Declaring War on Poverty (feat. Doris Kearns Goodwin)

Summary

History This Week: Declaring War on Poverty (feat. Doris Kearns Goodwin)

Podcast Information:

• Title: HISTORY This Week
• Host/Author: The HISTORY® Channel
• Episode: Declaring War on Poverty (feat. Doris Kearns Goodwin)
• Release Date: January 6, 2025

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of History This Week, hosted by Sally Helm, the focus centers on President Lyndon B. Johnson's ambitious initiative, the "War on Poverty." Featuring insights from Doris Kearns Goodwin, a renowned presidential historian, and Guillen McKee, an associate professor of presidential history, the episode delves into the origins, implementation, challenges, and lasting legacy of this pivotal moment in American history.

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Johnson's State of the Union Address

The episode begins by setting the historical context of January 8, 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his State of the Union address amidst national mourning following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. With an approval rating exceeding 75%, Johnson leveraged this mandate to introduce his own agenda, aiming to define his presidency beyond Kennedy's legacy.

• Notable Quote:

  Lyndon Baines Johnson ([02:28]): "This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America."

Johnson’s address was both a response to the immediate national crisis and a strategic move to establish his own policy initiatives.

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Origins of the War on Poverty

Johnson's commitment to combating poverty was deeply rooted in his personal experiences. Growing up in the economically fluctuating hill country of Texas, he witnessed firsthand the struggles of poverty, shaping his understanding and empathy towards the issue.

• Doris Kearns Goodwin ([07:06]): "He taught two grades. He was the bandleader, he was the softball coach. He gave up part of his first salary to buy sports equipment for them."

Goodwin recounts Johnson's early career as a teacher in a segregated school, highlighting how these experiences fueled his dedication to addressing poverty through government action.

Guillen McKee ([09:45]): "The depression hit, his own family struggled and many of their neighbors struggled far more."

These formative years convinced Johnson that government intervention could be a positive force in alleviating poverty, a belief that became the cornerstone of his Great Society programs.

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Formulating the War on Poverty

In the wake of Kennedy's assassination, Johnson sought to swiftly implement his anti-poverty agenda. Recognizing the necessity to act decisively, he allocated an additional $500 million to the effort, bringing the total budget to approximately $1 billion.

• Guillen McKee ([17:02]): "He wanted to have something that he could call absolutely his own. Not a Kennedy bill that he shepherded through to passage, but a Johnson program."

The term "War on Poverty" was conceived to encapsulate the boldness and urgency of the initiative, aiming to mobilize national resources and public support.

• Notable Quote:

  Lyndon Baines Johnson ([20:20]): "This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. It will not be a short or easy struggle. No single weapon or strategy will suffice. But we shall not rest until that war is won."

This declaration was met with acclaim, with The New York Times heralding it as a classic political document.

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Implementation Challenges and Community Action

One of the most innovative yet contentious components of the War on Poverty was the introduction of Community Action. This approach empowered local communities by involving them directly in the development and implementation of anti-poverty programs.

• Guillen McKee ([22:14]): "The idea that you would give poor people themselves, as the legislation stated, maximum feasible participation in developing the programs that would be implemented in their own communities."

Despite its progressive intent, Community Action faced significant hurdles. Johnson himself remained skeptical, concerned about the shift of authority away from traditional political structures.

• Lyndon Baines Johnson ([32:02]): "This community action program. Poverty is a wasteful thing. They ought to cut it out. It's a dangerous thing, too. These folks are liable to get his terrible. And they."

The dissonance between Johnson’s idealistic vision and the practical execution led to political resistance and operational conflicts, especially at the local government level.

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Political Fallout and Declining Support

As the War on Poverty progressed, it encountered increasing opposition. Local political leaders resented the federal encroachment into community affairs, and incidents such as the unrest at Camp Breckenridge in Morganfield, Kentucky, highlighted the program’s vulnerabilities.

• Guillen McKee ([30:55]): "In Morganfield, Kentucky, young men from the city working in the job Corps living in Camp Breckenridge, quote, rioted."

This backlash was further exacerbated by criticisms from both conservative factions and disillusioned progressives. Bobby Kennedy emerged as a vocal critic, accusing Johnson of inadequately addressing poverty and managing the initiative.

By 1968, the cumulative challenges eroded Johnson's confidence in the effectiveness of his policies, leading him to withdraw from the presidential race.

• Lyndon Baines Johnson ([34:05]): "I ain't the master of nothing. I just haven't got it. And we cannot make this Congress do one damn thing that I know of."

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Legacy and Long-Term Impact

Despite the setbacks and political turmoil, the War on Poverty left an indelible mark on American society. Key programs such as the Job Corps, Head Start, Medicare, and Medicaid were established, many of which continue to serve the nation today.

• Doris Kearns Goodwin ([37:12]): "The metaphor that he constantly used that, you know, both the War on Poverty and the Great Society were somehow going to turn into a beautiful woman... that somehow all of these programs would come together and they would deal with the structural inequities in the country."

The episode acknowledges that while poverty remains a persistent issue, the initiatives launched under Johnson's administration significantly reduced the national poverty rate and reshaped the role of the federal government in social welfare.

Guillen McKee ([35:46]): "It produced a kind of cynicism about our capacity to tackle big problems. It wasn't the only cause of that. But I think some of that sense of failing to meet expansive expectations had a negative effect."

However, the ambitious goals set forth by Johnson may have been overly optimistic, and the war on poverty is often viewed as only partially successful given the continued existence of poverty in America.

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Conclusion

The "War on Poverty" remains a pivotal chapter in the history of American social policy. Through strategic initiatives and enduring programs, Lyndon B. Johnson aimed to create lasting change. While the endeavor faced significant obstacles and achieved mixed results, its influence persists in contemporary social programs and the ongoing dialogue about poverty and government responsibility.

• Doris Kearns Goodwin ([36:25]): "The war on poverty is still being waged, but it's worth remembering its programs did help lift millions of people out of poverty, which is a victory even if we haven't won the war."

History This Week provides a nuanced exploration of this critical period, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of the complexities and enduring significance of the War on Poverty.

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Produced by: Ben Dickstein, Lynn McKamey, Julie McGruder, Sally Helm
Editor and Sound Designer: Dan Rosado
Researcher: Emma Fredericks
Executive Producers: Jesse Katz and Ted Butler

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For more insights and episodes, visit historythisweekpodcast.com and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

[Sally Helm]

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[Sally Helm]

Channel original podcast history this week, January 8, 1964. I'm Sally Helm, Mr. Speaker, the President.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson]

Of the United States.

[Sally Helm]

A joint session of Congress. The Chamber is full of men in dark suits. They all rise to applaud President Lyndon Baines Johnson as he makes his way through the crowd. Johnson is here to give his State of the Union address, and when he begins to speak, he sounds subdued, even a little mournful.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson]

My fellow Americans, I will be brief, for our time is necessarily short and our agenda is already long.

[Sally Helm]

Johnson has at this point been president for less than 50 days. John F. Kennedy was assassinated just weeks ago on November 22nd in Dallas, Texas. Vice President Johnson was riding in a car behind Kennedy when the shots were fired. He was sworn in hours later on Air Force. And today he addresses a still grieving nation. He invokes Kennedy's name early on.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson]

Let us carry forward the plans and programs of John Fitzgerald Kennedy not because of our sorrow or sympathy, but because they are right.

[Sally Helm]

But then over the course of the next 30 odd minutes, he says Kennedy's name only twice more. Johnson is at this point immensely popular in the country. His approval rating is over 75%. He's stepped up to lead in a time of crisis, and he's here to introduce his own agenda to the world, not simply to carry on Kennedy's legacy. Johnson wants to define his own presidency. And about 10 minutes into his speech, he comes out with a declaration of war.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson]

This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.

[Sally Helm]

Today. Johnson's war on poverty. At this traumatic moment in American history, why did the President choose poverty as his defining issue? And what is the legacy of the war he started?

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[Sally Helm]

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[Guillen McKee]

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[Sally Helm]

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[Sally Helm]

On a spring evening in 1967, 24 year old Doris Kearns is in a ballroom at the White House and President Lyndon Baines Johnson walks right up to her.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

That's the first time I'd ever seen him and he came over and asked me to dance.

[Sally Helm]

By the time we talked to her for this episode, Doris Kearns Goodwin had come a long way from that young person in the White House ballroom. She's a Pulitzer Prize winning presidential historian, a foremost expert on President Johnson. We were so excited to talk to her for this episode, especially because she really knew lbj. She even helped him write his memoirs. That first meeting, it happened at a celebration for the 16 new members of the White House Fellows program. This was a highly competitive opportunity for young Americans to spend a year working in the executive branch. And Goodwin was one of the fellows.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

Only three women, so it wasn't that peculiar. He asked each one of us to dance, but nonetheless, right away he started talking and his face came alive.

[Sally Helm]

Goodwin didn't fully agree with Johnson's politics. She was against the Vietnam War. In fact, she'd written a yet to be published article critical of LBJ and his handling of the conflict. And she had a certain idea of the President in her head.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

I had this caricature of him, like so many of my generation, with ears hanging down and his eyes squinting and his expression was always very stern.

[Sally Helm]

But now she's looking at that face in person.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

Suddenly here's this character, you know, who is dancing very well, whose face is Filled with animation. And there was a sense of a person there, as if this caricature had somehow come to life.

[Sally Helm]

While they were dancing, Johnson asked Goodwin to work for him directly at the White House. But remember, Goodwin was arguing against the war. And a week after she meets lbj, that article she'd written gets published in the New Republic under the headline how to remove LBJ in 1968.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

So I was certain he would kick me out of the program, but instead, surprisingly said, oh, bring her down here for a year, and if I can't win her over, no one can.

[Sally Helm]

And did he win you over in the end?

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

He certainly won me over as a human being. He didn't change my feeling about the war. And that became part of our conversations. What I believed in deeply, the domestic programs of his administration.

[Sally Helm]

The War on Poverty was one of those domestic programs, and its roots go back to Johnson's childhood.

[Guillen McKee]

Johnson grew up in the hill country of Texas outside of Austin.

[Sally Helm]

That's Guillen McKee, an associate professor of presidential history at UVA's Miller Center. We also talked to him about President Johnson and the war on poverty. And he and Goodwin both told us that Johnson knew poverty in his own childhood. In Texas, his family's fortunes went up and down. Johnson was president of his six person senior class in Johnson City, Texas, and graduated at age 15 in 1924. Then he drifted around, worked for a while as an elevator operator in California, studied to be a teacher, and when.

[Guillen McKee]

The depression hit, his own family struggled and many of their neighbors struggled far more.

[Sally Helm]

During this time, Johnson got a job teaching at a segregated school in Cotulla, Texas, on the Mexican border. Goodwin said that was the experience that really shaped his views on poverty.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

He talked to me about it endlessly. He talked to everybody who would listen about it endlessly. And he would say that his students were so poor, they came to school without breakfast. They were hungry, and he could see the pain on their faces.

[Sally Helm]

Johnson threw himself into the job.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

He taught two grades. He was the bandleader, he was the softball coach. He gave up part of his first salary to buy sports equipment for them. He was the chorus leader. I can't even imagine him as the chorus leader. You know, he was like a one man band.

[Sally Helm]

But eventually he decides that his true calling is in politics. He gets a job as a congressional aide in Washington, works tirelessly, makes a name for himself as capable and ambitious. In 1935, he's appointed as the Texas head of the National Youth Administration, the nya. This New Deal program helped provide jobs for young people so that they could earn money and stay in school. Under Johnson, Texas had one of the most successful NYA programs in the country. Guillen McKee says it helped to bring.

[Guillen McKee]

Johnson to prominence, but it also shaped his understanding of what the government could do, that government action can be a positive force in people's lives.

[Sally Helm]

He's something of an idealist, but also.

[Guillen McKee]

This is where Johnson's so fascinating. As he moves into politics, that motivation is constantly balanced by his desire for power and his often ruthlessness in pursuing it.

[Sally Helm]

In 1937, Johnson is elected as one of the youngest congressmen in the country. After World War II, he's elected to the Senate where he becomes minority leader, then majority leader, one of the most effective Senate majority leaders in history.

[Guillen McKee]

He's ruthless in his use of information. He knows everything that he can possibly put together about the political interests and the personal foibles of his colleagues. And he will both appeal to interests, but also threatening when necessary. Even his size can be intimidating. The famous Johnson treatment where he will get into your personal space.

[Sally Helm]

He was about 6 foot 4.

[Guillen McKee]

He's never violent, but he is physically intimidating.

[Sally Helm]

And with the election of 1960, Johnson's political rise continues when John F. Kennedy chooses him as his running mate. Kennedy doesn't choose Johnson because he likes him particularly.

[Guillen McKee]

It's certainly no personal affection for Johnson or even a sense that he would be an active partner in the presidency.

[Sally Helm]

The two of them come from very different backgrounds. Kennedy was rich in 1937, the same year that Johnson became one of the youngest people elected to Congress. At 28, a 20 year old Jack Kennedy went on a summer tour of Europe in a convertible he had shipped across the Atlantic. The next year, 1938, Kennedy inherited a million dollars. So the two men are different and some of their differences have political advantages. Johnson is a moderate Southern Democrat. He's an experienced politician and a Protestant. Kennedy is young Catholic from the North. So the idea is that Johnson can help deliver voters that Kennedy couldn't reach on his own, and especially help deliver LBJ's home state of Texas, which has historically gone for the Democrats, but has been trending more and more red. And it works. Kennedy wins Texas, wins the election and gets sworn in as president. And Lyndon Johnson goes from being an extremely powerful voice in the Senate to sitting around.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

People keep wondering why in the world did he ever take the job of being Vice president? And I think part of it is that all of his life he had taken insignificant positions and somehow made them powerful from the days when he was in college, and he was mopping floors outside the president of the college's office and somehow worked his way into becoming the president's messenger. And then the next thing you know it, he's the president's chief of staff.

[Sally Helm]

In a certain sense, as vice president, he can't really do that. He's given a few real tasks. He leads a commission on employment discrimination. He travels around on foreign policy expeditions. But he's cut out of the action.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

He was miserable. There's no question about that. I mean, he made this crazy statement. He said, I don't even know exactly what it meant. He said, like he felt like he was a Texas steer. A Texas steer is evidently a steer who's lost all its social standing. But he hated the ceremony, ceremonial duties. He wanted to be doing something he was so used to doing, something that mattered. And he said he detested every minute of being vice president.

[Sally Helm]

Johnson feels like he can barely get an invite to a Kennedy dinner party, let alone a seat at the table on important decisions. But then, in November 1963, everything changes.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson]

The President's car is now turning onto Elm street, and it will be only a matter of minutes before he arrives at the foodmark.

[Guillen McKee]

Something has happened in the motorcade route.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson]

Stand by, please.

[Guillen McKee]

When Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Johnson is in one of the cars, falling behind the President.

[Sally Helm]

He and his wife, Lady Bird, are pushed to the floor of their car by a secret Service agent. They follow the wounded President to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where they're taken to an unoccupied cubicle. LBJ biographer Robert Caro described the scene. Lady Bird sits down on a folding chair. Lyndon leans against the wall. They soon learn that John F. Kennedy is dead and Lyndon B. Johnson will become the 36th President of the United States. The people around Johnson describe him as calm in that moment of terrible crisis. Determined, he takes the oath of office hours later on Air Force One and immediately flies back to Washington.

[Guillen McKee]

As much as he's shocked and knows that the nation is grieving, he also understands the government can't cease to function.

[Sally Helm]

The day after the assassination, Johnson meets with his advisors, including Walter Heller, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. Heller tells Johnson about an anti poverty initiative that had been in the works, though it hadn't really gone anywhere yet. And Johnson is sold almost immediately.

[Guillen McKee]

He says, that's my kind of program. Go ahead with it, you know, double your efforts on this. And, oh, by the way, I want to be able to go with this next year.

[Sally Helm]

Johnson wants to hit the ground running. He's Been thrust suddenly into the highest office in the land. And he wants to make his mark. He may not have much time. There's an election in a year.

[Guillen McKee]

And he very much wanted to have something that he could call absolutely his own. Not a Kennedy bill that he shepherded through to passage, but a Johnson program.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

You can imagine that's what every president would want, something that would be his own contribution to the use of the power of the office. And it makes complete sense when I think about it, given that impact that poverty and Katula had had on him.

[Sally Helm]

At this time, one in five Americans lived below the poverty line. Kennedy had set up a few committees to look into ways to address poverty.

[Guillen McKee]

It went really badly. These committees, by the time of the assassination, were really floundering around to figure out, you know, what poverty was in a real sense, you know, statistically and kind of at the community level, let alone how you might approach it programmatically.

[Sally Helm]

President Johnson knew what poverty was from his own upbringing in Texas, hill country and his experience in Cotullah. And now he wants his advisors to figure it out quick. He comes up with an extra $500 million for the anti poverty effort, bringing the total budget allocation to around 1 billion. And he decides to announce the program in January at his State of the Union address.

[Guillen McKee]

The State of the Union speech is a tremendous opportunity to shape the dialogue and to present your message and your vision to the country. And that's amplified for Johnson in this situation. He's just taken over for John F. Kennedy and has to stand for re election.

[Sally Helm]

He wants this poverty initiative to sound bold and dramatic and important. And he and his speechwriters are having trouble striking the right tone.

[Guillen McKee]

They were having difficulty coming up with a phrase that would capture what this program would be. Something that wasn't kind of overly academic, that wasn't pedantic, that wasn't insulting to the poor themselves. They stumbled around with things like widening participation and prosperity and some ideas like that that just seemed like a mouthful.

[Sally Helm]

They're getting frustrated. And then they hit on the idea of a war, the war on poverty.

[Guillen McKee]

Johnson himself like the idea, the boldness of a war on poverty. It's simple, it's direct. It catches the attention of the public to say, this is a problem and we are going to fight a war on it.

[Sally Helm]

And so.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson]

This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. It will not be a short or easy struggle. No single weapon or strategy will suffice. But we shall not rest until that war is won.

[Sally Helm]

The speech Goes over big the next day. The New York Times is already calling it a quote classic political document. But McKee says you have to remember declaring war on anything comes with big risks.

[Guillen McKee]

It creates an expectation that you're going to win or you're going to lose. You're either going to defeat this enemy or you're not.

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[Sally Helm]

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[Sally Helm]

Now that a war on poverty has been declared, Johnson has to try to win it. And so the work really begins.

[Guillen McKee]

One way I like to think about the war on poverty is that there is a narrow war on poverty and a broader war on poverty. The narrow war on poverty is the Economic Opportunity act itself.

[Sally Helm]

In the six weeks after his State of the Union, Johnson pushes to have this Economic Opportunity act drafted and sent to Congress. And to lead this effort he chooses John F. Kennedy's brother in law, Sergeant Shriver. It's a somewhat surprising choice for LBJ who was lukewarm towards the Kennedy dynasty. But Shriver has been running the newly formed Peace Corps and is extremely popular with the public. And it's important to Johnson to stay in the Kennedys good graces.

[Guillen McKee]

He has to keep them at least publicly on his side and preferably privately as well. And really he doesn't want Bobby Kennedy to challenge him for the nomination in 1964.

[Sally Helm]

Over those next six weeks after the State of the Union, things happen quickly. Shriver and his team draft the Economic Opportunity act which creates a brand new executive agency called the Office of Economic Opportunity, the oeo. Its efforts will center around a brand new concept.

[Guillen McKee]

The idea that ultimately comes most associated with the war on poverty is one called Community Action.

[Sally Helm]

Community Action.

[Guillen McKee]

This was the idea that you would give poor people themselves, as the legislation stated, maximum feasible participation in developing the programs that would be implemented in their own communities. This is really an unprecedented idea in American government. At the time there had never really been a program like this that shifted authority down to the ground level.

[Sally Helm]

For the time Community Action was radical. It had been tested out in A few small scale studies around the country, but this will be the big test. And when the President first hears about.

[Guillen McKee]

It, Lyndon Johnson initially isn't very enthusiastic about it because he's, you know what? You're gonna actually give federal money to these committees of poor people.

[Sally Helm]

As Johnson's getting his head around the idea, he reasons that, well, politicians will.

[Guillen McKee]

Still be involved and sees it as something that will run through the existing political structures in the communities around the country, which is different than how the planners understand it. So there's a seed of a really problematic conflict that's planted in that misunderstanding.

[Sally Helm]

A conflict over community action. And meanwhile, Johnson is more focused on other components of the Economic Opportunity Act.

[Guillen McKee]

His real interest is in the idea of work camps. Basically things that were coming out of programs called the Job Corps, Neighborhood Youth Corps being another one. And this again goes back to the New Deal experience. He's thinking about programs under the New Deal like the Civilian Conservation Corps and his own National Youth Administration where he took young people, put them to work, maybe funded their education, gave them some basic job skills. And that's really where his interest in the War on Poverty is and his understanding of what the core of the program would be.

[Sally Helm]

McKee has listened through hours and hours of White House tapes where Johnson himself explains this idea. Here's one from a conversation he had with Texas Representative George Mahan in 1964.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson]

I'm going to put 150,000 of them to work in 90 days time on useful, hard working projects. Teach them some discipline and when to get up and how to work all day. And in two years I'll have them trained where they can at least drive a truck instead of sitting around a pool room.

[Sally Helm]

Johnson also makes clear that he sees this as a signature accomplishment, something that is his program, not President Kennedy's.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson]

This is one I just can't lose. It's the only Johnson proposal I've got, the only bail.

[Sally Helm]

To help write his speech to Congress to introduce this legislation, LBJ actually recruits Doris Kearns Goodwin's future husband, Richard Goodwin, who had been a speechwriter for JFK and was then working in the leadership of the Peace Corps.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

There's a tape that we listened to while my husband was still alive with Bill Moyers.

[Sally Helm]

Moyers, who was Johnson's special assistant at the time, suggests that Goodwin should help write the speech.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson]

The only person I know who can, and I'm reluctant to ask him to get involved in this because right now it's in our little circle, is Goodwin. Well, I just asked him if he can't put some sex in it. I asked him if he couldn't put some rhyme in it and some beautiful church alien phrases and take it, turn it out.

[Sally Helm]

LBJ delivers his message to Congress on March 16, 1964.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

It's once again that same underlying argument that he had begun to make in the State of the Union, that what poverty represented was not simply a loss of jobs, but for large numbers of people. They were on the outside looking in. They didn't have a chance because they didn't have the right opportunities to rise to the level of their talent and discipline.

[Sally Helm]

After some classic LBJ wheeling and dealing, he signs the Economic Opportunity act Into Law on August 20. It is a major victory that summer. Johnson has also signed the Civil Rights act, which is perhaps his most important legacy. He's showing that he can get things done.

[Guillen McKee]

I think it does play into that feeling that he has been a successful president in his first year after taking office in the midst of this intense crisis following the assassination in November, Johnson.

[Sally Helm]

Wins re election on his own terms. And at the end of his first term and into his second, the wider war on poverty starts falling into place. Lots of big laws and programs that most people today would recognize. They also go under the umbrella term the Great Society, which is a name for Johnson's ambitious domestic policy agenda. There was the Food Stamp Act act of 1964, the elementary and Secondary School Education act of 1965, which gave a boost to underfunded schools. The Social Security amendments of 1965, which boosted the amount of money given out through Social Security and also created Medicare and Medicaid. Things that are still making an impact today.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

Now, you know, there's a sense of permanent change because of what he did, and I just wished he had lived to see that.

[Sally Helm]

But back in LBJ's time, the office of Economic Opportunity and the idea of community action still remain the centerpiece of the war on poverty. And soon cracks begin to form.

[Guillen McKee]

As you get into 1965, things start to go wrong pretty quickly. Every city or community that starts a community action program actually does give authority to the participants in that program.

[Sally Helm]

Remember, Johnson had been skeptical of that idea from the start. But community action goes ahead. The participants set up programs that they think will be good for their communities. In Louisville, Kentucky, for example, community action boards set up programs for youth counseling, remedial reading, after school recreation. Some of those programs are pretty successful. Here's a documentary the OEO recorded in the late 60s in Avery County, North Carolina. It's called beyond these Hills, they began.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson]

To hear about something called community action. People getting together to improve their lives through a chain of concern that reached out from their own valley all the way back to Washington in less than two years. Through this new idea of community action, they have built a water system, begun a handcraft industry, and change the pattern of education for themselves and their children.

[Sally Helm]

But community action also creates some political issues.

[Guillen McKee]

This very quickly comes into conflict with the political establishment at the local level. You know, mayors, county leaders really resist this approach because this is essentially the federal government is coming in and shifting power and authority away from local governments and local agencies where it's traditionally been located and putting it at the community level.

[Sally Helm]

Johnson gets blamed by political leaders for disrupting their power and for whatever problems arise from these new programs. For example, there were some issues with the job Corps program where young people were brought from cities to work in rural areas.

[Guillen McKee]

They're called riots. I think that's a little strong, but basically bored kids with nothing to do and access to, you know, beer and, you know, stuff goes wrong.

[Sally Helm]

In Morganfield, Kentucky, young men from the city working in the job Corps living in Camp Breckenridge, quote, rioted. A newspaper article from the time makes it sound like their big complaint was that the food was bad. One of the people running Camp Breckenridge said they were upset about everything from, quote, poor potatoes in the cafeteria to not enough girls. They end up vandalizing some property and actually even injuring a firefighter who responds to. To the scene.

[Guillen McKee]

All these things, whether they're major incidents or not, get a lot of press attention. And by mid-1965, late 1965, there's kind of a growing public perception and political perception that the war on poverty has.

[Sally Helm]

Gone off the rails, and Lyndon Johnson starts to have serious doubts about his own administration's policies.

[Guillen McKee]

Johnson himself has never bought into community action. He bitterly resents the fact that this has slipped into his own signature policy initiative. So there are a number of conversations all through this period where he is ranting against community action.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson]

This community action program. Poverty is a wasteful thing. They ought to cut it out. It's a dangerous thing, too. These folks are liable to get his terrible. And they.

[Sally Helm]

The war on poverty begins to fall apart politically. On Johnson's right, both Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats criticize the program for its cost and for what they see as it favoring people of color. And from the left, Bobby Kennedy emerges as a fierce political adversary. He holds hearings exposing the issues with Johnson's poverty efforts and pushes for much More aggressive action.

[Guillen McKee]

He's worried about Bobby Kennedy challenging his control of the party and the war on poverty. And especially community action for Johnson becomes kind of a symbol of this. It's this remarkable situation where you have a president pushing back against a program that his own administration has created that just a few years before was seen as kind of one of his major accomplishments.

[Sally Helm]

In 1966, Congress passes amendments to the Economic Opportunity act stripping community action boards of much of their power. The boards still exist even to this day, but in a much more watered down form than what was originally intended.

[Guillen McKee]

There's this kind of public sense that this idealistic vision of a few years before isn't actually playing out. And of course that connects to backlash against the Civil Rights act and the movements urban revolts, the Vietnam War and the anti war movement.

[Sally Helm]

By 1968, things have gotten so bad for LBJ that he chooses not to run for re election. He doesn't even try to hold onto the office he had sought for decades. He felt that he wasn't effective anymore at passing key legislation.

[Guillen McKee]

There's a recorded conversation, I think it's about two days before he gives the televised address where he withdraws his name from consideration.

[Sally Helm]

He's talking to an advisor about getting a bill passed. And the advisor says, yeah, sir, you.

[Guillen McKee]

Can get this job. You're the master of the Senate. And Johnson pauses and responds to him and says, I ain't the master of the Senate. I ain't the master of nothing.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson]

So I'm not master of nothing. I just haven't got it. And we cannot make this Congress do one damn thing that I know of.

[Sally Helm]

Hubert Humphrey becomes the Democratic nominee and loses to Richard Nixon. At first, Nixon actually keeps the Office of Economic Opportunity running, but Ronald Reagan formally dissolves it in 1981. Still, many of its programs get absorbed into other departments and are still around today. Programs like the Job Corps, Head Start, and even the Community Action Program. And beyond these programs, that broader war on poverty. A large part of Johnson's Great Society had a massive impact. Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, enhanced Social Security, all of that really brought poverty down. As of 2019, the poverty rate in the US was around half what it was before the war on poverty began. Yet in many ways, the effort is seen as a failure because poverty is still such an issue in the country.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

Especially today, when you think that Covid has made so clear to all of us that poverty is still heartbreakingly widespread. It's not simply that people don't have jobs right now because of COVID I mean, there was before this a lack of mobility in large sections of the.

[Sally Helm]

Country and the idealism Lyndon Johnson had that we could win something like the War on Poverty. That optimism is a rare commodity today.

[Guillen McKee]

It produced a kind of cynicism about our capacity to tackle big problems. It wasn't the only cause of that. But I think some of that sense of failing to meet expansive expectations had a negative effect.

[Sally Helm]

But McKee says it's possible that Johnson just didn't give himself enough time.

[Guillen McKee]

If they had just sort of taken time to develop it as a fully fledged campaign proposal, as a more thought out program, they might have had even more effect and more success.

[Sally Helm]

Doris Kearns Goodwin heard that basic argument from LBJ himself. He explained it in a way that only he could.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin]

The metaphor that he constantly used that, you know, both the War on Poverty and the Great Society were somehow going to turn into a beautiful woman. I mean, he kept talking about this with me, that he figured her growth would be as natural as any small child. You know, in the first year she would start, you know, crawling, and then she'd start walking, and then she'd start running. And then someday she'd be so beautiful that everyone would fall in love with her and that once they did, they'd want to keep her around forever and make her a permanent part of American life even more than the New Deal. So that was his dream, that somehow all of these programs would come together and they would deal with the structural inequities in the country. So he was way ahead on all of this and I think deserves to be remembered for that.

[Sally Helm]

The war on poverty is still being waged, but it's worth remembering its programs did help lift millions of people out of poverty, which is a victory even if we haven't won the war. Thanks for listening to History this week. For more moments throughout history that are also worth watching, check your local TV listings to find out what's on the History Channel today. This episode was produced by Ben Dickstein. History this Week is also produced by McKamey, Lynn, Julie McGruder and me, Sally Helm. Our editor and sound designer is Dan Rosado and our researcher is Emma Fredericks. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz and Ted Butler. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review History this Week wherever you get your podcasts and we will see you next week.