Great+Society+*

=**The Great Society**= toc

Introduction
President Lyndon B. Johnson enacted a large number of domestic programs during his administration. The goals of the social reforms were to eliminate poverty, promote equality, rejuvenate cities, improve education, and protect the environment. These programs were very broad in scope. The Federal government's yearly revenue increased by 54 billion dollars between 1961 and 1967. The United States was a very prosperous nation, but all was not perfect. In the South, racial discrimination persisted. Urban riots in black neighborhoods became common.

On May 22nd, 1964, President Johnson expressed his goals for the Great Society in a speech at the University of Michigan. He said, //“We are going to assemble the best thought and broadest knowledge from all over the world to find these answers. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series 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."//

1964 and 1965
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a huge landmark in our nations' history. But other programs of the Great Society did not play a role in the 1964 presidential election. Johnson won with a landslide, and the Democrats controlled the Senate and House of Representatives. Eighty-seven bills were submitted to Congress and eighty-four were signed by Johnson. Many consider this administration the most effective in American history.

President Johnson liked to rely on experts and set up 14 task forces to study major aspects of our society. Each task force had about nine members who were either governmental experts or came from universities. The task forces studied agriculture, finances, the economy, civil rights, education, health, the environment, transportation, urban problems, and several others topics.

Bill Moyers and Richard N. Goodwin were the presidential assistants who over saw these task forces. Once the reports were submitted to White House, many others reviewed the reports including members of Congress. This made the proposals much more likely to be made into laws.



Civil Rights
Civil Rights are very important to Americans. They give any gender, race and religion their freedom of speech, association, and the right to be able to have a say by voting in politics. Also, Civil Rights played a huge part in the time of the Great Society by translating demands of the Civil Rights Movement into law. The Civil Rights Act allowed African Americans in the United States to be insured that they were safe, protect them from physical abuse, protect them from being discriminated against, and to give them the right as an American to have the freedom of speech. But this didn't stop groups like the Ku Klux Klan from verbally abusing, physically abusing, and even killing African Americans.

The Great Society program urged to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which outlawed discriminatory voting practices that hadn't been fair to African Americans in the United States. Martin Luther King, Jr. was taking a leading role in the South. College students volunteered to register the disenfranchised voters in many states such as Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama. Social unrest was rising and the resulting riots, demonstrations, and violence naturally occurred as a result of the a huge shift in the policies of the government. Many people feel that television opened the door to desegregation. People all over the country viewed first hand how other American citizens were being denied their rights. This produced a ground swell for sweeping changes.

War on Poverty
The War on Poverty was the legislation developed by the President Lyndon B. Johnson on January 8th, 1964. It was aimed at eliminating poverty in the United States. It included programs like the Job Corps and Head Start, which are the programs still used today. These programs gave a boost to poverty ridden citizens. Which were made possible by the Office of Economic Opportunity or the OEO.

The Job Corps was also introduced. It is a no-cost education and vocation training program for young adults ages 16 to 24. It taught young adults the skills they need to become employable and independent. This program was very popular because at the age of 16 many teens want to be independent and help their families, especially young adults who could not enlist in the armed services. They felt that if their father wasn't there, then they had to be the man of the house and pull themselves together and work to support their family.

Head Start, like the Job Corps, is still around today. Head Start helps underprivileged children, who can't afford to go to pre-school. Pre-school has been shown to improve reading ability later. Many of children who live in poverty have little or no exposure to reading and books. The teachers at the schools in 1964 were volunteers who were people who respected all races and religions.



Health
President Johnson signed into law Medicare and its companion program Medicaid as part of his Great Society program. Ex-President Harry S. Truman was the the first citizen to enroll into Medicare. Medicare was originally intended to help older Americans receive hospital and doctor care. Few retirement programs provided health insurance. Since 1966 Medicaid has served over 200 million Americans. Food Stamps were introduced. The Great Society's commitments to provide funds has resulted in numerous medical miracles. By 1997 life expectancy jumped ten per cent, with the greatest increase among the disadvantaged. The enormous investments made by the government have played a large role in making the United States a leader in medical research, pharmaceutical research, and the creation of new medical procedures and machinery.

Arts and Cultural Institutions
The National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities were created in 1965. Cultural centers to improve exposure to cultural events were created. The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 created public television. Public Radio was also created at this time.

Transportation
The Department of Transportation was created on October 16th, 1966. In 1964, The Urban Mass Transit Act gave three hundred and seventy-five million dollars to urban public or private rail projects. Ralph Nader's book, Unsafe at Any Speed, influenced the creation of the National Traffic and Motor Safety Act. One of its results was the Washing ton Metro. It was built not only to help commuters, but as President Johnson said, "to create a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community."



Consumer Protection
In 1965 the Cigarette Labeling Act required cigarettes to carry warning labels about their health effects. Fair packaging laws were passed as well as uniform weights and size rules. Meat safety was also addressed. Lenders were required to make full disclosure of the total cost on installment loans and sales. Safeguards were initiated to protect the consumer against fraud in the sale of land. Recalls for defective electronic parts were made part of the Radiation Safety Act.

The Environment
Legislation was aimed at protection and conservation of untouched resources. President Johnson said, "the air we breathe, our water, our soil and wildlife, are being blighted by poisons and chemicals which are by-products of technology and industry. The society that receives the rewards of technology, must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for (their) control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation." The great Society passed new environmental acts to protect the air we breathe and the water we need to survive.

The Legacies of the Great Society
In the words of Lyndon B. Johnson, //"The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands if the commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quality of their goals than the quality of their goods."//

As a result of the Great Society programs of the 1960s, Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2% to 12.6%. The Government truly helped the most vulnerable members of our society. Education and health are very important for a person to have a chance at the American Dream. Because of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act the federal government began helping local school districts. Higher education laws provided scholarships, grants, and work study programs so that American youth would be able to attend college. Head Start provided kindergarten and nursery school for poor children. Medicare and Medicaid revolutionized health care for millions of Americans. The food stamp program feeds millions of Americans. In 1964 a man's life expectancy in America was 66.6 years. By 1997, it had jumped to 73.6 years. Infant mortality has dropped by 75% since 1964.The National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities has helped make theater and music availible throughout the nation. PBS has provided quality broadcasting to American's since th 1960s. The Great Society's most important contribution to the envirnment was the establishment of principles to guide the envirnmental movement. The 1964 Civil Rights Act tore down the "whites only" signs across the nation. 1968 Fair Housing Act helped end raical segragation in housing. The legacies of the Great Society reverberate throughout the United States today. We are a better nation for it.