On May 22, 1964, in a University of Michigan commencement speech, President Lyndon B. Johnson formally launched the most ambitious set of social programs ever undertaken in the United States—surpassing even Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in its range and in its ambition to transform the country.
Most of the Great Society’s achievements came during the 89th Congress, which lasted from January 1965 to January 1967, and is considered by many to be the most productive legislative session in American history. Johnson prodded Congress to churn out nearly 200 new laws launching civil rights protections; Medicare and Medicaid; food stamps; urban renewal; the first broad federal investment in elementary and high school education; Head Start and college aid; an end to what was essentially a whites-only immigration policy; landmark consumer safety and environmental regulations; funding that gave voice to community action groups; and an all-out War on Poverty.
Here are the Great Society’s key achievements and biggest failures.
Civil Rights
On July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“We believe that all men are created equal,” Johnson said in an address to the country. “Yet many are denied equal treatment.”
The law outlawed discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion or sex. It also authorized the attorney general to bring lawsuits against schools practicing segregation and discouraged job discrimination through the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In fiscal 2013, there were 93,727 charges filed with the agency; 35.3 percent involved race and 29.5 percent were based on alleged sex discrimination.
Johnson later added to those protections with the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, parts of which were rescinded by the Supreme Court in 2013, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which sought to eliminate discrimination in housing.
Johnson did away with literacy tests some Southern states required voters to take; black voter registration rates in those states increased an average of 67 percent from 1964 to 1968. In 1970, there were 1,469 black elected officials in the United States; by November 2011, there were more than 10,500.
Critics, noting how much progress has been made on racial equality, argue that some aspects of the civil rights laws are no longer needed. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated some parts of the Voting Rights Act, and earlier this month, it upheld the state of Michigan’s move to ban affirmative action.