Great Society Case

On November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, President Kennedy was assassinated. Following the assassination Vice President Lyndon Johnson took office. He wanted to accomplish all of the things that President Kennedy wanted to do and everything that he failed to accomplish. President Johnson grew up in Texas and he was very poor. As president he wanted to help the poor and decrease the amount of people that were poor. He also wanted to follow President Kennedy’s ideas of eliminating segregation. He created a three part plan that he called the Great Society. The three parts were War on Poverty, Department Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Civil Rights. The Great Society was a very good thing for the United States of America.

The War on Poverty was how President Johnson planned on helping the people below the poverty line. He provided medicare to the senior citizens. Medicare is a program that provides medical care to senior citizens. He also provided medicaid, which provided money to help the poor pay their medical bills. His hope was paying for medical bills would help the poor save some money. He didn’t want medical care to be the reason that families were poor. He also created the Neighborhood Youth Corps which provided work-study programs to help underprivileged young men and women earn a high school diploma or college degree. Another program was Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). This program put young people with skills and community-minded ideals to work in poor neighborhoods and rural areas to help people overcome poverty. President Johnson created many more programs as well and they all contributed to helping the poor or helping young people so they had a chance to get out of poverty when they grew up.

President Johnson knew what it was like to be poor and he wanted to make sure that the people that were poor had a place to live. He created the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This program built houses and sold them for a reduced price so that people that were poor could afford a place to live. If the people that are below the poverty line have the ability to get a home for a reduced price it is a great thing. A life without somewhere to sleep would be horrible