Lyndon Johnson's Great Society: Case Study

Lyndon Johnson’s desire to build a “Great Society” came from his childhood rearing. While growing-up in Texas, he viewed poverty as being more of a cause of being hostile towards people than race (Schultz,2014). President Johnson intended to change American liberalism through a series of programs that he implemented to end poverty and expand education. The “Great Society is where no child will go unfed and no youngster will go unschooled” (Schultz,2014). He also visioned that every child having a good teacher and every teacher have good pay, and both have good classrooms. All human beings will have dignity and every worker has a job (Schultz,2014). President Johnson wanted to make America a place where no person would be in poverty, while we are the wealthiest nation in the world. In January 1964, a report from the Council of Economic Advisers estimated that 22 percent of the nation’s population lived in poverty. As a result of this report he persuaded Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA), which was designed to attack poverty. This EOA contained a number of agencies and programs that were designed to help people in poverty. Head Start (early pre-school), Work-training programs, Job Corps,

He passed the Elementary and Secondary School Act that divided $1.3 billion among individual districts, based upon how many students who lived in poverty to ensure fairness among all regardless of income. He made sure that the millions of elderly and poor who lacked health care was able to receive it through a program name Medicare. He created what was referred to as “welfare” at the time for families with dependent children, raised minimum wage for all workers, created the Housing and Urban Development (HUD), in 1966. And to show to show that he stood firm on civil rights, he appointed Thurgood Marshall, an African-American to solicitor general in 1965 and then o Supreme Court Justice in