S2 Ep 6 - The Engineer
Nixon at War
PRX
4.8 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2020
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Five decades after Lyndon Johnson first unveiled his lofty vision of a Great Society, politicians and pundits are still arguing about what he accomplished, and what he didn’t. This final installment will look at the legacy of LBJ's Great Society through the lens on one of its most enduring and popular programs — Head Start. Today, the Head Start program is alive and well, and so deeply woven into the fabric of American life that few know of its roots in the Great Society, or of the conflict and controversy that plagued many of its early programs.
Features Alice O’Connor, Professor of History and Director of the Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy at the University of California Santa Barbara, and commentary from historians Rhonda Y. Williams, Josh Zeitz, and Julian Zelizer. Learn more at LBJsGreatSociety.org.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Speaking from the White House, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the first grants under Project Head Start. |
| 0:16.5 | It's May 1965, and Lyndon Johnson is riding high. |
| 0:21.6 | Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guest, this is a very proud occasion for us today |
| 0:27.6 | because it was less than three months ago that we opened a new war front on poverty. |
| 0:33.6 | We called our program Project Head Start. |
| 0:38.3 | 18 months into his term, LBJ is pushing legislation through Congress, on a scale and at a pace, not seen since the days of the New Deal. |
| 0:47.3 | Civil Rights, Medicare, A to Education, Public Broadcasting, Clean Air and water. The list is long and there's more |
| 0:55.5 | in the pipeline. But few of these programs will go from zero to 60 as fast as project head |
| 1:01.6 | start, dreamed up just months before by Johnson's hard-charging poverty czar, our Sergeant |
| 1:07.3 | Shriver. |
| 1:07.7 | Open nearly any door here in the West Wing and you're liable to run into Sergeant Shriver. Open nearly any door here in the West Wing, and you're liable to run into Sergeant Shriver, |
| 1:15.0 | and sometimes you'll find him in more than one room at the same time. |
| 1:20.8 | Like much of the war on poverty, Head Start was an invention born of necessity. |
| 1:25.9 | Barely two weeks into his presidency, |
| 1:28.3 | LBJ had promised the country an all-out assault on poverty. |
| 1:32.3 | It fell to Shriver to deliver on that promise. |
| 1:35.3 | But how on earth to do that? |
| 1:37.3 | In the early days of war against poverty, |
| 1:39.3 | people did not know the demographics of poverty in the United States. |
| 1:43.3 | This is Sergeant Shriver. |
| 1:45.0 | So one of the first things I asked, the experts to prepare from me was a pie chart, which |
| 1:50.2 | would just show me where the poor people were. |
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