Lyndon B. Johnson's Legacy
“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.” Many hated Lyndon B. Johnson during his presidency because of his actions during the Vietnam. This incident clouded his legacy and influenced how people saw his presidency. Millions saw his presidency as a disgrace, that it had started and ended in tragedy, but there was more to him that met their eyes. Johnson was an aggressive man, he wanted to be able to control everyone so they were within his reach when he needed them. With his fiery and desire to fix the nation, he spent every second of his presidency help everyone in America. With the help of Congress, Johnson was able to pass many programs and bills that improved millions of lives, but he also had bigger dreams.
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Johnson had two ideas that he needed to accomplish called the Great Society and the War on Poverty.
The Great Society was meant to help end discrimination and segregation between the blacks and whites, while the War on Poverty was made to successfully end poverty while providing everyone with many opportunities. Although many decades have passed since these programs of his have passed, many people continue to argue on whether or not his programs performed on how Johnson had intended for them to. Johnson’s presidency was greatly overshadowed by his failures in Vietnam, but his ideas, such as the Great Society, had a large impact on society during the 1960’s and continue to influence us to this very day. While the idea of war on poverty began with the Kennedy Administration in 1963, Johnson learned about the poverty program the day after Kennedy was killed and wanted to work on it as fast as possible. In Johnson’s state of Union address, as part of a even bigger idea of his, the Great Society, he needed to end poverty, so he declared an unconditional war against poverty in order to completely remove it from the U.S within 50 years. Johnson wanted to break the cycle of poverty in the U.S by attacking the source of it in urban ghettos and …show more content…
depressed rural areas. Although poverty continues to exist, he did however help decrease the percentage of Americans in poverty and improved their lives. The War on poverty’s effect continues to influence us today and is still debated on whether or not it was a success. When giving his speech on the war on poverty, Johnson made it clear that his Act would provide five basic opportunities that millions would benefit from. This Act would allow nearly half a million young Americans the chance to develop skills and continue their education to find jobs in the future, the community an opportunity fight its own poverty with their own plans while being supported by the government, create vacant spots that people could volunteer to help the war against poverty, letting workers and farmers the opportunity to break through particular barriers which bar their escape from poverty, and finally give the entire nation the opportunity for a combined attack on poverty through the Office of Economic Opportunity the national headquarters for the war against poverty.
In order for Johnson to his first major legislation, he focused his major attack on poverty which consisted of one fifth of the U.S’s population at the time with education, income maintenance, and job creation. His primary weapon in the war against poverty and the main tool for building a Great Society was Education, he was able to pass the elementary and secondary and the higher education act of 1965. With these acts Johnson wanted to aid schools and students, "For the primary and secondary school years, we will aid public schools serving
low-income families and assist students in both public and private schools.” Johnson not only planned to aid poor public schools by giving them large amounts of funding, but he also planned to help the poor students that eventually led to programs such as financial aid that continues to be used to this very day. For students in colleges he wanted to “provide scholarships to high school students of the greatest promise and greatest need and guarantee low-interest loans to students continuing their college studies.” While moving very quickly with this program, many people had doubts about this plan and whether or not its purpose to end poverty would actually succeed in the end and even said that it was created out of Johnson's idiosyncrasy. After the authority of this plan was given to the Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver, there were many points that were favored by people and other points that was seen as a eyesore such as the proposal for a strong federal backing for community action so that they could oversee what would be happening. Many people today argue that the war on Poverty was a failure and had failed to end poverty in the U.S. While it did fail to completely end poverty from the U.S, it didn’t fail to decrease the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dramatically from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent. While the War against Poverty was Johnson's first major legislation program, he had even bigger ideas that he wanted to pursue. The fight for equality in America was one of Johnson’s idea’s that he vigorously fought to achieve. Even before Johnson’s presidency, there was a movement for equality and an end to racial injustice between blacks and whites. Johnson heard these voices from many people and needed to end this racial injustice at once. By thinking of these he created many important programs, one idea of his that greatly helped the civil rights movement was the Great Society. Johnson had based his presidential campaign on this idea, a program that brought out social reform that called for equal and fair educational opportunities for all American cities. After elected, the “Great Society” brought forth a new era of a large government that helped everyone and increased spending to solve society’s problems. In Johnson’s speech about the Great Society he informs everyone that “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.” With this program not only did Johnson Plan to end poverty and racial discrimination once and for all in all American Cities, but he had even more faith and idea’s this program. Including ending poverty and racial injustice in his legislation, he mainly wanted to build the great society in three places, in our cities, countryside, and our classrooms. Within 40 years of his plan, he desired to rebuild the entire urban United states to make it more modern, keep the countryside clean and free of pollution to make America Beautiful again, and to shape the lives of children to let them reach their fullest potential. With his vision of what the United States must become, it laid out a plan to reshape the U.S legislation and politics that lasted for decades. In 1968 Johnson had emphasized that the ratification of human rights treaties was long overdue, that this ratification was needed very badly otherwise the government wouldn’t be able to function properly and attend the United Nations Conference on Human Rights in Teheran. In the U.S there were many unions that fought for organized labour in the U.S, two groups that were popular among the workers was the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organization. They eventually combined into one group known as the AFL-CIO and focused on human rights during the postwar years. As the Teheran conference was coming closer, the AFL-CIO urged the government to take initiative on human rights, while saying this they provided them with steps to implement such as “The creation of more effective safeguards against the violation of human rights by establishing a Permanent U.N. Commission on the Preservation and Promotion of Human Rights, with authority to appoint Human Rights Observation Committees endowed with the rights and powers of investigation, surveillance and reporting.” Years after this incident, the AFL-CIO’s influence continued to help Americans and elevate human rights. As protests for civil and women's rights rose in the 1960’s and 70’s, this caused the UN to start holding world conferences focusing on women’s rights and racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia. With the help of many unions and people supporting Johnson, he was able to pass programs and bills other presidents failed to do. Johnson was able to remove many issues of inequality in education by pouring vast amounts of money into colleges to fund certain students and projects to aid elementary and secondary education in many districts, mainly in poorer districts. This program failed to pass in the past by other presidents, but Johnson was able to pass it even over the disputes over aid to parochial schools by making a compromise that also provided some funds to catholic schools. While Johnson gave out many speeches during his presidency, perhaps the most influential for the Civil Rights movement was his special message to congress speech, the American Promise. In his speech he used the full force of his presidency to help the movement for the first time and helped to bring in the Voting Rights Act. With this speech Johnson was able to seize the opportunity to prose the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that proceeds to break down illegal barriers such as poll tax and literacy tests that stopped illiterate African Americans from voting. In response to the black protestors in Selma, Alabama and how badly they were beaten, he delivered his American Promise speech, and stated that "There is no moral issue. It is wrong — deadly wrong — to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights. I have not the slightest doubt what will be your answer." With this speech, he was able to quickly pass the Voting Rights Law, and the effects of this was quick and became very significant. But although the Voting Rights Act was passed and signed by Johnson on August 6, 1965, the enforcement of this law was very weak and was often ignored in many southern areas where the majority of their population was black. While Johnson focused on equality, he also created other programs and bills that greatly improved millions of lives in the U.S. As part of the Great Society and the War on Poverty, Johnson had created dozens of programs and bills that were meant to drastically improve lives in the U.S. While many of his ideas such as the War on Poverty didn’t reach the goal he had set out for it to achieve, there were many achievements he had won. Before signing the Voting Right’s Act of 1965, Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and addressed the country by saying “We believe that all men are created equal, Yet many are denied equal treatment.” This law that Johnson had passed outlawed discrimination in the U.S based on race, color, religion, or sex. While doing so, The Equal Employment Opportunity commision was created which allowed lawsuits to be filed against schools that still practiced segregation and discrimination. Although this law was passed in 1964, there continues to to be charges filed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision. In 2013 alone, there were 93,727 charges filed, and 61% of those involved race and sex discrimination. With job discrimination being looked at as wrong, Johnson then proceeded to provide public assistance and welfare as part of his War on Poverty program. With his ambitious legislative idea’s, he created Medicare and Medicaid programs that provides federal health insurance for the elderly and poor Americans, these programs continue to exists to this day and improve our daily lives. While Johnson’s programs kept millions of Americans out of poverty, provided many with basic health care, and ensured the basic human rights and citizenship for minorities, many of his legacies of renewal and opportunity attached to his administration became ironic due to the devastating outcome of the Vietnam War, with millions of Vietnamese that lost their lives and homes due to his failure. While Johnson had many victories and achievements in his presidency, they were all clouded and forgotten for many years over his actions and events that happened in the Vietnam War. The War was a conflict between North and South Vietnam, but the effects of the war was global. The North was fighting for a communist and nationalist country, while the south was led by a non-Communist leader. While fighting to be either communist or not communist, the war was seen as three ways by the world, as a civil war between pro and anti Diem groups in the south, a war waged by the North against the South. America however, saw it as a Soviet conspiracy to conquer the third world and make all of them communists. Even before the war had begun previous presidents had started American involvement in Vietnam such as Truman and Eisenhower, Kennedy however, took it a step further and sent special forces personnel to Vietnam. Although many people criticize him for staying in the Vietnam war, his decision was deeply influenced the people around him and his predecessors as he wanted to follow their path. In the beginning the president assured people that "We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves," explaining to his audience that "We don't want to get . . . tied down to a land war in Asia." Although he had said this, he had planned to step in when the situation deteriorated. His decisions to send thousands of men to Vietnam was based on many complicated political and military considerations. There were many people called “hawks” in congress and in the military that wanted to resort to aggressive measures, such as engaging in massive bombing of the city and the use of nuclear weapons which could have led on to another world war. While many today continue to blame him for what happened in vietnam, Johnson struggled to deal with the war as best as he could with no easy path in sight. Johnson’s legacy was clouded by his actions in Vietnam, but his programs and ideas created large impact on society during the 1960’s and continue to influence us and help us to this very day. After JFK was killed Johnson had no time to waste, he spent every minute of his presidency working on how to improve the lives of Americans. With the Civil Rights movement he was able to take that opportunity to fight for equality and to end racial injustice in the U.S. While doing so he also passed laws and programs that helped improve lives by getting millions of people out of poverty and giving young citizens a better education. Although Johnson tried his best for the country, it started off with a tragedy with JFK’s death, and ended in tragedy with his actions in the Vietnam War.
Johnson had two ideas that he needed to accomplish called the Great Society and the War on Poverty.
The Great Society was meant to help end discrimination and segregation between the blacks and whites, while the War on Poverty was made to successfully end poverty while providing everyone with many opportunities. Although many decades have passed since these programs of his have passed, many people continue to argue on whether or not his programs performed on how Johnson had intended for them to. Johnson’s presidency was greatly overshadowed by his failures in Vietnam, but his ideas, such as the Great Society, had a large impact on society during the 1960’s and continue to influence us to this very day. While the idea of war on poverty began with the Kennedy Administration in 1963, Johnson learned about the poverty program the day after Kennedy was killed and wanted to work on it as fast as possible. In Johnson’s state of Union address, as part of a even bigger idea of his, the Great Society, he needed to end poverty, so he declared an unconditional war against poverty in order to completely remove it from the U.S within 50 years. Johnson wanted to break the cycle of poverty in the U.S by attacking the source of it in urban ghettos and …show more content…
depressed rural areas. Although poverty continues to exist, he did however help decrease the percentage of Americans in poverty and improved their lives. The War on poverty’s effect continues to influence us today and is still debated on whether or not it was a success. When giving his speech on the war on poverty, Johnson made it clear that his Act would provide five basic opportunities that millions would benefit from. This Act would allow nearly half a million young Americans the chance to develop skills and continue their education to find jobs in the future, the community an opportunity fight its own poverty with their own plans while being supported by the government, create vacant spots that people could volunteer to help the war against poverty, letting workers and farmers the opportunity to break through particular barriers which bar their escape from poverty, and finally give the entire nation the opportunity for a combined attack on poverty through the Office of Economic Opportunity the national headquarters for the war against poverty.
In order for Johnson to his first major legislation, he focused his major attack on poverty which consisted of one fifth of the U.S’s population at the time with education, income maintenance, and job creation. His primary weapon in the war against poverty and the main tool for building a Great Society was Education, he was able to pass the elementary and secondary and the higher education act of 1965. With these acts Johnson wanted to aid schools and students, "For the primary and secondary school years, we will aid public schools serving
low-income families and assist students in both public and private schools.” Johnson not only planned to aid poor public schools by giving them large amounts of funding, but he also planned to help the poor students that eventually led to programs such as financial aid that continues to be used to this very day. For students in colleges he wanted to “provide scholarships to high school students of the greatest promise and greatest need and guarantee low-interest loans to students continuing their college studies.” While moving very quickly with this program, many people had doubts about this plan and whether or not its purpose to end poverty would actually succeed in the end and even said that it was created out of Johnson's idiosyncrasy. After the authority of this plan was given to the Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver, there were many points that were favored by people and other points that was seen as a eyesore such as the proposal for a strong federal backing for community action so that they could oversee what would be happening. Many people today argue that the war on Poverty was a failure and had failed to end poverty in the U.S. While it did fail to completely end poverty from the U.S, it didn’t fail to decrease the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dramatically from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent. While the War against Poverty was Johnson's first major legislation program, he had even bigger ideas that he wanted to pursue. The fight for equality in America was one of Johnson’s idea’s that he vigorously fought to achieve. Even before Johnson’s presidency, there was a movement for equality and an end to racial injustice between blacks and whites. Johnson heard these voices from many people and needed to end this racial injustice at once. By thinking of these he created many important programs, one idea of his that greatly helped the civil rights movement was the Great Society. Johnson had based his presidential campaign on this idea, a program that brought out social reform that called for equal and fair educational opportunities for all American cities. After elected, the “Great Society” brought forth a new era of a large government that helped everyone and increased spending to solve society’s problems. In Johnson’s speech about the Great Society he informs everyone that “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.” With this program not only did Johnson Plan to end poverty and racial discrimination once and for all in all American Cities, but he had even more faith and idea’s this program. Including ending poverty and racial injustice in his legislation, he mainly wanted to build the great society in three places, in our cities, countryside, and our classrooms. Within 40 years of his plan, he desired to rebuild the entire urban United states to make it more modern, keep the countryside clean and free of pollution to make America Beautiful again, and to shape the lives of children to let them reach their fullest potential. With his vision of what the United States must become, it laid out a plan to reshape the U.S legislation and politics that lasted for decades. In 1968 Johnson had emphasized that the ratification of human rights treaties was long overdue, that this ratification was needed very badly otherwise the government wouldn’t be able to function properly and attend the United Nations Conference on Human Rights in Teheran. In the U.S there were many unions that fought for organized labour in the U.S, two groups that were popular among the workers was the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organization. They eventually combined into one group known as the AFL-CIO and focused on human rights during the postwar years. As the Teheran conference was coming closer, the AFL-CIO urged the government to take initiative on human rights, while saying this they provided them with steps to implement such as “The creation of more effective safeguards against the violation of human rights by establishing a Permanent U.N. Commission on the Preservation and Promotion of Human Rights, with authority to appoint Human Rights Observation Committees endowed with the rights and powers of investigation, surveillance and reporting.” Years after this incident, the AFL-CIO’s influence continued to help Americans and elevate human rights. As protests for civil and women's rights rose in the 1960’s and 70’s, this caused the UN to start holding world conferences focusing on women’s rights and racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia. With the help of many unions and people supporting Johnson, he was able to pass programs and bills other presidents failed to do. Johnson was able to remove many issues of inequality in education by pouring vast amounts of money into colleges to fund certain students and projects to aid elementary and secondary education in many districts, mainly in poorer districts. This program failed to pass in the past by other presidents, but Johnson was able to pass it even over the disputes over aid to parochial schools by making a compromise that also provided some funds to catholic schools. While Johnson gave out many speeches during his presidency, perhaps the most influential for the Civil Rights movement was his special message to congress speech, the American Promise. In his speech he used the full force of his presidency to help the movement for the first time and helped to bring in the Voting Rights Act. With this speech Johnson was able to seize the opportunity to prose the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that proceeds to break down illegal barriers such as poll tax and literacy tests that stopped illiterate African Americans from voting. In response to the black protestors in Selma, Alabama and how badly they were beaten, he delivered his American Promise speech, and stated that "There is no moral issue. It is wrong — deadly wrong — to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights. I have not the slightest doubt what will be your answer." With this speech, he was able to quickly pass the Voting Rights Law, and the effects of this was quick and became very significant. But although the Voting Rights Act was passed and signed by Johnson on August 6, 1965, the enforcement of this law was very weak and was often ignored in many southern areas where the majority of their population was black. While Johnson focused on equality, he also created other programs and bills that greatly improved millions of lives in the U.S. As part of the Great Society and the War on Poverty, Johnson had created dozens of programs and bills that were meant to drastically improve lives in the U.S. While many of his ideas such as the War on Poverty didn’t reach the goal he had set out for it to achieve, there were many achievements he had won. Before signing the Voting Right’s Act of 1965, Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and addressed the country by saying “We believe that all men are created equal, Yet many are denied equal treatment.” This law that Johnson had passed outlawed discrimination in the U.S based on race, color, religion, or sex. While doing so, The Equal Employment Opportunity commision was created which allowed lawsuits to be filed against schools that still practiced segregation and discrimination. Although this law was passed in 1964, there continues to to be charges filed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision. In 2013 alone, there were 93,727 charges filed, and 61% of those involved race and sex discrimination. With job discrimination being looked at as wrong, Johnson then proceeded to provide public assistance and welfare as part of his War on Poverty program. With his ambitious legislative idea’s, he created Medicare and Medicaid programs that provides federal health insurance for the elderly and poor Americans, these programs continue to exists to this day and improve our daily lives. While Johnson’s programs kept millions of Americans out of poverty, provided many with basic health care, and ensured the basic human rights and citizenship for minorities, many of his legacies of renewal and opportunity attached to his administration became ironic due to the devastating outcome of the Vietnam War, with millions of Vietnamese that lost their lives and homes due to his failure. While Johnson had many victories and achievements in his presidency, they were all clouded and forgotten for many years over his actions and events that happened in the Vietnam War. The War was a conflict between North and South Vietnam, but the effects of the war was global. The North was fighting for a communist and nationalist country, while the south was led by a non-Communist leader. While fighting to be either communist or not communist, the war was seen as three ways by the world, as a civil war between pro and anti Diem groups in the south, a war waged by the North against the South. America however, saw it as a Soviet conspiracy to conquer the third world and make all of them communists. Even before the war had begun previous presidents had started American involvement in Vietnam such as Truman and Eisenhower, Kennedy however, took it a step further and sent special forces personnel to Vietnam. Although many people criticize him for staying in the Vietnam war, his decision was deeply influenced the people around him and his predecessors as he wanted to follow their path. In the beginning the president assured people that "We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves," explaining to his audience that "We don't want to get . . . tied down to a land war in Asia." Although he had said this, he had planned to step in when the situation deteriorated. His decisions to send thousands of men to Vietnam was based on many complicated political and military considerations. There were many people called “hawks” in congress and in the military that wanted to resort to aggressive measures, such as engaging in massive bombing of the city and the use of nuclear weapons which could have led on to another world war. While many today continue to blame him for what happened in vietnam, Johnson struggled to deal with the war as best as he could with no easy path in sight. Johnson’s legacy was clouded by his actions in Vietnam, but his programs and ideas created large impact on society during the 1960’s and continue to influence us and help us to this very day. After JFK was killed Johnson had no time to waste, he spent every minute of his presidency working on how to improve the lives of Americans. With the Civil Rights movement he was able to take that opportunity to fight for equality and to end racial injustice in the U.S. While doing so he also passed laws and programs that helped improve lives by getting millions of people out of poverty and giving young citizens a better education. Although Johnson tried his best for the country, it started off with a tragedy with JFK’s death, and ended in tragedy with his actions in the Vietnam War.