Great Society - Definition and Overview

The Great Society was a series of domestic initiatives announced in 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson at Ann Arbor, Michigan. A main focus of these social reforms to "end to poverty and racial injustice" was the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The efforts also helped establish the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Other programs included:

• VISTA
• Job Corps
• Upward Bound
• Neighborhood Youth Corps
• Head Start
• an unconditional war on poverty
• Medicare/Medicaid

The Great Society was never fully funded because of the Vietnam War, which drained available resources. It was heavily critized by conservatives like Charles Murray who criticized it in his 1984 book Losing Ground as being ineffective and creating an underclass of lazy citizens. It was later partially overturned by President Ronald Reagan's first budget.

External links

• Great Society speech (http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/great.html)
• Outline of American History - Lyndon Johnson and Great Society (http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/H/1994/ch12_p2.htm)