U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson unveiled an ambitious domestic economic agenda in his first state of the union address and moved aggressively in subsequent months to push equal opportunity and social security programs through Congress. The War on Poverty program, as it came to be called, was part of his larger goal of a Great Society.
In the early 1960’s, poverty stood on the periphery of politics in the United States. Critic Dwight Macdonald’s 1963 review essay in which he discussed Michael Harrington’s The Other America
Chapter 2 of the CEA’s Economic Report of the President,
President Lyndon B. Johnson, who took office after Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, declared a war on poverty in his January 8, 1964, state of the union message. Johnson embraced the issue after he heard about the order from Kennedy to address poverty in the United States. On January 31, 1964, Johnson appointed Sargent Shriver as special assistant to organize a president’s task force on poverty. Members of the task force included Adam Yarmolinsky from the Department of Defense, Daniel Patrick Moynihan from the Department of Labor, and James L. Sundquist from the Department of Agriculture.
On March 16, Johnson submitted the Economic Opportunity Bill to Congress with the help of two members of Congress: Georgia Democrat Phillip Mitchell Landrum introduced the bill into the House of Representatives and Michigan Democrat Patrick Vincent McNamara introduced the bill into the Senate. House Education and Labor Committee chair Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., had introduced a similar bill but stepped aside in favor of the version introduced by Landrum. On August 20, after much debate and compromise over issues ranging from states’ rights to federal funding of religious antipoverty organizations, the bill was passed, becoming law as the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.
President Lyndon B. Johnson takes notes during a cabinet meeting. The president attempted to transform the U.S. economy with his War on Poverty.
Title II of the act, which created the Community Action Program
On the whole, however, CAP embodied the democratic wish for community control over events that directly affected local people, a tradition of local activism and work that fueled many social reform movements in the United States throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Along with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the War on Poverty paved the way for greater participation of African Americans in the country’s civic culture. The scope of CAP, nonetheless, remained limited. By the end of 1967, for example, only 41,000 poor people were working in CAP-administered programs, a rather small number compared to the millions of unemployed and underemployed poor persons and the approximately 6 million recipients in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.
The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 raised the issue of poverty to a level of national concern and so helped pave the way for federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Head Start, and Upward Bound, as well as legal and other comprehensive health services.
The act also established in Washington the idea that ghettos could be transformed into stable, good neighborhoods, and that those most directly affected by antipoverty initiatives should be involved in planning and implementing those initiatives. Community action, originally an idea for delivering services in poor neighborhoods more efficiently and with more sympathy, mutated into the concept of “community development.” The idea of empowering consumers of services became the sine qua non of effective advocacy movements for women’s rights, health care, environmental concerns, and the like. Head Start
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Brauer, Carl M. “Kennedy, Johnson, and the War on Poverty.” Journal of American History 69 (June, 1982): 98-119. Argues that presidential initiative, rather than the efforts of intellectuals and journalists bringing attention to poverty as a social problem, accounted for the War on Poverty. -
Califano, Joseph A., Jr. “What Was Really Great About the Great Society.” Washington Monthly 31 (October, 1999): 13-19. Argues that the War on Poverty was far more successful than implied by the “misguided failure” characterization by later twentieth century political and social critics. -
Caputo, Richard K. Welfare and Freedom American Style II: The Role of the Federal Government, 1941-1980. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994. A comprehensive study of factors and forces shaping the development of America’s welfare state in the post-World War II period. Devotes an entire chapter to Johnson’s War on Poverty and Great Society programs. Endnotes, bibliography, index. -
Clark, Robert F. The War on Poverty: History, Selected Programs, and Ongoing Impact. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2002. Concisely describes the origins and programs of the Great Society between 1965 and 2000. Endnotes, bibliography, index. -
Miller, S. M., and Martin Rein. “Participation, Poverty, and Administration.” Public Administration Review 29 (January, 1969): 15-25. Explores the evolving purposes to which “maximum feasible participation” was put into effect. -
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty. New York: Vintage Books, 1970. An early account of the War on Poverty, reflecting the role of social scientists, by one of the program’s architects. -
Murray, Charles. Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Argues that post-World War II social policy in general and the War on Poverty in particular provided disincentives to work and to two-parent family formation among poor people, thereby doing them more harm than good. -
Patterson, James T. America’s Struggle Against Poverty in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. A comprehensive study of the evolution of policies and attitudes toward poverty in the twentieth century United States. Argues that while public poverty policies changed, public attitudes toward the poor largely remained the same. Bibliography, index. -
Sundquist, James L. Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1968. Historical treatment of these three presidential administrations by one of the architects of the War on Poverty, who stressed the cyclical nature of social reform.
6.6 Million Women Enter the U.S. Labor Force
Inflation and Labor Unrest
Employment Act
Firms Begin Replacing Skilled Laborers with Automated Tools
Galbraith Critiques the Creation of a Society of Mass Consumption
United Nations Adopts the Declaration of the Rights of the Child
Head Start Is Established to Aid Poor Children
Johnson Signs the Medicare and Medicaid Amendments
Canada Implements Its National Health Plan
Congress Passes the Consumer Credit Protection Act