What was the Great Society?

The Great Society was President Lyndon B. Johnson's broad set of domestic programs in the mid-1960s aimed at ending poverty, expanding civil rights, improving education, providing health care for the elderly and the poor, protecting the environment, and supporting the arts. Johnson first used the phrase Great Society in a speech at Ohio University on May 7, 1964 and developed it more fully in his commencement address at the University of Michigan on May 22, 1964, where he challenged Americans to build a society that demanded an end to poverty and racial injustice. Johnson, who had served as a young congressman during the New Deal, modeled the Great Society on Franklin D. Roosevelt's reforms, but he extended them in directions Roosevelt had not pursued.

After winning the 1964 election in a landslide, with strong Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, Johnson pushed through more than 200 major laws in 1965 alone. The most consequential measures included Medicare, signed July 30, 1965, which provided federal health insurance for Americans 65 and older, and Medicaid, signed the same day, which provided health coverage for low-income Americans through joint federal and state funding. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of April 11, 1965 sent the first major federal aid to schools, and the Higher Education Act of November 8, 1965 created federal student loans and Pell Grants to make college affordable.

The Economic Opportunity Act of August 20, 1964 launched the War on Poverty, creating the Job Corps, Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America, and Community Action Programs. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, although typically discussed separately, were central to the Great Society agenda. The Immigration and Nationality Act of October 3, 1965 abolished the national-origin quotas of the 1924 Immigration Act and reshaped American demographics.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development was created in 1965, and the Department of Transportation in 1966. Other measures included the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities in 1965, the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, and consumer protection statutes. The Vietnam War increasingly diverted funding and political energy after 1965, but the Great Society permanently expanded the federal role in American life.