Johnson's 'Great Society': 1964-69

President Lyndon B Johnson believed in the original 19th century version of the American Dream – a country that would benefit ALL its citizens – although he did not call it that.  He called it the ‘Great Society’ (as opposed to merely a ‘good’ one). 

In Johnson's vision for America, everyone would work, would contribute, would be treated equally, would have the opportunity to prosper.  And the job of government was to clear out the barriers to that – racial discrimination, deprivation and poverty, sickness and lack of education, unfair business and pollution. 

He called together a team of young advisers and asked them to think as big as possible.  He was better than Kennedy at politicking – tbh, nowadays we would call it bullying.  In his first two years, Congress enacted over two hundred major bills and at least a dozen ‘landmark’ measures – four times the scale of the New Deal.  In his time in office, Johnson DOUBLED the size of the US government. 

The Benefit of an Assassination

In the end, his escalation of the Vietnam War ruined his reputation, and he did not bother standing for re-election in 1968.  It is ironic that Kennedy, who barely scratched the surface of America’s need, and took the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation, should be hero-worshipped ...  whilst Johnson, who arguably did more for America’s oppressed and needy than any other President in history, ended up roundly hated. 

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Basic account from BBC Bitesize

The US Voting Rights Act of 1965  - BBC Witness History

  Essay: How far was a ‘Great Society’ created in Civil Rights, Poverty, Health and Education, 1965-69?

YouTube

Johnson's Great Society - lively account of “the highpoint of liberalism”.

A failed effort? - a right-wing think-tank asks the question.

The 'Great Society' Programme [ESCAPE]

1. Economic growth

   • He inherited a booming economy (growing at 5%pa) from Kennedy. 

   • He took Walter Heller as his economic advisor.  Heller introduced ‘New Economics’ – which focussed on full employment, public AND private investment, low interest rates and tight government budgets. 

   • He passed the Revenue Act (1964), an $11 billion tax cut, lowering the highest rate of tax from 90% to 70%, and the lowest rate from 18% to 14%.  This – along with wining-and-dining leading businessmen – secured support for his other programmes.

   • Inflation, and the cost of the Vietnam War, forced Johnson to pass the Revenue & Expenditure Control Act (1968), increasing taxes and cutting government spending. 

2. Space race

   • Johnson supported NASA's Apollo space programme through the disaster of January 1967 (when the crew of Apollo 1 were killed in a cabin fire), and was President when Apollo 8 went round the moon and back.  In July 1969 he attended, as former President, the launch of Apollo 11 which landed on the moon.

   • Among the early 'spin-off' benefits of the space programme NASA listed in 1976 were: jobs and economic growth; satellites for weather forecasting and communications; integrated circuits for computers; cryogenics; zinc-rich paint that protects against salt spray; heart pacemakers and echo-cardiograms; 'space blanket's in first aid kits; 'clean rooms' manufacturing; the use of activated carbon in sewage treatment; solar power technology; and memory foam.

3. Civil Rights and Women's Rights

   • The Civil Rights Act (1964) outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, religion, or sex, and banned employment discrimination, and racial segregation in public facilities. 

   • The Voting Rights Act (1965) outlawed discrimination in voting, thus allowing all African Americans in the South to vote for the first time ...  which they did in their millions.

   • A Fair Housing Act (1968) prohibiting housing discrimination looked as though it was going to fail, but passed in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King. 

   • These Civil Rights acts, however, did not sufficiently address Black Inequality, and Johnson faced rioting 1964-68. 

   • For women, Executive Order 11375 (1967) banned discriminatory hiring on the basis of sex for government departments and government contractors.

   • Johnson, however, did little to further women's rights – women were omitted from his Executive Order for affirmative action in employment (1965), and only included two years later after a campaign by NOW.

   • The Immigration Act (1965) abolished quotas on immigration.

4. Alleviate poverty/ Housing

   • The Economic Opportunity Act (1964) enacted a number of initiatives to combat poverty, including: creating the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) under Sargent Shriver to oversee anti-poverty programmes; a Job Corps providing work and training for young people aged 16-21; Work Study grants to colleges for students from low-income families; Adult Education; Assistance for Needy Children; Assistance for Migrants; loans to small businesses; Health Centres in poor neighbourhoods; VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America – a domestic version of the Peace Corps); Head Start (an early education initiative); Foster Grandparents; and Legal Services for the Poor.

   • The Food Stamp Act (1964) expanded the food assistance programme, including (from 1965) home-delivered meals to the aged.

   • The minimum wage was increased to $1.40 an hour. 

   • The Housing and Urban Development Act (1965) created the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to improve urban housing and alleviate urban poverty.

   • The Model Cities programme worked together with communities to clear inner-city slums. 

   • By the end of his Presidency, poverty had dropped from 23% of the population to 12%, and Black poverty from 56% to 30%.

5. Public Health/ Environment/ Consumer Protection

   • The Social Security Amendments (1965) provided Medicare (health insurance for the elderly), and Medicaid (coverage to low-income families).

   • The Social Security Amendments (1967) provided funding for family planning.

   • The Wilderness Act (1964) established the National Wilderness Preservation System, and the Land and Water Conservation Fund provided funding to purchase land for federal and state parks.

   •  The Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act (1965) set emission standards for motor vehicles.

   • Consumer protection measures included product labelling, cigarette pack warnings, the Flammable Fabrics Act and meat inspection.

6. Education

   • In 1965 Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (which provided substantial funding to public schools, particularly benefiting schools in low-income areas) and the Higher Education Act (which expanded funding for colleges, including financial assistance for students).  Overall, Johnson doubled spending on education.

   • The Bilingual Education Act (1968) funded schools to meet the needs of children who did not speak English.

   • Head Start was an early education programme for children from low-income families. 

   • In 1967, a Peace Corps initiative called 'Volunteers to America' brought people from other countries to work in poor areas in the USA.

Source B

LBJ and Supreme Court Jusitice Abe Frontas, 1965.
The photo is meant to be light-hearted, but...

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Interpretations

EVERYBODY agrees on one thing: LBJ was ‘a great man’.  Just as he dominated politics at the time, biographers sometimes seem overwhelmed by his personality (see Source C). 

Whether you then regard him as a ‘great, good man’ or a ‘great, bad man’, however, depends on your politics. 

A bitter Eric Goldman (1969) – who had worked for the President but had resigned in disillusion, and who was writing at a time when Johnson was being hounded out of power – portrayed him as “the wrong man from the wrong place at the wrong time under the wrong circumstances”. 

The 1970s saw kindlier memoirs, which portrayed Johnson as a hero.  Aide and confidant Jack Valenti (1975) and Johnson’s chosen memorialist Doris Kearns (1976) praised the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts , and the poverty, education, and healthcare programmes.  Historian James Patterson (1981) noted “a fantastic drop in the number of poor and a stunning enlargement of social welfare programs”, especially Medicare and Medicaid (though he commented that they were not popular). 

The 1980s, especially after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1981, returned to calumny.  Journalist Robert Caro (1982) called LBJ "a mixture of bootlicker and bully” and accused him of “frantic, almost desperate aggressiveness … a need to dominate … viciousness and cruelty … fear and insecurity … utter ruthlessness in destroying obstacles in that path … a seemingly bottomless capacity for deceit, deception and betrayal”. 

Right-wing commentators hated the Great Society, particularly the growth of central government and deficit budgets, and argued that welfare programs led to dependency rather than self-sufficiency.  A recent biographer, Amity Schlaes (2019), belongs to this neo-conservative backlash – Johnson and his government did not understand economics or politics, were hijacked by left-wing extremists, and did permanent damage not only to the economy but to the people it wanted to help … the ‘Great Society’ actually caused the problems it was trying to ’solve’. 

Against that, other historians have tried to strike a more moderate tone.  Historian Robert Dallek (1991) condemned the “hatred of Johnson that passes the bounds of common sense”, and commended the “considerable vision” of “one of the most important historical figures of our time”.  More recently, biographer and historian Randall Woods (2006) cast him as the conclusion of a century of progressive politics, heir of the New Deal, and concluded: “The Great Society was breathtaking in its scope and dramatic in its impact.  It created the social bedrock on which our current structure rests”.