A People's War on Poverty
Title | A People's War on Poverty PDF eBook |
Author | Wesley G. Phelps |
Publisher | University of Georgia Press |
Total Pages | 264 |
Release | 2014 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 0820346705 |
Phelps investigates the on-the-ground implementation of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty during the 1960s and 1970s and argues that the fluid interaction between federal policies, urban politics, and grassroots activists created a significant site of conflict over the meaning of American democracy.
A People’s War on Poverty
Title | A People’s War on Poverty PDF eBook |
Author | Wesley G. Phelps |
Publisher | University of Georgia Press |
Total Pages | 264 |
Release | 2014-03-15 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0820346721 |
In A People's War on Poverty, Wesley G. Phelps investigates the on-the-ground implementation of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty during the 1960s and 1970s. He argues that the fluid interaction between federal policies, urban politics, and grassroots activists created a significant site of conflict over the meaning of American democracy and the rights of citizenship that historians have largely overlooked. In Houston in particular, the War on Poverty spawned fierce political battles that revealed fundamental disagreements over what democracy meant, how far it should extend, and who should benefit from it. Many of the program's implementers took seriously the federal mandate to empower the poor as they pushed for a more participatory form of democracy that would include more citizens in the political, cultural, and economic life of the city. At the center of this book are the vitally important but virtually forgotten grassroots activists who administered federal War on Poverty programs, including church ministers, federal program volunteers, students, local administrators, civil rights activists, and the poor themselves. The moderate Great Society liberalism that motivated the architects of the federal programs certainly galvanized local antipoverty activists in Houston. However, their antipoverty philosophy was driven further by prophetic religious traditions and visions of participatory democracy and community organizing championed by the New Left and iconoclastic figures like Saul Alinsky. By focusing on these local actors, Phelps shows that grassroots activists in Houston were influenced by a much more diverse set of intellectual and political traditions, fueling their efforts to expand the meaning of democracy. Ultimately, this episode in Houston's history reveals both the possibilities and the limits of urban democracy in the twentieth century.
The War on Poverty
Title | The War on Poverty PDF eBook |
Author | Annelise Orleck |
Publisher | University of Georgia Press |
Total Pages | 516 |
Release | 2011-11-01 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 0820341843 |
Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty has long been portrayed as the most potent symbol of all that is wrong with big government. Conservatives deride the War on Poverty for corruption and the creation of "poverty pimps," and even liberals carefully distance themselves from it. Examining the long War on Poverty from the 1960s onward, this book makes a controversial argument that the programs were in many ways a success, reducing poverty rates and weaving a social safety net that has proven as enduring as programs that came out of the New Deal. The War on Poverty also transformed American politics from the grass roots up, mobilizing poor people across the nation. Blacks in crumbling cities, rural whites in Appalachia, Cherokees in Oklahoma, Puerto Ricans in the Bronx, migrant Mexican farmworkers, and Chinese immigrants from New York to California built social programs based on Johnson's vision of a greater, more just society. Contributors to this volume chronicle these vibrant and largely unknown histories while not shying away from the flaws and failings of the movement--including inadequate funding, co-optation by local political elites, and blindness to the reality that mothers and their children made up most of the poor. In the twenty-first century, when one in seven Americans receives food stamps and community health centers are the largest primary care system in the nation, the War on Poverty is as relevant as ever. This book helps us to understand the turbulent era out of which it emerged and why it remains so controversial to this day.
Launching the War on Poverty
Title | Launching the War on Poverty PDF eBook |
Author | Michael L. Gillette |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | 480 |
Release | 2010-07-09 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780199779864 |
Head Start, Job Corps, Foster Grandparents, College Work-Study, VISTA, Community Action, and the Legal Services Corporation are familiar programs, but their tumultuous beginning has been largely forgotten. Conceived amid the daring idealism of the 1960s, these programs originated as weapons in Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, an offensive spearheaded by a controversial new government agency. Within months, the Office of Economic Opportunity created an array of unconventional initiatives that empowered the poor, challenged the established order, and ultimately transformed the nation's attitudes toward poverty. In Launching the War on Poverty, historian Michael L. Gillette weaves together oral history interviews with the architects of the Great Society's boldest experiment. Forty-nine former poverty warriors, including Sargent Shriver, Adam Yarmolinsky, and Lawrence F. O'Brien, recount this inside story of unprecedented governmental innovation. The interviews capture the excitement and heady optimism of Americans in the 1960s along with their conflicts and disillusionment. This new edition of Launching the War on Poverty adds the voice of Lyndon Johnson to the story with excerpts from his recently-released White House telephone conversations. In these colorful and brutally candid conversations, LBJ exercises his full arsenal of presidential powers, political leverage, and legendary persuasiveness to win one of his most difficult legislative battles. The second edition also documents how the OEO's offspring survived their volatile origins to become broadly supported features of domestic policy.
Why America Lost the War on Poverty--And How to Win It
Title | Why America Lost the War on Poverty--And How to Win It PDF eBook |
Author | Frank Stricker |
Publisher | UNC Press Books |
Total Pages | 360 |
Release | 2011-02-01 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0807882291 |
In a provocative assessment of American poverty and policy from 1950 to the present, Frank Stricker examines an era that has seen serious discussion about the causes of poverty and unemployment. Analyzing the War on Poverty, theories of the culture of poverty and the underclass, the effects of Reaganomics, and the 1996 welfare reform, Stricker demonstrates that most antipoverty approaches are futile without the presence (or creation) of good jobs. Stricker notes that since the 1970s, U.S. poverty levels have remained at or above 11%, despite training programs and periods of economic growth. The creation of jobs has continued to lag behind the need for them. Stricker argues that a serious public debate is needed about the job situation; social programs must be redesigned, a national health care program must be developed, and economic inequality must be addressed. He urges all sides to be honest--if we don't want to eliminate poverty, then we should say so. But if we do want to reduce poverty significantly, he says, we must expand decent jobs and government income programs, redirecting national resources away from the rich and toward those with low incomes. Why America Lost the War on Poverty--And How to Win It is sure to prompt much-needed debate on how to move forward.
The Other America
Title | The Other America PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Harrington |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Total Pages | 254 |
Release | 1997-08 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 068482678X |
Examines the economic underworld of migrant farm workers, the aged, minority groups, and other economically underprivileged groups.
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime
Title | From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime PDF eBook |
Author | Elizabeth Hinton |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Total Pages | 460 |
Release | 2016-05-09 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0674737237 |
How did the land of the free become the home of the world’s largest prison system? Elizabeth Hinton traces the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: not the War on Drugs of the Reagan administration but the War on Crime that began during Johnson’s Great Society at the height of the civil rights era.