Johnson's War on Poverty:
Breakdown
or
Breakthrough?

“Sh! After A While They'll Go Away!” by Clifford Baldowski, originally published in the Atlanta Constitution, 1964. Clifford Baldowski Editorial Cartoon Collection

In a special address to Congress on March 16, 1964, Lyndon Johnson presented a “Proposal for a Nationwide War on the Sources of Poverty” that gave five ways in which the United States could help its citizens and created the Office of Economic Opportunity. Like the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965, this initiative carried out some of the late President Kennedy's final executive proposals. “This is number one of the domestic front. Next to peace in the world, this is the most important,” Johnson told the new Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Sargent Shriver.