Kennedy, Johnson, and the War on Poverty

Abstract

When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared metaphorical war on poverty in 1964, he set in motion an important, complex, and controversial phase in the history of reform in the United States, whose shockwaves were still being felt in the early 1980s, a time of counterreformation. Although poverty reform in the 1960s influenced the historical profession no less than some others-in the rise of social history, for example-historians concentrated their research efforts on the more distant past. Analysis of the history, workings, consequences, and lessons of the War on Poverty remained largely the business of social scientists, who turned it into a sizable industry. The passage of time and the growing availability of primary sources now invite historical investigation, which has no more apposite starting point than the War on Poverty's genesis. Social scientists explain the War on Poverty's creation in essentially three different ways. Daniel P. Moynihan in his Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding does not treat motive systematically or explicitly, but he builds a powerful implicit argument that the War on Poverty grew out of the rising influence of social science itself. In particular, Moynihan attributes the Community Action Program, which became central to the War on Poverty, to reform-minded, though unscientific, sociologists. A second school of thought emphasizes interest groups and political calculation. Among those who take this approach, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward have probably been most widely read. President John F. Kennedy and President Johnson, they argue, launched the War on Poverty in order to attract a high percentage of black votes in the 1964 election. Third, the War on Poverty's birth has been explained through the cyclical theory of reform. After a period of dormancy, James Sundquist maintains, the reform impulse once again swept through the American political system, bringing with it a national effort to eradicate poverty. '