January 8, 2025: Great Society Laws: Economic Safety Nets

[60 years ago this month, President Lyndon B. Johnson—fresh off his successful re-election campaign—created his Great Society program, pushing Congress to help him (as he put it in his 1964 speech acceptance the presidential nomination) “build a great society, a place where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’s labor.” So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a number of Great Society laws, leading up to a post on what we still desperately need to learn from these histories.]

On three distinct and equally important ways that the Great Society created safety nets.

1)      Housing: In that section of Monday’s post on the Civil Rights Act of 1968, I noted that part of that law (Title VIII) came to be known as the Fair Housing Act. That important set of policies and protections was made much more possible by a distinct federal law from a few years earlier: the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965. Besides adding a number of programs and protections to federal housing policy, this 1965 law also created a new Cabinet department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Given the federal government’s central role in such longstanding discriminatory practices as redlining, it was particularly important that the Great Society make equal opportunity to and accessibility of housing a significant focus, both to redress such specific histories and to do what it could to guarantee this vital resource for all Americans.

2)      Jobs: If housing is a great example of a safety net resource, though, it’s also just a baseline on which more must be added to help move individuals out of poverty and toward prosperity. Exemplifying the Great Society’s efforts towards those broader goals was the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which as President Johnson argued was intended “to eliminate the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty in this nation by opening to everyone the opportunity for education and training, the opportunity to work, and the opportunity to live in decency and dignity.” And for those critics who might worry about the dangers of federal government overreach, it’s worth adding that this law pursued those shared goals primarily by creating Community Action Agencies, local organizations that would help individuals, families, and communities in their areas in specific and targeted ways.

3)      Food Stamps: Whether or not an individual is able to find and keep a job or jobs, however, it’s important to add that far too often more of a safety net is needed to keep folks and families on the right side of the poverty line. Even before the Great Society, President Kennedy and Congress had recognized that fact and launched the Food Stamp Program (often known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) in 1962 to help Americans purchase food and related resources; but the Johnson administration expanded and cemented that program with the Food Stamp Act of 1964. Over the sixty years since, “food stamps” have become almost as frequent a target of misinformation and prejudice as “welfare,” and with just as little cause; as the Great Society’s contemporary activists the Black Panthers knew well, if folks are hungry there’s very little that education, or jobs, or any other resource can truly offer them.

Next Great Society law tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?