History of the United States II / Unit 14 USH2 1967 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Great Society
The idea
In May nineteen sixty-four, speaking at the University of Michigan, Johnson called for an end to poverty and racial injustice, the Yawp records, and the Great Society followed. In nineteen sixty-five Congress passed Medicare and Medicaid, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Higher Education Act and a new immigration law, and Johnson signed laws creating national endowments for the arts and the humanities.
In practice
Laws on health care, schools and immigration signed within a single year.
Where people slip
The anchor records that by the time Johnson left office the proportion of Americans in poverty had fallen by nearly half. The Yawp notes that later presidents and Congresses left most of it in place, from Medicare and Medicaid to food stamps and Head Start. Whether it succeeded is the question of this unit's first closing entry.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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