And now we see that the copters are approaching from the southeast.

Here comes one of the copters now.

And boy, they come in low to the ground, almost tipping the tops of these trees.

In the spring of 1964, a dozen of the poorest communities in the country had a surprising visitor.

The door will open then. We'll see President Lyndon B. Johnson, and his copter stopped.

1964, the visit to the Queen City of the Alleghenies in Gumberland, Maryland.

The poverty tour, as these visits came to be called, took the president and his entourage to place as few outsiders had ever been, or for that matter, even knew existed.

And that was the point.

The chief executive is here for another firsthand look at the problems of urban and rural

poverty, and to publicly urge support for his anti-poverty program.

Four months earlier, in his first State of the Union address, LBJ had taken an idea that had been quietly

percolating in the Kennedy administration and brought it abruptly to a boil.

This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.

LBJ's headlong move on poverty, just weeks into his term, was audacious in the extreme.

Even among White House staff, some had doubted the wisdom of a new and unelected president,

tying his political fortune so closely to the nation's poorest citizens. I said they don't vote. This is Douglas Cater, a senior White House aide.

They don't have any organized lobbies. How in the world are you going to get any substantial

legislation on poverty? Jack Kennedy couldn't.

How are you going to do it?

He said, I don't know whether I'll pass a single law or get a single dollar appropriated,

but before I'm through, no community in America is going to be able to ignore the poverty in its midst.

In fact, LBJ would need to get a lot of dollars appropriated, and that was the rub.

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