The Great Society is a term used to describe antipoverty legislation passed during President Lyndon Johnson's administration. Johnson's Great Society extended President John F. Kennedy's New Frontier initiatives, which operated under the assumption that by expanding access to health care, education, employment, and training opportunities, the poor could benefit from the then-projected growth of the U.S. economy.
Michael Harrington's influential book The Other America (1962), the civil rights movement, and urban unrest of the 1960s exposed the need for legislation to address economic and social problems faced by the elderly, unemployed, and others living in poverty, as well as to protect the civil rights of women and racial minorities. Great Society legislation targeted poor communities and individuals living in poverty as well as educational and employment practices.
One of the most significant pieces of legislation to pass during this period was Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination in employment on the basis of race and sex. Programs that targeted poor communities included the Area Redevelopment Act of 1961 and the Economic Development Act of 1965, both designed to encourage new industries to move into economically depressed areas. Housing and community development programs included the 1965 rent supplement program and the 1966 Demonstration (Model) Cities and Metropolitan Development Act. The 1962 Manpower Development and Training Act offered retraining for displaced workers, and the Food Stamp Act of 1964 provided eligible individuals and families with cash vouchers to purchase basic food and related items. Education measures included the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and the Higher Education Act of 1965.
Among other key programs associated with the Great Society were the 1965 Title XVIII (Medicare) and Title XIX (Medicaid) amendments to the Social Security Act. Because Medicare was provided as a universal health care program for the elderly, it did not carry the stigma that was attached to Medicaid, which was designated for those who met the low-income requirements. However, since women were overrepresented among the elderly and among the poor generally, they benefited from both programs.
In his 1964 State of the Union Address, President Johnson called for a "War on Poverty." The resulting legislation, the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA), became one of the most hotly contested legislative innovations of the Great Society. The EOA offered the first government-sponsored attempt to involve the poor directly and formally in decision making, advocacy, and service provision in their own communities.
Early reports on the War on Poverty ignored women's contributions as paid workers, despite the fact that the majority of positions such as community aide, community worker, and parent aide were filled by women. In keeping with the traditional view of women's work as unpaid, the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), established by the EOA, defined women's role in the War on Poverty as that of volunteer. Strategies for preventing poverty emphasized expanding employment opportunities for poor men; this marginalized women's employment needs as well as their actual contributions as staff members and administrators of antipoverty programs.
Policymakers, along with African American male and Latino community leaders who parlayed antipoverty experiences into political careers or built large welfare bureaucracies, are treated in most written accounts as the primary beneficiaries of the War on Poverty. Although many of the extensive reports on the Community Action Programs (CAPs) mentioned that women were in the majority at the lower-level positions, few detailed the important leadership roles that women played in these programs.
EOA's framers and implementers were unprepared for the challenge the CAPs in low-income communities of color posed to the political establishments in different locales. In less than two years, political pressures from mayors, other local officials, and traditional social service organizations had already circumscribed the federal government's commitment to maximum feasible participation of the poor. Furthermore, funds available for the War on Poverty quickly subsided as costs for the Vietnam War escalated.
Funding was initially provided in a lump sum with specific programmatic decisions to be made at the local level. To circumscribe local discretion over program design, the 1968 amendments targeted specific programs to be funded such as Head Start, legal services, and emergency food and medical services. As funds were cut back, local communities had little money remaining for other program initiatives. The comprehensive, multiservice approach to fighting poverty that marked the initial efforts was further undermined as the specific programs were delegated to other government agencies. By 1970, community action and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) were the only programs operated by OEO.
Under pressure from President Nixon, OEO was disbanded, and the remaining CAPs were coordinated by the newly established Community Services Administration (CSA) of the Department of Health and Human Services. CSA received little support from President Carter and was finally dismantled by the Reagan administration in 1981.
The classification of community action positions as paraprofessional helped expand jobs in health and social welfare organizations but hastened the deskilling of certain forms of work in the health, legal, and social work professions. Many of these positions were filled by women, so this deskilling process also furthered the gender segregation in these occupations. Women of color were disproportionately represented in these positions and therefore disproportionately affected by the cutbacks in social services.
Many observers point out that the War on Poverty's attention to Black America created the grounds for the backlash that began in the 1970s. The perception by the white middle class that it was footing the bill for ever-increasing services to the poor led to diminished support for welfare state programs, especially those that targeted specific groups and neighborhoods. Many whites viewed Great Society programs as supporting the economic and social needs of low-income urban minorities; they lost sympathy, especially as the economy declined during the 1970s.
Of the many Great Society programs, more support remains for Medicare, which serves the elderly, and for Head Start, which serves the youngest of the poor, than for housing subsidies and other transfer payments for families living in poverty or low-income communities. The basic assumption of the Great Society, that government must take an active role to reduce poverty, has been replaced by the 1990s assertion that government support for the poor leads to dependency and undermines the work ethic. Whereas the Great Society emphasized the structural roots of poverty, contemporary poverty policy focuses on the individual behaviors and choices of people who are poor.
Numerous critics of the War on Poverty, representing a range of political perspectives, emphasized the limits of maximum feasible participation as a strategy to enhance democratic practice. Others criticized the programs for undermining progressive efforts to develop a national unemployment policy and for increasing local infighting among people of color in poor communities. Many also argued that inexperienced and greedy program administrators misspent and misappropriated funds. However, from the vantage point of women hired by antipoverty programs, the War on Poverty contributed to their personal and political empowerment. It also transformed the unpaid work they were already performing for their communities into paid work. The skills they gained in struggling against insensitive and ineffective public agencies in efforts to address the economic and social needs of their communities enhanced their political efficacy on behalf of themselves, their families, and their community.
Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1962); Nancy A. Naples, Grassroots Warriors: Activist Mothers, Community Work, and the War on Poverty (New York: Routledge, forthcoming); Jill Quadagno and Catherine Fobes, "The Welfare State and the Cultural Reproduction of Gender: Making Good Girls and Boys in the Job Corps," Social Problems, 42 no. 2 (1995): 171-90.
Nancy A. Naples
See also
Civil Rights Act of 1964;
Poverty;
Welfare State.
