Heath observes that, "Johnson personally was non much interested in the acquisition of cognition, cultural or otherwise, for its own sake, nor did he have time for art appreciation or meeting with artists."^[35]

National Endowments for the arts and the humanities [edit]

In September 1965, Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act into law, creating both the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities as split up, independent agencies. Lobbying for federally funded arts and humanities support began during the Kennedy Administration. In 1963 three scholarly and educational organizations—the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Quango of Graduate Schools in America, and the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa—joined together to institute the National Commission on the Humanities. In June 1964, the commission released a report that suggested that the emphasis placed on scientific discipline endangered the study of the humanities from elementary schools through postgraduate programs. In order to correct the residue, information technology recommended "the establishment by the President and the Congress of the Usa of a National Humanities Foundation."^[36]

In August 1964, Representative William S. Moorhead of Pennsylvania proposed legislation to implement the commission's recommendations. Support from the White Business firm followed in September, when Johnson lent his endorsement during a oral communication at Dark-brown University. In March 1965, the White House proposed the institution of a National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities and requested $20 million in kickoff-up funds. The committee'south report had generated other proposals, but the White House's approach eclipsed them. The administration's plan, which chosen for the creation of two separate agencies each advised by a governing trunk, was the version that the Congress canonical. Richard Nixon dramatically expanded funding for NEH and NEA.^[36]

Public dissemination [edit]

After the First National Briefing on Long-Range Financing of Educational Boob tube Stations in December 1964 called for a study of the role of noncommercial education television in club, the Carnegie Corporation agreed to finance the work of a fifteen-member national commission. Its landmark study, Public Television: A Program for Action, published on January 26, 1967, popularized the phrase "public television" and assisted the legislative campaign for federal aid. The Public Broadcasting Deed of 1967, enacted less than 10 months later, chartered the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as a private, non-profit corporation.

The police initiated federal assistance through the CPB for the functioning, equally opposed to the funding of uppercase facilities, of public dissemination. The CPB initially collaborated with the pre-existing National Educational Television organisation, simply in 1969 decided to offset the Public Dissemination Service (PBS). A public radio written report commissioned by the CPB and the Ford Foundation and conducted from 1968 to 1969 led to the establishment of National Public Radio, a public radio organization under the terms of the amended Public Broadcasting Act.

Cultural centers [edit]

Two long-planned national cultural and arts facilities received federal funding that would allow for their completion through Great Lodge legislation. A National Cultural Center, suggested during the Franklin Roosevelt Assistants and created past a bipartisan law signed past Dwight Eisenhower, was transformed into the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a living memorial to the assassinated president. Fundraising for the original cultural center had been poor prior to legislation creating the Kennedy Middle, which passed two months after the president'south death and provided $23 one thousand thousand for construction. The Kennedy Centre opened in 1971.^[37]

In the tardily 1930s the U.S. Congress mandated a Smithsonian Establishment art museum for the National Mall, and a blueprint by Eliel Saarinen was unveiled in 1939, merely plans were shelved during World State of war II. A 1966 deed of the U.S. Congress established the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden equally part of the Smithsonian Establishment with a focus on modernistic art, in dissimilarity to the existing National Fine art Gallery. The museum was primarily federally funded, although New York financier Joseph Hirshhorn after contributed $1 one thousand thousand toward edifice structure, which began in 1969. The Hirshhorn opened in 1974.^[38]

Transportation [edit]

Transportation initiatives started during President Johnson's term in office included the consolidation of transportation agencies into a cabinet-level position under the Section of Transportation.^[39] The department was authorized past Congress on Oct 15, 1966 and began operations on April 1, 1967. Congress passed a variety of legislation to back up improvements in transportation including The Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964 which provided $375 million for large-calibration urban public or private runway projects in the form of matching funds to cities and states and created the Urban Mass Transit Administration (now the Federal Transit Assistants), High Speed Footing Transportation Act of 1965 which resulted in the creation of loftier-speed track between New York and Washington, and the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Condom Act of 1966—a bill largely taken credit for by Ralph Nader, whose book Unsafe at Any Speed he claims helped inspire the legislation.

Consumer protection [edit]

In 1964, Johnson named Assistant Secretary of Labor Esther Peterson to be the first presidential assistant for consumer diplomacy.

The Cigarette Labeling and Advert Act of 1965 required packages to carry alarm labels. The Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 gear up standards through cosmos of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The Off-white Packaging and Labeling Act requires products identify manufacturer, address, clearly marker quantity and servings. The statute as well authorized the HEW and the FTC to establish and ascertain voluntary standard sizes. The original would have mandated compatible standards of size and weight for comparison shopping, but the concluding law only outlawed exaggerated size claims.

The Kid Safety Deed of 1966 prohibited any chemical then dangerous that no warning can make it safety. The Flammable Fabrics Deed of 1967 fix standards for children's sleepwear, but not baby blankets.

The Wholesome Meat Act of 1967 required inspection of meat which must meet federal standards. The Truth-in-Lending Act of 1968 required lenders and credit providers to disclose the total toll of finance charges in both dollars and annual per centum rates, on installment loan and sales. The Wholesome Poultry Products Act of 1968 required inspection of poultry which must meet federal standards. The Land Sales Disclosure Act of 1968 provided safeguards confronting fraudulent practices in the sale of state. The Radiation Condom Human action of 1968 provided standards and recalls for defective electronic products.

The environment [edit]

Joseph A. Califano, Jr. has suggested that the Great Society's primary contribution to the environment was an extension of protections beyond those aimed at the conservation of untouched resources.^[twoscore] In a message he transmitted to Congress, President Johnson said:

The air we breathe, our water, our soil and wildlife, are beingness blighted by poisons and chemicals which are the by-products of technology and industry. The society that receives the rewards of technology, must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for [their] command. To bargain with these new problems volition require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and relieve it from devastation, nosotros must restore what has been destroyed and save the dazzler and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be non just the classic conservation of protection [against] development, merely a creative conservation of restoration and innovation.

—Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty; February 8, 1965^[41]

At the behest of Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, the Peachy Society included several new ecology laws to protect air and water. Ecology legislation enacted included:

H2o Quality Act of 1965
Clean Air Human activity of 1963
Wilderness Human activity of 1964
Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966
National Trails System Act of 1968
Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968
Land and Water Conservation Fund Deed of 1965
Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965
Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act of 1965
National Historic Preservation Act of 1966
National Environmental Policy Human activity of 1969

Housing [edit]

In 1964, the quality of the housing program was improved by requiring minimum standards of code enforcement, providing assistance to dislocated families and small businesses and authorizing below market place interest loans for rehabilitating housing in urban renewal areas.^[23] The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 included important elements such every bit rent subsidies for low-income families, rehabilitation grants to enable low-income homeowners in urban renewal areas to improve their homes instead of relocating elsewhere, and improved and extended benefits for relocation payments.^[27] The Demonstration Cities Act of 1966 established a new program for comprehensive neighborhood renewal, with an emphasis on strategic investments in housing renovation, urban services, neighborhood facilities, and job creation activities.^[42] ^[43]

Rural development [edit]

A number of measures were introduced to improve socio-economic weather in rural areas. Under Title Three of the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act, Special Programs to Gainsay Rural Poverty, the Role for Economic Opportunity was authorized to act every bit a lender of terminal resort for rural families who needed money to assist them permanently increment their earning capacity. Loans could be made to purchase land, improve the operation of family unit farms, let participation in cooperative ventures, and finance non-agronomical business enterprises, while local cooperatives which served low-income rural families could apply for some other category of loans for similar purposes.^[44]

Title Iii besides made loans and grants available to local groups to meliorate housing, education, and kid intendance services for migrant farm workers, while Titles I and 2 also included potentially important programs for rural development. Title I established the Job Corps which enrolled school dropouts in customs service projects: xl% of the corpsmen were to work in a Youth Conservation Corps to carry out resource conservation, adornment, and development projects in the National Forests and countryside. Arguably more important for rural areas were the Community Action Programs authorized by Title II. Federal money was allocated to States according to their needs for job training, housing, health, and welfare assist, and the States were then to distribute their shares of the Community Action grants on the basis of proposals from local public or non-turn a profit private groups.^[44]

The Public Works and Economical Development Human activity of 1965 reorganized the Areas Redevelopment Administration (ARA) into the Economical Development Administration (EDA), and authorized $iii.3 billion over 5 years while specifying seven criteria for eligibility. The listing included low median family income, only the 6% or college unemployment practical to the greatest number of areas, while the Human action besides mentioned outmigration from rural areas equally a benchmark. In an attempt to get beyond what one writer described as "ARA's failed scattershot approach" of providing help to individual counties and inspired by the European model of regional development, the EDA encouraged counties to form Economic Development Districts (EDDs) as it was recognized that individual distressed counties (chosen RAs or Redevelopment Areas) lacked sufficient resource for their ain development.^[44]

EDDs encompassed from 5 to 15 counties and both planned and implemented development with EDA funding and technical assist, and each EDD had a "growth center" (another concept borrowed from Europe) called a redevelopment eye if it was located in an RA or evolution heart if in another canton. With the exception of the growth centers, EDD counties were ineligible for help unless they were RAs, but they were all expected to do good from "coordinated districtwide development planning."^[44]

Labor [edit]

The Amendments made to the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act in 1964 extended the prevailing wage provisions to cover fringe benefits,^[45] while several increases were made to the federal minimum wage.^[46] The Service Contract Human action of 1965 provided for minimum wages and fringe benefits too as other conditions of work for contractors nether certain types of service contracts.^[47] A comprehensive minimum rate hike was also signed into law that extended the coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Human action to nigh nine.1 million additional workers.^[45]

Conservative opposition [edit]

In the 1966 midterm elections, the Republicans made major gains in part through a challenge to the "State of war on Poverty." Large-scale borough unrest in the inner-city was escalating (reaching a climax in 1968), strengthened demand for Law and order.^[48] Urban white ethnics who had been an of import office of the New Bargain Coalition felt abased by the Democratic Political party'due south concentration on racial minorities. Republican candidates ignored more pop programs, such as Medicare or the Elementary and Secondary Didactics Act, and focused their attacks on less popular programs. Furthermore, Republicans made an effort to avoid the stigma of negativism and elitism that had indomitable them since the days the New Deal, and instead proposed well-crafted alternatives—such as their "Opportunity Crusade."^[49] The result was a major gain of 47 House seats for the GOP in the 1966 United States House of Representatives elections that put the conservative coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats back in business.^[50]

Despite conservatives who attacked Johnson'southward Keen Society making major gains in Congress in the 1966 midterm elections, and with acrimony and frustration mounting over the Vietnam State of war, Johnson was even so able to secure the passage of additional programs during his last two years in office. Laws were passed to extend the Food Postage Program, to expand consumer protection, to improve prophylactic standards, to train health professionals, to assist handicapped Americans, and to further urban programs.^[51]

In 1968, a new Fair Housing Act was passed, which banned racial discrimination in housing^[52] and subsidized the construction or rehabilitation of low-income housing units.^[53] That same year, a new programme for federally funded job retraining for the hardcore unemployed in fifty cities was introduced, together with the strongest federal gun control pecker (relating to the transportation of guns across state lines) in American history upwardly until that point.^[54]

By the end of the Johnson Administration, 226 out of 252 major legislative requests (over a four-year menstruum) had been met, federal aid to the poor had risen from $9.nine billion in 1960 to $thirty billion by 1968, one 1000000 Americans had been retrained under previously non-existent federal programs, and 2 1000000 children had participated in the Head Start plan.

Legacy [edit]

Interpretations of the War on Poverty remain controversial. The Function of Economic Opportunity was dismantled past the Nixon and Ford administrations, largely past transferring poverty programs to other authorities departments.^[55] Funding for many of these programs was further cutting in President Ronald Reagan'southward Gramm-Latta Budget in 1981.^{[ commendation needed ]}

Alan Brinkley has suggested that "the gap between the expansive intentions of the War on Poverty and its relatively modest achievements fueled after conservative arguments that authorities is non an appropriate vehicle for solving social problems."^[20] One of Johnson's aides, Joseph A. Califano, Jr., has countered that "from 1963 when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of his Not bad Society programs were felt, the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.six per centum, the near dramatic turn down over such a brief period in this century."^[xl]

In the long run, statistical analysis shows that the Official Poverty Charge per unit fell from 19.five percent in 1963 to 12.iii percent in 2017. Still, using a broader definition that includes cash income, taxes, and major in-kind transfers and aggrandizement rates, the "Total-income Poverty Rate" based on President Johnson'due south standards fell from xix.five percentage to 2.3 percent over that menstruation.^[56] ^[57]

The percentage of African Americans below the poverty line dropped from 55 percent in 1960 to 27 pct in 1968.^[58] From 1964 to 1967, federal expenditures on education rose from $4 billion to $12 billion, while spending on health rose from $v billion to $sixteen billion. By that time, the federal government was spending $4,000 per annum on each poor family of four, 4 times as much equally in 1961.^[59]

References [edit]

Citations [edit]

^ "U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson visits Ohio University, film, May 7, 1964". media.library.ohio.edu . Retrieved 2021-01-26 .
^ Caves, R. W. (2004). Encyclopedia of the City. Routledge. p. 315.
^ ^a ^b Zelizer, Julian E. (2015). The fierce urgency of now : Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the battle for the Corking Club. New York. ISBN978-i-59420-434-0. OCLC 881094066.
^ Life, November 5, 1965
^ Nation'south Business organization A Useful Expect Ahead January 1966 Vol. 54 No. 1, P.73
^ Riley, Jason L. (2008). Let Them In: The Example for Open Borders . Gotham Books. p. 98. ISBN9781592403493.
^ Revenue Deed of 1964
^ ^a ^b ^c Chafe, William H. The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II
^ "President Johnson's spoken language at Ohio University, May vii, 1964". The American Presidency Project. Retrieved July 28, 2015.
^ "President Johnson's speech at the Academy of Michigan from the LBJ Library". Lbjlib.utexas.edu. Archived from the original on June 2, 2002. Retrieved Baronial 26, 2013.
^ ^a ^b Woods, Randall (2007). LBJ: Architect of American Ambition. Simon and Schuster. p. 557. ISBN 1416593314.
^ Smith, Nancy Kegan. "Presidential Job Force Performance during the Johnson Administration". Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 2, 1985, pp. 320–329. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27550209.
^ Lester, Robert East., editor. Task Strength Reports of the Johnson White House, 1963–1969. LexisNexis, http://cisupa.proquest.com/ksc_assets/catalog/101686.pdf Archived 2016-x-13 at the Wayback Auto.
^ DeBolt, Abbe Allen, Baugess, James S. (2011). Encyclopedia of the Sixties: A Decade of Culture and Counterculture. ABC-CLIO. p. 261. ISBN 0313329443.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Civil Rights Act of 1964". Finduslaw.com. Archived from the original on October 21, 2010. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
^ Marc Dollinger, "The other War: American Jews, Lyndon Johnson, and the Bang-up Society." American Jewish History 89#4 (2001) pp. 437+. online.
^ Unger, Irwin, 1996: The All-time of Intentions: the triumphs and failures of the Swell Social club under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Doubleday, p. 104.
^ O'Mara, Margaret (5 December 2018). "The Terminate of Privacy Began in the 1960s". The New York Times.
^ Igo, Sarah E. (2018-05-07). The Known Denizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America. ISBN9780674985193.
^ ^a ^b Alan Brinkley, "Keen Lodge" in The Reader'south Companion to American History, Eric Foner and John Arthur Garraty eds., ISBN 0-395-51372-3, Houghton Mifflin Books, p. 472
^ ^a ^b Serwer, Adam. "Lyndon Johnson was a civil rights hero. But as well a racist". MSNBC. April 11, 2014. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/lyndon-johnson-ceremonious-rights-racism.
^ Lowe, Norman. Mastering Modern Earth History.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Voting Record-88th Congress, 2nd Session" (PDF). ADA World. Americans for Democratic Action. October 1964. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
^ Rachman, Fred D. (Baronial 28, 2010). "Quality Measures Workgroup Testimony" (PDF). Alliance of Chicago Community Health Services. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 21, 2012.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d "History of SSA During the Johnson Administration 1963–1968". Social Security Administration. Retrieved July 15, 2013.
^ Backlash against welfare mothers: past and present by Ellen Reese
^ ^a ^b "Voting Tape-89th Congress, 1st Session" (PDF). ADA World. Americans for Democratic Action. November 1965. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
^ Lyndon B. Johnson: Remarks Upon Signing the College Education Facilities Human activity. Presidency.ucsb.edu (December 16, 1963). Retrieved July 15, 2013.
^ Kennedy by Theodore C. Sorensen
^ The Bilingual Education Act Archived 2006-08-07 at the Wayback Machine
^ Fairman, Julie (August 2009). Making Room in the Clinic: Nurse Practitioners and the Development of Modern ... ISBN9780813545028 . Retrieved August 26, 2013.
^ "Social Security Act Amendments (1965)". Ourdocuments.gov. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
^ Sreenivasan, Jyotsna (2009). Poverty and the Government in America. ISBN9781598841688.
^ "Kid Nutrition Act of 1966 - Nutrient and Nutrition Service". usda.gov. Archived from the original on 2013-08-13. Retrieved 2013-09-03 .
^ Karen Patricia Heath, "Artistic scarcity in an age of material abundance: President Lyndon Johnson, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Keen Club liberalism." European Periodical of American Culture 36.1 (2017): five-22. online
^ ^a ^b "How NEH got its start". National Endowment for the Humanities. September 29, 1965. Archived from the original on March 5, 2012. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
^ "Living Legacy: Kennedy Eye for the Performing Arts". WOSU. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
^ "The Hirshhorn Story". Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Archived from the original on July ii, 2007.
^ Grinder, R. Dale. "The U.s. Section of Transportation: A Brief History". U.S. Department of Transportation. Archived from the original on July 17, 2004.
^ ^a ^b What Was Actually Dandy About The Dandy Society: The truth backside the conservative myths Archived 2014-03-26 at the Wayback Machine by Joseph A. Califano Jr.
^ "Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Dazzler". Lbjlib.utexas.edu. Archived from the original on June 26, 2013. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
^ Galster, George C. (1996). Reality and Research: Social Scientific discipline and U.S. Urban Policy Since 1960. ISBN9780877666394 . Retrieved Baronial 26, 2013.
^ Conley, Richard Steven (2002). The Presidency, Congress, and Divided Authorities: A Postwar Cess. ISBN9781603446815 . Retrieved Baronial 26, 2013.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Roth, Dennis. "The Johnson Administration and the Great Guild" (PDF). Federal Rural Development Policy in the Twentieth Century. United States Section of Agriculture. Archived from the original (PDF) on Baronial 24, 2014. Retrieved Baronial 26, 2013.
^ ^a ^b Bruno, Robert (January 3–5, 1998). "Presidential Labor Regimes: Democrats from Roosevelt to Clinton" (PDF). University of Illinois. Archived from the original (PDF) on Baronial 21, 2013. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
^ Boosting paychecks: the politics of supporting America'south working poor past Daniel Paul Gitterman
^ Boyd, Bob (Baronial 2012). The COR/COTR Reply Book, Thi - Bob Boyd. ISBN9781567263732 . Retrieved Baronial 26, 2013.
^ Michael West. Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s (2007).
^ Mark McLay, "A Loftier-Wire Crusade: Republicans and the State of war on Poverty, 1966." Journal of Policy History 31.three (2019): 382-405.
^ "1966 Elections–A Major Republican Comeback." in CQ Almanac 1966 (22nd ed., 1967) pp 1387-88. online
^ Thousand.J. Heale, The Sixties in America: History, Politics, and Protestation (2001)
^ The Housing status of black Americans By James Benjamin Stewart
^ The Penguin Encyclopedia of American History past Robert A. Rosenbaum and Douglas Brinkley
^ Truman to Carter: A post-War History of the U.s.a. of America by Peter J. Mooney and Colin Brown
^ Bailey, Martha J.; Duquette, Nicolas J. (2014-06-01). "How Johnson Fought the War on Poverty: The Economics and Politics of Funding at the Role of Economical Opportunity". The Journal of Economic History. 74 (2): 351–388. doi:ten.1017/S0022050714000291. ISSN 0022-0507. PMC4266933. PMID 25525279.
^ Richard V. Burkhauser, et al. "Evaluating the Success of President Johnson's War on Poverty: Revisiting the Historical Record Using a Total-Income Poverty Mensurate." AEI Paper & Studies (American Enterprise Establish, 2019), online.
^ For a graph of the Official poverty charge per unit from 1960 through 2012 run into Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History (2015)
^ Mintz, South (2007). "The Dandy Guild and the Bulldoze for Black Equality". Digital History. University of Houston. Archived from the original on January 16, 2009. Retrieved May 13, 2009.
^ LBJ: Builder of American Ambition by Randall B. Woods

Primary sources [edit]

Johnson, Lyndon B. My Hope for America: Random Business firm, 1964 ISBN 1-121-42877-0

External links [edit]

President Johnson's spoken communication at the Academy of Michigan from the LBJ Library
80,000 people filled Michigan Stadium to hear President Lyndon Johnson
Social Studies help on the Great Society
Johnson's Nifty Society speech on CNN
John Gardner Architect of the Swell Society on PBS
The Great Society Congress Digital Exhibition

reidstroathemed.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society