Section outline

  • MON
    9/21
    No class
     
    WED
    9/23
    The Great Society and its Limits
    How did Johnson’s Great Society build on the model of the New Deal and the G.I. Bill – and the goals of the civil rights movement? 
    SLIDES TO COME

    Primary Sources

    • Lyndon Johnson, excerpt from “Special Message to the Congress Proposing a Nationwide War on the Sources of Poverty,” March 16, 1964. [PDF]
    • Excerpt from Dolores Huerta, speech at National Farm Workers Association march and rally in Sacramento, April 10, 1966. [LINK]
    • With No One to Help Us (1967), director unknown, produced by Office of Economic Opportunity [21 minutes] [PANOPTO VERSION WITH CAPTIONS] [LINK]

    Optional

    • Joseph L. Locke and Ben Wright, eds., The American Yawp, Chapter 27, “The Sixties” (Stanford University Press, 2019), 314-342. [PDF]
    • Ana Elizabeth Rosas, “Love as Mirror and Pathway: The Undocumented Emotive Configuration of Mexican Immigration,” in A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered: US Society in an Age of Restriction, 1924-1965, ed. Maddalena Marinari, Madeline Y. Hsu, and María Cristina Garcia (University of Illinois Press, 2019), 255-272. [PDF]

    Reading Questions

    1.  Johnson's "War on Poverty" speech, still in his first year of office following Kennedy's assassination, laid the groundwork for his "Great Society" programs, including a federal food stamp program, Medicare and Medicaid, and greater investment in education (as discussed in the optional American Yawp chapter). In what ways does Johnson's proposal build on and/or remake the model of government and citizenship we saw in the formulation of the New Deal and the G.I. Bill? And how does Johnson frame the problem of poverty--what does he see as the roots and effects, and what kinds of language does he draw on to make his case?

    2. The little-known film "With No One to Help Us" follows a group of working-class women organizing a grocery buyer's club in Newark, NJ to combat price-gouging. One of the key confrontations of the film is with the head of  United Community Corporation, which administers federal welfare benefits locally. What does the film suggest about the ways Johnson's War on Poverty actually played out, who led and shaped it, and the ways ordinary people navigated new welfare systems? For more background on the film, I also recommend Whit Strub's article here. 

    3. Chicana activist Dolores Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962 with César Chávez, leading a series of major strikes among farm workers. Where does Huerta place the blame and responsibility for the challenges faced by farm workers?