The Great Society And Civil Rights Essay free essay sample

, Research Paper The Great Society is a term coined and conceptualized by one adult male, the 36th President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson. It was an thought that would concentrate on many major societal alterations. President Johnson started a war on poorness, and wanted more support for civil rights. Free instruction for the young person of America was another focal point. President Johnson besides took some of the first stairss toward doing America more environmentally witting. After taking over for assassinated President John F. Kennedy and so being elected as President, he brought an onslaught of statute law in a short sum of clip, puting some legislative records. Johnson foremost talked about his dream for the Great Society during an reference at the University of Michigan, on May 22, 1964. Johnson told the pupils that America had become so comfortable that it was acquiring fat and greedy. It was clip that America took its huge wealth and distribute it out among those impoverished in our state. We will write a custom essay sample on The Great Society And Civil Rights Essay or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page He noted the decay of metropoliss, and the decay of public instruction that was dragging America down. He cited that about 54 million Americans ( about? of the entire population ) hadn? T finished high school. These were merely a little portion of Johnson? s expansive strategy. President Johnson created a undertaking force of the most skilled urban contrivers to revamp the tally down metropoliss of America and create modern, efficient, and beautiful topographic points for all citizens to thrive. But they were non successful in all metropoliss. The black population began to name this urban reclamation? negro remotion? . Some metropoliss got new promenades, film theatres, courthouses and new edifices for concerns. Some were merely merely half renovated, go forthing an incomplete muss. This was a good program that merely didn? t work out for Johnson, particularly as the war in Vietnam began to intensify and he had to perpetrate more work forces and financess to that attempt. Johnson talked a batch about bettering the metropoliss, invariably declaring all of our metropoliss to be in a decaying diminution of values, pride, and instruction. He created? Demonstration Cities? , in which the Federal Government would face the physical, societal, medical and administrative facets of a selected metropolis. Congress at foremost had a small problem back uping these vastly dearly-won undertakings, but the race public violences that had broken out all over the state silenced any scruples about bettering the? ghettos? or? slums? . Federal money poured into the state? s interior metropoliss as lodging undertakings became a chief focal point ; elephantine tower block edifices were created to house the hapless and/or homeless. As a portion of metropolis betterment, President Johnson wanted to better race dealingss. Merely months after being elected in 1964, he passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2nd. This astonishing measure had eventually brought race dealingss to the political tabular array. The authorities eventually made it illegal to know apart ; conveying down the dictatorship of the Jim Crow Torahs of the old South. No longer would Whites be able to lawfully maintain inkinesss out of their eating houses, hotels, film theatres, shops, etc. Blacks could now, by jurisprudence, move freely and make whatever white people could make. Of class in world this wasn? T ever the instance, with the ill-famed KKK and their lynch rabble maintaining the inkinesss in changeless fright and watchfulness. On the instruction forepart, no longer did black kids have to travel to a decrepit and frequently far off unintegrated school, even if they lived near a white school. They could go to any public school, merely like white kids. Of class this was good on paper, but in world these pupils for the first few old ages faced legion troubles even come ining the schools. The celebrated Brown vs. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas ; tested this new jurisprudence. The authorities besides now explicitly prohibited itself from lending to any bureau or organisation that discriminated on the evidences of race, colour, or nationality. It was a immense measure for minorities, they eventually achieved the same rights as white American citizens. Soon after came the Voting Rights Act of 1965 leting minorities to eventually acquire the opportunity to vote for authorities that controlled their lives. A measure rushed through Congress from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ? s March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama brought national attending to the predicament of the laden black people. This new jurisprudence allowed federal testers to be sent to register electors. It besides outlawed the usage of literacy trials in provinces in which less than 50 % of the voting-age population had been registered or had voted in the 1964 election. This had an instantaneous consequence on black electors. By the terminal of 1965, over a one-fourth of a million black citizens had bec ome registered electors. Chief Justice Earl Warren said, ? the right to vote freely for the campaigner of one’s pick is of the kernel of a democratic society, and any limitations on that right work stoppage at the bosom of representative authorities? . The jurisprudence was now on the side of the minorities for the first clip in their lives. This finally led to minorities deriving more and more rights, with affirmatory action being one of the most celebrated by-products. This measure ended favoritism in the workplace in corporate America. Companies were forced to higher more minorities to make a more diverse and equal working environment. Another of import portion of the Great Society was the new thought of supplying money for citizens that couldn? T afford the costs of infirmary measures and other medical disbursals. This was Medicare, the plan that would supply assistance to anyone that needed it, and likely most of import? save people from going personally belly-up from unexpected wellness costs. Originally conceptualized as a national infirmary insurance program for the aged through societal security, it became a manner for the hapless aged to hold free corsets in a infirmary for up to a meager 30 yearss. The opposite number to Medicare was Medicaid, which paid the medical costs of public assistance receivers and the indigent, irrespective of age. The costs for this plan would funded by the provinces, but subsidized by Federal grants. It seemed like the greatest thing for America, no 1 would be denied health care, and persons would no longer hold a ground to avoid infirmaries. Today oppositions to Medicare claim t hat it? s costs have spiraled out of control. This can non be disputed. In 1965, the entire federal disbursement for Medicare was around $ 101 billion. It is estimated by the twelvemonth 2000 we will hold spent over four times that sum. The Great Society was without a uncertainty, a fantastic program to hike America? s criterion of life for all citizens every bit. With new civil rights and elector rights measures, minorities gained a immense triumph over the long oppressive rich white adult male. Urban renewal undertakings promised to turn the slums into beautiful metropoliss with a rich societal and economic encouragement, certain to maintain America the universe? s most powerful state. Education was eventually being addressed, with measures to stop school segregation, better the quality of instruction, and besides supply financess for those who could non afford college. Unfortunately the state? s increasing engagement in the war in Vietnam, meant that financess began to run abruptly, and plans were abandoned to concentrate on the struggle. It was all a beautiful strategy that would hold benefited the full state, it may hold merely been the incorrect clip or perchance excessively idealistic. Johnson knew he couldn? T win both wars and he said it best himself in this quotation mark: ? I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either manner I moved. If I left the adult female I truly loved? the Great Society? in order to acquire involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the universe, so I would lose everything at place. All my plans. All my hopes to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. All my dreams to supply instruction and medical attention to the browns and the inkinesss and the square and the hapless. But if I left that war and allow the Communists take over South Vietnam, so I would be seen as a coward and my state would be seen as an appeaser, and we would both happen it impossible to carry through anything for anybody anyplace on this full Earth. ? It merely wasn? T possible to accomplish all the dreams of the superb Great Society in a clip of such utmost political, societal, cultural, and economic alteration. But because of President Johnson? s great vision and effectual leading our state was forced to confront the world of racial favoritism. What started out in 1964 as a catchy election twelvemonth phrase, has made our state a much better topographic point to populate for all citizens. While we still have a batch to carry through in making a genuinely equal society, without the penetration and motive of President Johnson our society wouldn? T be anyplace near to a genuinely? Great Society? . We would still be decennaries behind in our pursuit for true equality among all citizens of America. Bibliography: The Best Of Purposes: The Triumph and Failure Of The Great Society Under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon? by Irwin Unger # 211 ; 1996 Doubleday Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream? by Doris Kerns # 211 ; 1976 Harper A ; Row Vietnam: A History? by Stanley Karnow # 211 ; 1983 WGBH Educational Foundation White House Old ages? by Henry Kissinger # 211 ; 1979 Little, Brown and Company