a great society speech

The speech that launched the Great Society

Assistant Professor of Political Management, George Washington University

Disclosure statement

Matthew Dallek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

View all partners

In May 1964, Lyndon Johnson described his vision of a great society in a commencement address delivered to the University of Michigan.

The audience could not have been more receptive to his message. Speaking to a university where President John F. Kennedy had announced the Peace Corps and which had supplied some of the leaders of the activist group, Students for a Democratic Society , Johnson called out to the audience a series of questions, each one eliciting vocal waves of affirmative answers from the graduating class.

The speech, in some respects, was a cornerstone of Johnson’s 1964 election campaign. He used the speech to articulate his own program, distinct not only from Kennedy but also from his political mentor, Franklin Roosevelt, in whose shadow he stood.

LBJ wanted to put a stamp on a program of his own. He believed that the power he had in his hands was to be maximized for progressive ends. More importantly, though, liberalism was undergoing a series of shifts in direction. Johnson’s speech helped channel and accelerate the new mood.

To many liberals, prosperity had come to seem an almost permanent characteristic of American life. A broad, expanding middle-class was taken for granted by the date of Johnson’s speech.

If sixties liberals saw the New Deal as primarily an architecture to provide an economic floor for citizens when industrial capitalism faltered, they also concluded that a new program was needed to address the anxiety and discomfort that was festering in America. Liberals had concluded that government’s mission had less to do with ensuring economic fairness than with helping people to find meaning in their lives and to achieve a level of spiritual fulfillment.

Above all, Johnson wanted to deliver a speech that called Americans to a greater purpose. Without this context it’s difficult to grasp why Johnson announced a vision of such sweep.

Why was it called ‘the great society?’

LBJ began the speech with a call, simple and bold, to bring an end to the twin scourges of racism and poverty in his time. But that was just the start, he announced.

In his brilliant memoirs , Richard Goodwin – who was the primary author of Johnson’s speech – recalled how almost as an afterthought he had inserted the phrase “Great Society” into a minor speech. “In our time,” he wrote, “we have the opportunity to move not just toward the rich society or the powerful society, but toward the great society.” Johnson admired the phrase and continued to use it in his remarks. Reporters soon were describing Johnson’s entire program as “the Great Society.”

Goodwin explained that “the very engine of prosperity—growth, development, technology, the golden liberators – were themselves corroding the spiritual and material conditions of American life,” and Johnson’s speech, which put a stamp on the phrase and outlined the philosophy behind it, took aim at the developments.

Johnson declared that the government, working with a citizenry motivated to improve community life, had to make cities more livable, protect the natural environment, and provide education that gave all citizens regardless of race or class the chance to rise in society and find meaning in life.

The speech was a spiritual invocation as much as a political statement to fulfill Jefferson’s promise in the Declaration of Independence to give all the right to “pursuit of happiness.”

“The Great Society,” Johnson declared, “…demands an end to poverty and racial injustice,” but it also had to be “a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and enlarge his talent…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.”

The Great Society, he added, meant making the nation’s cities places where “future generations can come together, not only to live, but to live the good life.” It was a place where “America the beautiful” and “our natural splendor” were protected from the pollution that threatened to destroy “the water we drink, the food we eat, the very air we breath.”

While Johnson’s 1964 speech dwelled on the problems of the cities, the environment, and education, the constellation of programs that came to be known as the Great Society addressed a much wider agenda. They included not only Medicare, Medicaid and civil rights legislation but also the creation of a department of Housing and Urban Development and the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities, to name just a few.

“The liberal assumption that rising wealth more widely distributed would liberate Americans for the ‘pursuit of happiness’ had proven…inadequate,” Goodwin wrote of the genesis of the speech. The address, he argued, represented “the only possible direction for liberating, progressive change” .

Unlike today, people had faith in good government

The speech was also a response to the movements for social change led by the civil rights revolution in the South that were sweeping the country.

The liberals in the White House, Goodwin observed, were very much citizens of their time. African-American, women, consumer and nascent student movements suggested to the liberals in power that citizens and their government could relieve people from the suffocating bonds of past prejudices and free them to fulfill their potential.

Johnson’s speech reflected his faith in the power not just of government but also of ordinary citizens to enact changes that benefitted fellow Americans.

Over the past decades, Democratic politicians have worked hard to put a lot of distance between themselves and Johnson’s call for a Great Society.

Bill Clinton declared the end to the era of big government in 1996, and Barack Obama has resisted in his oratory and policies the kinds of soaring promises of a revolution in society initiated by government.

Johnson’s speech contains sentiments that no major Democrat would dare to voice in 2015 and still hope to be taken seriously. And for good reasons.

The hopes and promises articulated by Johnson were grandiose, and inevitably raised expectations (bringing an end to poverty and racism for example) that no president could realistically hope to achieve.

Johnson’s Great Society by now has also become so associated with big-government connotations that Democrats running for office at a time when government is viewed with extreme displeasure, would be committing political suicide if they embraced Johnson’s soaring rhetoric.

Nonetheless, Johnson’s speech remains a great speech and not only because it defined a program – much of which was enacted into law – that has proven beneficial to millions of Americans for the past 50 years and counting. The Great Society speech marks a key moment in American history because it called on both government and citizens to create a just, more equal and humane society – cutting the poverty rate, protecting the environment, bolstering public education, curbing racism -— in ways that still guide our political debates and capture much that is decent and sensible in the liberal political tradition.

Even as Democratic politicians run from Johnson’s legacy, they are forced, wittingly or not, to operate in the shadow of the words he uttered at Michigan more than 50 years ago.

• Great Society
• The Great Society

Faculty of Law - Academic Appointment Opportunities

Operations Manager

Senior Education Technologist

Audience Development Coordinator (fixed-term maternity cover)

Lecturer (Hindi-Urdu)

Here is the audio clip of Johnson's speech. It is split into two parts. Scroll down for the transcript.

It is a great pleasure to be here today.

This university has been coeducational since 1870, but I do not believe it was on the basis of your accomplishments that a Detroit high school girl said, "In choosing a college, you first have to decide whether you want a coeducational school or an educational school." Well, we can find both here at Michigan, although perhaps at different hours. I came out here today very anxious to meet the Michigan student whose father told a friend of mine that his son's education had been a real value. It stopped his mother from bragging about him. I have come today from the turmoil of your Capital to the tranquility of your campus to speak about the future of your country. The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation. For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people. The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization. Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the \cf2 Great Society\cf0 . The \cf2 Great Society\cf0 rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in out time. But that is just the beginning. The \cf2 Great Society\cf0 is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is 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. It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what is adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods. But most of all, the \cf2 Great Society\cf0 is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor. So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the \cf2 Great Society\cf0 -- in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms. Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now, when there will be 400 million Americans -- four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this century urban population will double, city land will double, and we will have to build homes, highways, and facilities equal to all those built since this country was first settled. So in the next 40 years we must re-build the entire urban United States. Aristotle said: "Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life." It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today. The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated. Worst of all expansion is eroding the precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference. Our society will never be great until our cities are great. Today the frontier of imagination and innovation is inside those cities and not beyond their borders. New experiments are already going on. It will be the task of your generation to make the American city a place where future generations will come, not only to live but to live the good life. I understand that if I stayed here tonight I would see that Michigan students are really doing their best to live the good life. This is the place where the Peace Corps was started. It is inspiring to see how all of you, while you are in this country, are trying so hard to live at the level of the people. A second place where we begin to build the \cf2 Great Society\cf0 is in our countryside. We have always prided ourselves on being not only America the strong and America the free, but America the beautiful. Today that beauty is in danger. The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing. A few years ago we were greatly concerned about the "Ugly American." Today we must act to prevent an ugly America. For once the battle is lost, once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted. A third place to build the \cf2 Great Society\cf0 is in the classrooms of America. There your children's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination. We are still far from that goal. Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million -- more than onequarter of all America -- have not even finished high school. Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it. And if we cannot educate today's youth, what will we do in 1970 when elementary school enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. College enrollment will increase by more than 3 million. In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are unqualified. So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty. But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation. These are three of the central issues of the \cf2 Great Society\cf0 . While our Government has many programs directed at those issues, I do not pretend that we have the full answer to those problems. But I do promise this: We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings -- on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the \cf2 Great Society\cf0 . The solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington, nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities. Woodrow Wilson once wrote: "Every man sent out from his university should be a man of his Nation as well as a man of his time." Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination. For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation. So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin? Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty? Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace -- as neighbors and not as mortal enemies? Will you join in the battle to build the \cf2 Great Society\cf0 , to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit? There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society. Those who came to this land sought to build more than just a new country. They sought a new world. So I have come here today to your campus to say that you can make their vision our reality. So let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look back and say: It was then, after a long and weary way, that man turned the exploits of his genius to the full enrichment of his life. Thank you. Good-bye.  

More History

Picture Archive A - C Picture Archive D - M Picture Archive N - Z

Attila short biography Map of Attila's empire Battle of the Catalaunian Plains Who were the Huns?  

Also called the Persian Wars , the Greco-Persian Wars were fought for almost half a century from 492 BC - 449 BC. Greece won against enormous odds. Here is more:

Battle of Marathon Battle of Thermopylae Battle of Salamis Battle of Plataea

Module 12: America in the 1960s (1960-1970)

Lyndon johnson and the great society, learning objectives.

• Describe the major goals and initiatives of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society

The Great Society

In a speech at the University of Michigan in May 1964, Lyndon Johnson laid out a sweeping vision for a package of domestic reforms known as the Great Society . Speaking before that year’s graduates of the University of Michigan, Johnson called for “an end to poverty and racial injustice” and challenged both the graduates and American people to “enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.” At its heart, he promised, the Great Society would uplift racially and economically disfranchised Americans, too long denied access to federal guarantees of equal democratic and economic opportunity, while simultaneously raising all Americans’ standards and quality of life.

Figure 1 . In a speech at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on May 22, 1964 (a), President Johnson announced some of his goals for the Great Society. These included rebuilding cities, preserving the natural environment, and improving education. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in his hometown of Johnson City, Texas, alongside his childhood schoolteacher, Kate Deadrich Loney (b). (credit a: modification of work by Cecil Stoughton)

Great Society Programs

While the programs of the New Deal thirty years earlier responded to the dire economic context of the Great Depression, the Great Society was a response to unequal opportunity in the midst of prosperity. The Great Society took on a range of quality-of-life concerns that seemed suddenly solvable in a society of such affluence. It established the first federal food stamp program. Medicare and Medicaid would ensure access to quality medical care for the aged and poor. In 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act , an outgrowth of Johnson’s experience as a former teacher, was the first sustained and significant federal investment in public education, totaling more than $1 billion. Significant funds were poured into colleges and universities through the Higher Education Act , passed the same year. The Great Society also established the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, both federal investments in arts and letters that fund American cultural expression to this day.

In addition to funding for education and the arts, Great Society programs established consumer protection laws for the meat, tobacco, and automobile industries and required “truth in lending” by creditors. Other initiatives included funding for public transportation and high-speed mass transit as well as environmental protections. In 1965, Congress also passed the Immigration and Nationality Act , legislation that overturned quota-based laws from the 1920s that favored immigrants from western and northern Europe over those from eastern and southern Europe. The new law lifted severe restrictions on immigration from Asia and gave preference to immigrants with family ties in the United States and immigrants with desirable skills. Importantly, the Immigration and Nationality Act facilitated the formation of Asian and Latin American immigrant communities in the following decades.

Watch this video for a summary of Johnson’s Great Society programs.

You can view the  transcript for “What Were LBJ’s “Great Society” Programs? | History” here (opens in new window) .

Addressing Poverty

While these laws touched on important aspects of the Great Society, the centerpiece of Johnson’s plan was the eradication of poverty in the United States. Using the bellicose language common to the Cold War era, he declared a war on poverty  that he hoped would eliminate basic material wants in a prosperous society. The Economic Opportunity Act (EOA) of 1964 established and provided $3 billion in funding for a variety of programs to promote employment, development, and education in impoverished communities. The EOA fought rural poverty by providing low-interest loans to those wishing to improve their farms or start businesses. EOA funds were also used to provide housing and education for migrant farmworkers.

Figure 2 . President Johnson visits a poor family in Appalachia in 1964. Government initiatives designed to combat poverty helped rural communities like this one by providing low-interest loans and housing. (credit: Cecil Stoughton)

Other legislation created jobs in Appalachia, one of the poorest regions in the United States, and brought programs to Indigenous reservations. One of EOA’s successes was the Rough Rock Demonstration School on the Navajo Reservation, which worked to respect Navajo traditions and culture while also training people for careers and jobs outside the reservation.

No EOA program was more controversial than Community Action , considered the fulcrum of the antipoverty program. Johnson’s antipoverty planners felt that the key to uplifting disfranchised and impoverished Americans was involving poor and marginalized citizens in the actual administration of poverty programs, what they called “maximum feasible participation.”

Community Action Programs would give disfranchised Americans a seat at the table in planning and executing federally funded programs that were meant to benefit them—a significant seat change in the nation’s efforts to confront poverty, which had historically relied on local political and business elites, experts in academia, or charitable organizations for administration. In fact, Johnson himself had never conceived of poor Americans running their own poverty programs. While the president’s rhetoric offered a stirring vision of the future, this vision was essentially a second New Deal in which local elite-run public works camps would instill masculine virtues in unemployed young men. Community Action, however, almost entirely bypassed local administrations and sought to build grassroots civil rights and community advocacy organizations, many of which had originated in the broader civil rights movement.

Despite widespread support for most Great Society programs, the War on Poverty increasingly became the focal point of domestic criticisms from the left and right. On the left, frustrated Americans recognized the president’s resistance to further empowering poor disenfranchised communities and also assailed the growing war in Vietnam, the cost of which undercut domestic poverty spending. As racial unrest and violence swept across urban centers, most notably during the race riots during the summers of 1965 and 1967, critics from the right lambasted federal spending for “unworthy” citizens.

Review Question

Community Action:  Great Society programs that proposed placing poor and marginalized people in positions of leadership over initiatives that directly impact their communities

Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965):  provided $1 billion in federal funding to elementary and secondary schools to promote equal access to education regardless of economic status

Great Society:  Lyndon Johnson’s plan to eliminate poverty and racial injustice in the United States and to improve the lives of all Americans

Higher Education Act (1965):  provided federal funding to universities and colleges, established scholarships, and offered low-interest loans to individuals pursuing higher education

Immigration and Nationality Act (1965):  overturned quota policies favoring immigrants from north and western Europe, thereby paving the way for a new wave of immigrants from south and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, Central and South America

Medicare:  a national insurance program established in 1965 to provide healthcare access for Americans 65 and over as well as some Americans with disabilities

Medicaid:  a program created in 1965 to provide subsidized healthcare to Americans with limited income and resources

war on poverty:  Lyndon Johnson’s plan to end poverty in the Unites States through the extension of federal benefits, job training programs, and funding for community development

• US History. Provided by : OpenStax. Located at : http://openstaxcollege.org/textbooks/us-history . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/us-history/pages/1-introduction
• The Sixties. Provided by : The American Yawp. Located at : http://www.americanyawp.com/text/27-the-sixties/ . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Authored by : US Department of Justice. Provided by : Wikipedia. License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright

The New York Times

The learning network | text to text | president johnson’s ‘great society’ speech and ‘50 years into the war on poverty, hardship hits back’.

Text to Text | President Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ Speech and ‘50 Years Into the War on Poverty, Hardship Hits Back’

Text to Text

Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.

• See all Text to Text »
• See all lesson plans »

President Johnson announced 50 years ago this month his vision for a “Great Society” during two speeches — first at Ohio University and then at the University of Michigan. In those speeches he detailed his grand vision for America, which included not just ending poverty and racial injustice, but also a plan to build the Great Society “in our cities, in our countryside and in our classrooms.” A centerpiece of President Johnson’s Great Society was to free all Americans of the “crushing weight of poverty.” In this Text to Text , we pair President Johnson’s “Great Society” speech with an article by Trip Gabriel describing the new face of poverty in rural West Virginia.

Background: Four months before he invoked the Great Society, President Johnson had declared the need for an “unconditional war on poverty” during his first State of the Union address . The war on poverty, a cornerstone of the larger Great Society program , was an ambitious government initiative that helped introduce and expand such familiar programs as Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Head Start, the Job Corps and work-study grants. These programs and others continue to be central to the federal government’s antipoverty approach today.

With this year marking the 50th anniversary of the war on poverty, there has been much discussion and debate about whether the war on poverty has been a success. In January, Annie Lowrey weighed in :

To many Americans, the war on poverty declared 50 years ago by President Lyndon B. Johnson has largely failed. The poverty rate has fallen only to 15 percent from 19 percent in two generations, and 46 million Americans live in households where the government considers their income scarcely adequate. But looked at a different way, the federal government has succeeded in preventing the poverty rate from climbing far higher. There is broad consensus that the social welfare programs created since the New Deal have hugely improved living conditions for low-income Americans. At the same time, in recent decades, most of the gains from the private economy have gone to those at the top of the income ladder.

But whether or not you believe that government antipoverty programs have helped alleviate poverty, the unmistakable reality is that poverty is still entrenched in many parts of the country — in cities, suburbs and the countryside. And while poverty may look different today , with many poor people owning flat-screen TVs, smartphones and Internet-connected computers, the weight of poverty still continues to crush families and dreams.

Below, we pair an excerpt from President Johnson’s “Great Society” speech with an excerpt from Trip Gabriel’s article, “50 Years Into the War on Poverty, Hardship Hits Back,” documenting the stubborn poverty in McDowell County, West Virginia. As Mr. Gabriel writes, “When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared ‘unconditional war on poverty’ in 1964, it was the squalor of Appalachia he had in mind.”

Note: If you would rather have your students read about the bigger picture of national progress in the war on poverty, you might prefer to use one of Annie Lowrey’s two articles: “50 Years Later, War on Poverty Is a Mixed Bag” or “Changed Life of the Poor: Better Off, but Far Behind.”

Key Questions: To what extent has our nation succeeded in building President Johnson’s vision of a Great Society?

Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:

• Comparing Two or More Texts
• Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading
• Document Analysis Questions

Excerpt 1: From the “Great Society” Speech , University of Michigan, May 22, 1964, by President Lyndon Baines Johnson

I have come today from the turmoil of your Capital to the tranquillity of your campus to speak about the future of your country. The purpose of protecting the life of our nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a nation. For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people. The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization. Your imagination and your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society. The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning. 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 leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is 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. It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods. But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor. Read entire speech »

Excerpt 2: From “50 Years Into the War on Poverty, Hardship Hits Back,” April 21, 2014, by Trip Gabriel

When people visit with friends and neighbors in southern West Virginia, where paved roads give way to dirt before winding steeply up wooded hollows, the talk is often of lives that never got off the ground. “How’s John boy?” Sabrina Shrader, 30, a former neighbor, asked Marie Bolden one cold winter day at what Ms. Bolden calls her “little shanty by the tracks.” “He had another seizure the other night,” Ms. Bolden, 50, said of her son, John McCall, a former classmate of Ms. Shrader’s. John got caught up in the dark undertow of drugs that defines life for so many here in McDowell County, almost died of an overdose in 2007, and now lives on disability payments. His brother, Donald, recently released from prison, is unemployed and essentially homeless. “It’s like he’s in a hole with no way out,” Ms. Bolden said of Donald as she drizzled honey on a homemade biscuit in her tidy kitchen. “The other day he came in and said, ‘Ain’t that a shame: I’m 30 years old and carrying my life around in a backpack.’ It broke my heart.” McDowell County, the poorest in West Virginia, has been emblematic of entrenched American poverty for more than a half-century. John F. Kennedy campaigned here in 1960 and was so appalled that he promised to send help if elected president. His first executive order created the modern food stamp program, whose first recipients were McDowell County residents. When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty” in 1964, it was the squalor of Appalachia he had in mind. The federal programs that followed — Medicare, Medicaid, free school lunches and others — lifted tens of thousands above a subsistence standard of living. But a half-century later, with the poverty rate again on the rise, hardship seems merely to have taken on a new face in McDowell County. The economy is declining along with the coal industry, towns are hollowed out as people flee, and communities are scarred by family dissolution, prescription drug abuse and a high rate of imprisonment. Fifty years after the war on poverty began, its anniversary is being observed with academic conferences and ideological sparring — often focused, explicitly or implicitly, on the “culture” of poor urban residents. Almost forgotten is how many ways poverty plays out in America, and how much long-term poverty is a rural problem. Of the 353 most persistently poor counties in the United States — defined by Washington as having had a poverty rate above 20 percent in each of the past three decades — 85 percent are rural. They are clustered in distinct regions: Indian reservations in the West; Hispanic communities in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas; a band across the Deep South and along the Mississippi Delta with a majority black population; and Appalachia, largely white, which has supplied some of America’s iconic imagery of rural poverty since the Depression-era photos of Walker Evans. McDowell County is in some ways a place truly left behind, from which the educated few have fled, leaving almost no shreds of prosperity. But in a nation with more than 46 million people living below the poverty line — 15 percent of the population — it is also a sobering reminder of how much remains broken, in drearily familiar ways and utterly unexpected ones, 50 years on. Read entire article »

For Writing or Discussion

• What does President Johnson declare is the “challenge of the next half century?” What do his words mean to you?
• Describe President Johnson’s vision of a “Great Society.” What is it like?
• Do you agree with President Johnson’s goal of building a “Great Society?” Is it a worthwhile goal to which the country should aspire?
• How does rural West Virginia fit into the narrative of the antipoverty initiatives started by President Kennedy and President Johnson?
• Mr. Gabriel writes, “A half-century later, with the poverty rate again on the rise, hardship seems merely to have taken on a new face in McDowell County.” What does the new face of hardship there look like?
• What evidence does Mr. Gabriel cite to support his claim that to a significant extent, “long-term poverty is a rural problem.”
• How do you think President Johnson would respond to Mr. Gabriel’s description of McDowell County, W.Va., if he were alive today? To what extent has our nation succeeded in building President Johnson’s vision of a Great Society, based on the article by Mr. Gabriel?

Going Further:

1. The Face of Poverty: In an article looking at poverty in rural West Virginia , Trip Gabriel writes:

Fifty years after the war on poverty began, its anniversary is being observed with academic conferences and ideological sparring — often focused, explicitly or implicitly, on the “culture” of poor urban residents. Almost forgotten is how many ways poverty plays out in America, and how much long-term poverty is a rural problem.

In fact, according to this article , poverty in America has now become mainstream. Mark R. Rank, a professor of social welfare at Washington University, writes that over half of all Americans between the ages of 25 and 60 will experience at least a year in poverty or near poverty. And according to this article about low-wage workers , poverty is not confined to the unemployed or underemployed. Many work 40-hour-a-week jobs and still find themselves struggling.

So, what does poverty look like in America? How widespread is it? And, is it getting worse? To answer these questions, student can study this map and read two of Annie Lowrey’s articles: “50 Years Later, War on Poverty Is a Mixed Bag” and “Changed Life of the Poor: Better Off, but Far Behind.”

2. A New War on Poverty: What would a new war on poverty look like today? Would it focus on government programs to alleviate the effects of poverty, like nutrition assistance and unemployment insurance? Would it try to raise incomes by increasing the minimum wage or seeking to grow private sector jobs? Would it focus on social programs that help people lift themselves out of poverty, like education, health care and child care? Would it put more power into the hands of communities themselves?

We published a lesson earlier this school year, “Economic Inequality in America: Developing a New War on Poverty,” that helps students learn about the problems of poverty and economic inequality in America and then research possible solutions as they propose a new war on poverty for 2014. The Opinion piece “Poverty in America: Why Can’t We End It?” can also help students envision a new antipoverty campaign.

3. Johnson’s Legacy: How should President Johnson be remembered? President Johnson’s family and his friends from his years in the White House are “ seeking a reconsideration of Johnson’s legacy as president, arguing that it has been overwhelmed by the tragedy of the Vietnam War, and has failed to take into account the blizzard of domestic legislation enacted in the five years Johnson was in the White House.” Research the accomplishments of President Johnson, and decide how he should be remembered. Should the Vietnam War overshadow his domestic accomplishments, including his Great Society initiatives?

This resource may be used to address the academic standards listed below.

Common Core E.L.A. Anchor Standards

1   Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

9   Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice

United states history.

26   Understands the economic boom and social transformation of post-World War II United States.

28   Understands domestic policies in the post-World War II period.

31   Understands economic, social, and cultural developments in the contemporary United States.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

The war on poverty seems like a brilliant idea to our past president Mr. Johnson and the people who lived in that time, which surprisingly reached its 50th anniversary. Mr.Johnson’s idea of a perfect American society of where poverty and racial discrimination is just a dream with no cause. As long as their is people in this world of different diversities in this world there will be discrimination against each other and racial slurs being used against each other, were all different in our physical and mental qualities we have. Same goes for the poverty situation in the American society, when their is people with certain set of skills that set them besides the rest of the population they ask for more of their services and so social class will always be the issue on the goal of ending poverty. Yes, president Obama has lowered unemployment rates and as well President. Johnson issued systems to help the people in need, but it will not reach the point of equal class and a perfect society. I believe Mr. Johnson was a communist, its not bad; I’m communist myself, but lets face reality a perfect civilization, a Ethiopia, its never going to exist. I always asked my dad, “if were all people and were all the same, why does he have better things.” all he replied was that ” it depends on how hard the person works”, so as the years came I know one thing in mind for sure. Were human we want the best things in life for ourselves, were selfish we all want something, so we work hard and live the American dream. That’s why I believe Johnsons cause was meaningless he does not need to help, let societ6y work for once instead perfect being poor, and maybe one day a perfect society will exist.

Poverty is every where you look, some people choose not to notice it but it is. No matter what it will be on earth reaching the furthest countries, towns, cities etc. As shown by history poverty has been around for a really long time. My question is who’s helping?

What's Next

• This Day In History
• History Classics
• HISTORY Podcasts
• HISTORY Vault
• Link HISTORY on facebook
• Link HISTORY on twitter
• Link HISTORY on youtube
• Link HISTORY on instagram
• Link HISTORY on tiktok

Speeches & Audio

Great society.

In a speech presented at the University of Michigan on May 22, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson outlines his vision of a "Great Society," which includes the ideas that will later become programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Head Start.

Create a Profile to Add this show to your list!

Great Society Speech: Documents in Detail

The Great Society and LBJ's Vision for America

In this final episode of the 2018-19 Documents in Detail year, we discuss President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” speech – its reception in 1964, and its legacy for American social policy and political thinking.

Martin Luther King, Jr. vs. Malcolm X: Great American Debates

How did the goals and tactics of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr differ from one another?

"Great Society" Speech

President Johnson delivered the commencement address at the University of Michigan. He spoke about the state of American success. He stresse… read more

President Johnson delivered the commencement address at the University of Michigan. He spoke about the state of American success. He stressed that America’s power should be used to advance the quality of life of its citizens and create a “Great Society.” It was his second use of the term. This is a portion of his remarks. close

Javascript must be enabled in order to access C-SPAN videos.

• Text type Text People Graphical Timeline
• Filter by Speaker All Speakers Lyndon Baines Johnson
• Search this text

*This text was compiled from uncorrected Closed Captioning.

People in this video

Hosting Organization

• University of Michigan University of Michigan

Airing Details

• Nov 13, 1999 | 2:05am EST | C-SPAN 1
• Dec 10, 1999 | 2:42pm EST | C-SPAN 2
• Aug 03, 2000 | 11:45pm EDT | C-SPAN 2
• Aug 04, 2000 | 7:49am EDT | C-SPAN 2

Related Video

Commencement Speech

In a commencement address at his alma mater, Senator Tom Daschle spoke about how education brings freedom through creati…

Former Secretary of State James Baker delivered the commencement address at the Nitze School of Advanced International S…

University of Texas Commencement

Governor George W. Bush (R-Texas) delivered the commencement address at the University of Texas in Austin.

University of Maryland Commencement Speech

The first lady delivered the commencement address at the University of Maryland and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Pu…

User Created Clips from This Video

User Clip: The Great Society

• 2,037 views

User Clip: Lyndon Johnson Great Society

User Clip: LBJ "Great Society Speech"

User Clip: Speech- what society

Was the Great Society Successful?

Two scholars debate this question.

Written by: (Claim A) Anthony D. Bartl, Angelo State University; (Claim B) Gregory L. Schneider, Emporia State University

Suggested sequencing.

• Use this point-counterpoint after the  Lyndon B. Johnson, Commencement Address at the University of Michigan (“Great Society” Speech), May 22, 1964  Primary Source to have students analyze whether the Great Society’s government programs were successful in eradicating poverty.

Issue on the Table

Was the Great Society successful in using government programs to eradicate poverty for greater equality and opportunity in America, or did the Great Society fail to eradicate poverty and result in massive, unsustainable federal programs?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

In his 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson declared a “war on poverty” as one of the foundation stones in building the United States into “the Great Society.” A decade later, poverty appeared to be in retreat. If Johnson’s program did not eradicate all poverty, it ameliorated it considerably. The national poverty rate was 19 percent in 1964. Ten years later, it had dropped to below 11.2 percent, and it has never gone above 15.2 percent since then. As Johnson aide Joseph Califano Jr. noted, this “was the most dramatic decline [in poverty] over such a brief period in this century.”

After the momentous achievements of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, Great Society programs changed the American economic landscape forever, pushing the country in directions of greater equality and opportunity for all its citizens. The 89th and 90th Congresses, which forged the Great Society, were among the most productive in U.S. history, enacting hundreds of major proposals. Although many of the programs produced by this legislation have not lasted, the Great Society centerpieces concerning education and health care have remained and have been built upon by later administrations.

Perhaps no piece of legislation had a greater impact than the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which brought federal aid to local school districts for the first time. Other pieces of legislation also had an impact on school funding. For example, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 created Head Start, which expanded preschool to families who could not afford it. Likewise, disabled children from poor families now had access to special education services. Additional legislation made bilingual education available to children whose lack of English proficiency would otherwise have put them behind other children their age. Federal aid was also committed to higher education, with the Federal Higher Education Act of 1965 facilitating enormous growth in financial assistance to attend college. Prior to this legislation, 41 percent of Americans had completed high school and 8 percent held college degrees. High school graduation rates increased to the mid-80 percent range and more than one-third of all Americans now have college degrees.

The expansion of health care coverage to the elderly (Medicare) and the poor (Medicaid) improved the quality of life and reduced poverty. The elderly poor, by and large, could now afford to treat illnesses before they became critical emergencies. Federal aid for education in the health professions and funding to create centers of medical excellence produced greater access to health care and promoted greater progress in medical fields. Combined with the food stamp and school breakfast programs targeting malnutrition and hunger, these programs produced significant results. Infant mortality, which had stood at 26 deaths per 1,000 births in the mid-1960s, has since dropped to 5.9 per 1,000 today. Overall life expectancy rose from 66.6 years for men and 73.1 years for women in 1964 to 73.6 years for men and 79.2 years for women in 1997.

Federal funding for housing, public transportation, jobs, and urban development alleviated many burdens faced by the poor and middle classes. Of course, all this came at great cost, and critics have claimed these programs were unsustainable, opened the door to permanent deficit spending, undermined America’s long-term fiscal strength, and entrenched dependency on government among the lower classes. Others have argued that many of these initiatives violated the principle of federalism, which divided power between the federal government and states, in favor of expanding federal power and control.

Others still have noticed that even with the successes of the Great Society, the United States has fallen considerably short of the goals President Johnson himself put forth at the beginning of this endeavor. Johnson, after all, had called for an “unconditional” war, aiming “not only to relieve the symptom of poverty but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.” And his “Great Society” speech said it was not enough to end the material dimensions of poverty but that urban regeneration was necessary to further combat “loneliness, boredom, and indifference.”

These exalted goals were not achieved and perhaps could not be achieved. The unconditional surrender of poverty never came. But when adjusted for more modest, realistic expectations and measured by its material impact on the poverty rate and economic inequality in the 1960s and 1970s, the success of the Great Society is difficult to doubt.

President Lyndon Johnson fought two wars in the 1960s: one against communism in Vietnam and one against poverty at home. His policies failed to provide a victory in either conflict. South Vietnam fell to the communists in 1975, and we are still fighting the war on poverty today—a result of the unintended consequences of the faith in government solutions to social problems.

Johnson declared “an unconditional war on poverty” in his 1964 State of the Union message. He created the Office of Economic Opportunity to develop the mechanism whereby the poor would be helped. But his emphasis on the poor solving their own problems through Community Action Programs (CAPs) and with “maximum feasible participation” by the poor themselves, who often lacked the educational ability and political skills necessary to improve their condition, backfired. The effectiveness of the programs was inhibited when radical groups and bureaucrats bypassed liberal politicians while fighting the war, angering the traditional Democratic constituencies necessary to fight poverty, and urban political bosses and powerful members of Congress.

The Great Society was a campaign slogan announced in the spring of 1964. After Johnson’s landslide election as president in November, he worked with the huge majorities he had in Congress to pass legislation aimed at providing government aid for education, health care (Medicare and Medicaid), the rehabilitation of declining urban areas, and regulations of the environment, among dozens of other programs. Linked to this was the notion of providing opportunity—a hand up, not a hand out—but soon the notion of entitlement replaced opportunity in liberal thinking. Coalitions of welfare recipients, bureaucrats protecting their turf, and Democratic politicians all protected the war on poverty programs in spite of their obvious failure.

The Great Society and War on Poverty caused two interrelated problems. First, they led to increased dependency on government and perverse incentives that have hurt the poor. One example of this is welfare payments to single mothers that provided a disincentive for having a father in the home (benefits are cut if there is a working male member of the household). This led to a stark increase in single-parent households. Despite how heroic a single parent may be in trying to raise a child, the number of single-parent households in poverty increased drastically from 1.5 million in 1960 to approximately 5 million currently. This is compared with approximately 2 million married households under the poverty line, which has been constant since 1964. The continued fragmentation of families in poverty has led to increased crime, drug use, school dropout rates, and vast social problems in urban and rural America.

A second problem has been the cost of federal programs to aid the poor. Taxpayers have spent $20 trillion since the mid-1960s to fight the war on poverty. This includes housing allowances, food stamps, welfare payments, education, health care, and other benefits. The cost is more than the cost of all the wars fought in American history from the Revolution to the present day. What have been the results of such spending? The poverty rate has not declined and remains the same as in 1964, and there has been an explosion in the amount of federal dollars (and state dollars) needed to fund all the programs. The resulting entitlement crisis (especially for Medicare and Medicaid) threaten to bankrupt the country as states spend an increasing amount of their budgets on education and health care spending for the poor.

The demise of urban communities as a result of the war on poverty has also been a constant problem. Deindustrialization and the decline of entry-level jobs in industry occurred at the same time the federal government was moving in as a support network for poor people. Generational poverty expanded among the urban poor, who were increasingly segregated in failed schools, public housing, and a system that forced them into dependency. This is clearly seen in urban areas where blight, social problems, crime, and drug use are prevalent.

The war on poverty provided weak incentives for those in poverty to escape and to improve their lives. The faith in government to solve social problems increased social spending on programs designed to aid the poor from 14 percent of the federal budget to greater than 35 percent by the 1980s. The results are on display in every city, rural area, and community where poverty is high and show the failure of the government in addressing the nation’s problem with poverty.

Historical Reasoning Questions

Use  Handout A: Point-Counterpoint Graphic Organizer  to answer historical reasoning questions about this point-counterpoint.

Primary Sources (Claim A)

Johnson, Lyndon B. “’Great Society’ Speech.” May 22, 2964.  http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/great-society-speech/

Johnson, Lyndon B. “Special Message to Congress Proposing a Nationwide War on the Sources of Poverty.” March 16, 1964.  http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/special-message-to-congress-proposing-a-nationwide-war-on-the-sources-of-poverty/

Johnson, Lyndon B. “State of the Union Address.” January 8, 1964.  http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/state-of-the-union-address-152/

Primary Sources (Claim B)

Johnson, Lyndon B. “The Great Society.” May 22, 1964.  https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/lbjthegreatsociety.htm

Johnson, Lyndon B., and Bill Moyers. “I thought we were going to have CCC camps.” Recorded conversation on Johnson’s view of the war on poverty bill.  https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/i-thought-we-were-going-to-have-ccc-camps

Johnson, Lyndon B., and Richard Daley. “Mayor Daley on the Community Action Program.” 1966.  https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/mayor-daley-on-the-community-action-program

Johnson, Lyndon B., and Richard Russell. “LBJ and Richard Russell on the Community Action Program.” June 1966.  https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/lbj-and-senator-richard-russell-on-the-community-action-program

Suggested Resources (Claim A)

Califano, Joseph A., Jr. “What Was Really Great about the Great Society.”  Washington Monthly . October 1, 1999.  https://washingtonmonthly.com/1999/10/01/what-was-really-great-about-the-great-society/

Davies, Gareth.  From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism . Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996.

Kaplan, Marshall and Peggy L. Cuciti, eds.  The Great Society and Its Legacy: Twenty Years of U.S. Social Policy . Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986.

Mathews, Dylan. “Poverty in the 50 Years since ’The Other America,’ in Five Charts.”  Washington Post . July 11, 2012.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/07/11/poverty-in-the-50-years-since-the-other-america-in-five-charts/

Schwarz, John E.  America’s Hidden Success: A Reassessment of Public Policy from Kennedy to Reagan . New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1987.

Suggested Resources (Claim B)

Hayward, Steven F.  The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964–1980 . New York: Prima Publishing, 2001.

Sheffield, Rachel, and Robert Rector, “The Great Society After 50 Years.” Heritage Foundation, September 14, 2014.  https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/the-war-poverty-after-50-years

Shlaes, Amity.  Great Society: A New History . New York: HarperCollins, 2019.

More from this Category

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

In our resource history is presented through a series of narratives, primary sources, and point-counterpoint debates that invites students to participate in the ongoing conversation about the American experiment.

About  Search

Lyndon B. Johnson

Remarks at the university of michigan.

President Hatcher, Governor Romney, Senators McNamara and Hart, Congressmen Meader and Staebler, and other members of the fine Michigan delegation, members of the graduating class, my fellow Americans:

It is a great pleasure to be here today. This university has been coeducational since 1870, but I do not believe it was on the basis of your accomplishments that a Detroit high school girl said, "In choosing a college, you first have to decide whether you want a coeducational school or an educational school."

Well, we can find both here at Michigan, although perhaps at different hours.

I came out here today very anxious to meet the Michigan student whose father told a friend of mine that his son's education had been a real value. It stopped his mother from bragging about him.

I have come today from the turmoil of your Capital to the tranquility of your campus to speak about the future of your country.

The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation.

For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people.

The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.

Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.

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 leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is 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.

It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.

So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the Great Society--in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms.

Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now, when there will be 400 million Americans four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this century urban population will double, city land will double, and we will have to build homes, highways, and facilities equal to all those built since this country was first settled. So in the next 40 years we must rebuild the entire urban United States.

Aristotle said: "Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life." It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today.

The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated.

Worst of all expansion is eroding the precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference.

Our society will never be great until our cities are great. Today the frontier of imagination and innovation is inside those cities and not beyond their borders.

New experiments are already going on. It will be the task of your generation to make the American city a place where future generations will come, not only to live but to live the good life.

I understand that if I stayed here tonight I would see that Michigan students are really doing their best to live the good life.

This is the place where the Peace Corps was started. It is inspiring to see how all of you, while you are in this country, are trying so hard to live at the level of the people.

A second place where we begin to build the Great Society is in our countryside. We have always prided ourselves on being not only America the strong and America the free, but America the beautiful. Today that beauty is in danger. The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing.

A few years ago we were greatly concerned about the "Ugly American." Today we must act to prevent an ugly America.

For once the battle is lost, once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted.

A third place to build the Great Society is in the classrooms of America. There your children's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination. We are still far from that goal.

Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million--more than one-quarter of all America--have not even finished high school.

Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it. And if we cannot educate today's youth, what will we do in 1970 when elementary school enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. College enrollment will increase by more than 3 million.

In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are unqualified. So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation.

These are three of the central issues of the Great Society. While our Government has many programs directed at those issues, I do not pretend that we have the full answer to those problems.

But I do promise this: We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings-on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.

The solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington, nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities.

Woodrow Wilson once wrote: "Every man sent out from his university should be a man of his Nation as well as a man of his time."

Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination.

For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.

So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin?

Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?

Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace--as neighbors and not as mortal enemies ?

Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?

There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.

Those who came to this land sought to build more than just a new country. They sought a new world. So I have come here today to your campus to say that you can make their vision our reality. So let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look back and say: It was then, after a long and weary way, that man turned the exploits of his genius to the full enrichment of his life.

Thank you. Goodby. [See APP Note.]

Note: The President spoke at the graduation exercises at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor after receiving an honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law. His opening words referred to Harlan H. Hatcher, President of the University, Governor George Romney, Senators Pat McNamara and Philip A. Hart, and Representatives George Meader and Neil Staebler, all of Michigan.

APP Note:  Users have pointed out that the spelling "goodbye" or "good-bye" is more standard.  This spelling, "goodby" was used in the Public Papers of the Presidents, and the APP usually tries to reproduce that published version.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks at the University of Michigan Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/239689

Filed Under

Simple Search of Our Archives

Report a typo.

Great Society Speech, Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964

President Hatcher, Governor Romney, Senators McNamara and Hart, Congressmen Meader and Staebler, and other members of the fine Michigan delegation, members of the graduating class, my fellow Americans:

It is a great pleasure to be here today. This university has been coeducational since 1870, but I do not believe it was on the basis of your accomplishments that a Detroit high school girl said, "In choosing a college, you first have to decide whether you want a coeducational school or an educational school."

Well, we can find both here at Michigan, although perhaps at different hours.

I came out here today very anxious to meet the Michigan student whose father told a friend of mine that his son's education had been a real value. It stopped his mother from bragging about him.

I have come today from the turmoil of your Capital to the tranquillity of your campus to speak about the future of your country.

The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation.

For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people.

The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.

Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in out time. But that is just the beginning.

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 leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is 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.

It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what is adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.

So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the Great Society-- in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms.

Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now, when there will be 400 million Americans -- four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this century urban population will double, city land will double, and we will have to build homes, highways, and facilities equal to all those built since this country was first settled. So in the next 40 years we must re-build the entire urban United States.

Aristotle said: "Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life." It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today.

The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated.

Worst of all expansion is eroding the precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference.

Our society will never be great until our cities are great. Today the frontier of imagination and innovation is inside those cities and not beyond their borders.

New experiments are already going on. It will be the task of your generation to make the American city a place where future generations will come, not only to live but to live the good life.

I understand that if I stayed here tonight I would see that Michigan students are really doing their best to live the good life.

This is the place where the Peace Corps was started. It is inspiring to see how all of you, while you are in this country, are trying so hard to live at the level of the people.

A second place where we begin to build the Great Society is in our countryside. We have always prided ourselves on being not only America the strong and America the free, but America the beautiful. Today that beauty is in danger. The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing.

A few years ago we were greatly concerned about the "Ugly American." Today we must act to prevent an ugly America.

For once the battle is lost, once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted.

A third place to build the Great Society is in the classrooms of America. There your children's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination. We are still far from that goal.

Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million -- more than onequarter of all America -- have not even finished high school.

Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it. And if we cannot educate today's youth, what will we do in 1970 when elementary school enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. College enrollment will increase by more than 3 million.

In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are unqualified. So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation.

These are three of the central issues of the Great Society. While our Government has many programs directed at those issues, I do not pretend that we have the full answer to those problems.

But I do promise this: We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings -- on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.

The solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington, nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities.

Woodrow Wilson once wrote: "Every man sent out from his university should be a man of his Nation as well as a man of his time."

Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination.

For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.

So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin?

Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?

Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace -- as neighbors and not as mortal enemies?

Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?

There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.

Those who came to this land sought to build more than just a new country. They sought a new world. So I have come here today to your campus to say that you can make their vision our reality. So let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look back and say: It was then, after a long and weary way, that man turned the exploits of his genius to the full enrichment of his life.

Help inform the discussion

Presidential Speeches

May 22, 1964: remarks at the university of michigan, about this speech.

Lyndon B. Johnson

May 22, 1964

Johnson illustrates his vision for a Great Society in America, as he challenges graduates to continue working to improve the nation. This plan for domestic reform concentrates on revitalizing cities, beautifying the countryside, and reforming the educational system.

• Download Audio

President Hatcher, Governor Romney, Senators McNamara and Hart, Congressmen Meader and Staebler, and other members of the fine Michigan delegation, members of the graduating class, my fellow Americans: It is a great pleasure to be here today. This university has been coeducational since 1870, but I do not believe it was on the basis of your accomplishments that a Detroit high school girl said, "In choosing a college, you first have to decide whether you want a coeducational school or an educational school." Well, we can find both here at Michigan, although perhaps at different hours. I came out here today very anxious to meet the Michigan student whose father told a friend of mine that his son's education had been a real value. It stopped his mother from bragging about him. I have come today from the turmoil of your Capital to the tranquility of your campus to speak about the future of your country. The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation. For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people. The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization. Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society. The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning. 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 leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is 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. It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods. But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor. So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the Great Society—in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms. Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now, when there will be 400 million Americans four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this century urban population will double, city land will double, and we will have to build homes, highways, and facilities equal to all those built since this country was first settled. So in the next 40 years we must rebuild the entire urban United States. Aristotle said: "Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life." It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today. The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated. Worst of all expansion is eroding the precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference. Our society will never be great until our cities are great. Today the frontier of imagination and innovation is inside those cities and not beyond their borders. New experiments are already going on. It will be the task of your generation to make the American city a place where future generations will come, not only to live but to live the good life. I understand that if I stayed here tonight I would see that Michigan students are really doing their best to live the good life. This is the place where the Peace Corps was started. It is inspiring to see how all of you, while you are in this country, are trying so hard to live at the level of the people. A second place where we begin to build the Great Society is in our countryside. We have always prided ourselves on being not only America the strong and America the free, but America the beautiful. Today that beauty is in danger. The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing. A few years ago we were greatly concerned about the "Ugly American." Today we must act to prevent an ugly America. For once the battle is lost, once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted. A third place to build the Great Society is in the classrooms of America. There your children's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination. We are still far from that goal. Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million—more than one-quarter of all America—have not even finished high school. Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it. And if we cannot educate today's youth, what will we do in 1970 when elementary school enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. College enrollment will increase by more than 3 million. In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are unqualified. So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty. But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation. These are three of the central issues of the Great Society. While our Government has many programs directed at those issues, I do not pretend that we have the full answer to those problems. But I do promise this: We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings—on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society. The solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington, nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities. Woodrow Wilson once wrote: "Every man sent out from his university should be a man of his Nation as well as a man of his time." Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination. For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation. So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin? Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty? Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace—as neighbors and not as mortal enemies? Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit? There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society. Those who came to this land sought to build more than just a new country. They sought a new world. So I have come here today to your campus to say that you can make their vision our reality. So let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look back and say: It was then, after a long and weary way, that man turned the exploits of his genius to the full enrichment of his life. Thank you. Goodby.

More Lyndon B. Johnson speeches