War On Poverty Analysis

The 1960s are recognized as one of the most tumultuous decades in American history: The Second Wave of Feminism, the Civil Rights Movement, anti-war protests, the King and Kennedy’s assassinations, among other violence and social unrest marked the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. Also plaguing the nation was extreme poverty for many minority groups, despite the general era of prosperity for the majority. President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1968) demonstrated a desire to improve the lives of the American people during his time in office as his administration faced the height of many of these conflicts. “The Great Society” and its “War on Poverty” were his solutions. These initiatives were designed to be malleable for state and local
Johnson was tasked with a unique issue not in nature but in solution, “… the problems affecting [the poor] could not be solved by centralized administration and federal largesse alone but required a more creative intervention of the state that would address the underlying cause of social and political discontent: alienation, powerlessness, and the decline of the community.” Utilizing New Deal ideology and amending the concept to fit modern society, the Johnson administration crafted the basis of the WOP; federally funded programs to address needs of the specific states as defined by local leaders. After the passage of the Economic Opportunity Act and the creation of the Office of Economy Opportunity, programs were created and implemented that would allow the poor to obtain the training, education or opportunities needed to escape
“The civil rights movement, cresting in the August 1963 March on Washington, highlighted the unrest of a disenchanted minority most affected by poverty. The Johnson administration was eager to launch a national program to give the movement direction and purpose.” Black Americans were poor, Johnson wanted to alleviate poverty and his administration knew to do so their solution would need to address the underbelly of racialized poverty in the nation. Since the black population was not evenly distributed throughout the country, neither was the poor population and out of this fact stemmed the important role of regions and states in crafting programs and policy to alleviate suffering at the most local