1960s AD - Decade

Washington Monthly, Oct, 1999 by Joseph A. Califano

But the measure of the Great Society, particularly in this field, cannot be taken alone in statutes enacted. In one of the most moving speeches of the century, Johnson's 1965 Howard University commencement address, "To Fulfill These Rights," he said:

"But freedom is not enough. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race and then say, `You are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights." Thus was born the concept of affirmative action, Johnson's conviction that it is essential as a matter of social justice to provide the tutoring, the extra help, even the preference if necessary, to those who had suffered generations of discrimination, in order to give them a fair chance to share in the American dream. Perhaps even more controversial today than when then set forth, affirmative action has provided opportunity to millions of blacks and has been a critical element in creating a substantial black middle class and an affluent black society in a single generation.

That speech provided another insight the nation ignored. In cataloguing the long suffering of blacks, Johnson included this passage: "Perhaps most important--its influence radiating to every part of life--is the breakdown of the Negro family structure. It flows from centuries of oppression and persecution of the Negro man. And when the family collapses it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale the community itself is crippled. So, unless we work to strengthen the family, to create conditions under which most parents will stay together, all the rest--schools, and playgrounds, and public assistance, and private concern--will never be enough to cut completely the circle of despair and deprivation."

Conservatives charge the Great Society with responsibility for the disastrous aspects of the welfare program for mothers and children. But that program was enacted in the '30s and conservatives (and liberals) in Congress rejected Great Society efforts to revamp it. LBJ called the welfare system in America "outmoded and in need of a major change" and pressed Congress to stop conditioning welfare benefits on the man leaving the house and to create % work incentive program, incentives for earning, day care for children, child and maternal health, and family planning services." In the generation it has taken the nation to heed that warning, millions of children's lives have been savaged.

In the entire treasury of Great Society measures, the jewel Lyndon Johnson believed would have the greatest value was the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That law opened the way for black Americans to strengthen their voice at every level of government. In 1964 there were 79 black elected officials in the South and 300 in the entire nation. By 1998, there were some 9,000 elected black officials across the nation, including 6,000 in the South. In 1965 there were five black members of the House; today there are 39.