May 22: The Great Society

President Lyndon Baines Johnson unveiled his plans for “The Great Society” in a speech at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor on this date in 1964. (To hear his speech, click here.) The phrase was coined by speechwriter Richard N. Goodwin, who had been secretary-general of the Peace Corps and an advisor on Latin America in the Kennedy Administration. Goodwin worked with Bill Moyers (not Jewish) to oversee the fourteen task forces created by the Johnson Administration to shape the Great Society proposals, which included four major civil rights acts; Medicare and Medicaid; the $3 billion “War on Poverty,” which launched numerous community-based initiatives including the Job Corps, Neighborhood Youth Corps, and VISTA Volunteers; the Food Stamp Act of 1964; the Head Start program; creation of the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities; the launching of federal aid to state education programs; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; fundamental environmental legislation — and much more of what we today take for granted as foundation stones of a decent American society. According to Johnson’s aide Joseph Califano, “from 1963 when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of his Great Society programs were felt, the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent, the most dramatic decline over such a brief period in this century.”

“One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society . . . shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.