DOCSLIB.ORG

“A War Within Our Own Boundaries”: Lyndon Johnson's

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
“A War Within Our Own Boundaries”: Lyndon Johnson's “A War within Our Own Boundaries”: Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the Rise of the Carceral State Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/102/1/100/686903 by guest on 06 January 2019 Elizabeth Hinton Over the five summers of Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency, the nation witnessed more than 250 incidents of urban civil disorder. The violence—termedriots by policy makers, journalists, and the public—swept American cities and resulted in the deaths of more than two hundred black Americans, thirteen thousand injured civilians and officers, and the destruction of billions of dollars worth of property. Beginning with the killing of an unarmed black fifteen-year-old boy by New York City police that sparked the Harlem riot in July 1964, the uprisings constituted a prolonged and sporadic conflict involving more than one hundred thousand black participants and law enforcement officials. By the close of the 1960s these uprisings—sparked not by white hostility to integration like earlier race riots but by the presence of exploitative and exclusionary institutions in black neighborhoods—constituted the greatest period of domestic bloodshed the nation had witnessed since the Civil War.1 Unprecedented in its fury and frequency, this disorder radically reshaped the direc- tion of Johnson’s Great Society programs, resulting ultimately in a merger of antipoverty programs with anticrime programs that laid the groundwork for contemporary mass in- carceration. The links that the fire of urban discord forged between the fighting of crime and the fighting of urban inequality were established as early as 1965, in the three pieces of legislation that represented the Johnson administration’s legislative response to the civil rights movement. In March of that year, the administration presented to Congress the Elizabeth Hinton is an assistant professor of history and African and African American studies at Harvard Univer- sity. I am deeply indebted to Heather Thompson and Eric Foner for their insights and mentorship. Heather in par- ticular has generously offered advice on numerous drafts of this article, and I am grateful for her challenges and en- couragement. I must also thank Ira Katznelson, Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, Khalil Muhammad, Donna Murch, Mae Ngai, and Vesla Weaver for advancing my thinking on this subject. Readers may contact Hinton at [email protected]. 1 These figures are compiled from Senate Committee on Government Operations,Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders: Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Riots, 90 Cong., 1 sess., Nov. 1, 2, 3, 6, 1967; Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence, Riot Data Review (no. 1, May 1968); ibid. (no. 2, Aug. 1968); ibid. (no. 3, Feb. 1969); and Otto Kerner et al., Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York, 1968), 6, 35–108. Notable historical treatments in the expansive literature on the riots include Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967(East Lansing, 2007); Robert M. Fogelson, Violence as Protest: A Study of Riots and Ghettos (Garden City, 1971); Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Charlottesville, 1995); Michael B. Katz, Why Don’t American Cit- ies Burn? (Philadelphia, 2011); and Kevin Mumford, Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America (New York, 2007). doi: 10.1093/jahist/jav328 © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]. 100 The Journal of American History June 2015 Johnson’s Great Society and the Rise of the Carceral State 101 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/102/1/100/686903 by guest on 06 January 2019 Policemen attack a man at 133rd Street and Seventh Avenue during the Harlem uprising in July 1964. Photograph by Dick DeMarsico. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photo- graphs Division. Housing and Urban Development Act, which subsidized private homes for low-income renters; the Voting Rights Act, which gave black Americans in the South the opportunity to participate in the electoral process as full citizens; and the Law Enforcement Assistance Act, which broke with two hundred years of national policy and established federal influ- ence over local police operations. Reflecting on these three bills, and on already-operating programs such as Job Corps, Head Start, and Youth Opportunity Centers, Johnson de- clared his hope that 1965 would be remembered not as the apex of American liberal re- form but rather “as the year when this country began a thorough, intelligent, and effective war against crime.” A new era in American law enforcement had begun.2 These and other measures blended the opportunity, development, and training pro- grams of the War on Poverty with the surveillance, patrol, and detention programs of Johnson’s newly declared “War on Crime.” This entanglement of Great Society policies al- lowed law enforcement officials to use methods of surveillance that overlapped with social programs—for instance, antidelinquency measures framed as equal opportunity initia- tives—to effectively suffuse crime-control strategies into the everyday lives of Americans in segregated and impoverished communities. In time, the entire spectrum of domestic 2 Lyndon B. Johnson, “Statement by the President on Establishing the President’s Commission on Law Enforce- ment and the Administration of Justice,” July 26, 1965, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb .edu/ws/?pid=27110. 102 The Journal of American History June 2015 social programs actively participated in national law enforcement, thereby pushing the boundaries of the carceral state beyond penal institutions. By the time Johnson’s Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act passed in 1968, the carceral state had already begun to metastasize into a vast network of social programs originally created to combat racial exclusion and inequality. In response to rioting, however, these programs had shifted in purpose toward controlling the violent symptoms of socioeconomic problems. Ironically Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/102/1/100/686903 by guest on 06 January 2019 and tragically, as antipoverty and anticrime initiatives became increasingly entwined, nei- ther the political coalition that privileged the “forgotten civil right” to safety nor the black activists who sought equality and full democracy realized the society they imagined.3 Scholars have recognized the role of the riots in mobilizing white backlash and the sub- sequent rise of conservatism, moving liberal sympathizers away from egalitarian policy, and precipitating the federal government’s retreat from progressive social reform. Yet the threat the uprisings posed to American law and institutions also needs to be understood as the central catalyst behind the punitive turn in twentieth-century domestic policy. Remembering Johnson’s presidency for its monumental civil rights legislation and social welfare initiatives, historians and political scientists tend to explain his embrace of the politics of “law and order” as an electoral tactic: a reappropriation of Barry Goldwater’s platform during the 1964 presidential contest and a necessary concession made to the emerging coalition of southern Democrats and western Republicans to secure the enact- ment of antipoverty and civil rights bills. Thus, Richard M. Nixon is usually credited for spearheading the War on Crime, even though he inherited an already-vibrant law en- forcement infrastructure created by the Johnson administration. Far from being ambiva- lent about crime control as a major aim of domestic policy, Johnson and his radical do- mestic programs laid the foundation of the carceral state, opening an entirely new plane of domestic social programs centered on crime control, surveillance, and incarceration.4 The turn toward substituting confinement for opportunity programs resulted both from the urgency created by the rising disorder and from the way that Johnson and allied policy makers understood urban citizens’ decision to respond to their conditions with 3 Works that similarly understand the carceral state as a network of programs strongly tied to the welfare state include David Garland, Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies (London, 1985); David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Chicago, 2002); Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1977); Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, “Guns and Butter: The Welfare State, the Carceral State, and the Politics of Exclusion in the Postwar United States,” Journal of American History, 102 (June 2015), 87–99; and Loïc Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham, N.C., 2009). 4 Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall,Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on Ameri- can Politics (New York, 1991); Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, 2002); Michael B. Katz, ed., The “Underclass” Debate: Views from History (Princeton, 1993); and Michael B. Katz, The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare (New York, 1990); Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, 2006); Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); Rick Perlstein, Nix- onland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York, 2008); Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (New York, 1994); Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974– 2008 (New York, 2008). Placing race at the center of her analysis, Vesla M. Weaver breaks from the dominant view and describes the rise of federal crime-control policies as a “frontlash” to the upheaval of the “second reconstruc- tion.” See Vesla M. Weaver, “Frontlash: Race and the Development of Punitive Crime Policy,” Studies in American Political Development, 21 (Fall 2007), 230–65.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society
    LYNDON B. JOHNSON AND THE GREAT SOCIETY Books | Articles | Collections | Oral Histories | YouTube | Websites | Podcasts Visit our Library Catalog for a complete list of books, magazines and videos. Resource guides collate materials about subject areas from both the Museum’s library and permanent collections to aid students and researchers in resource discovery. The guides are created and maintained by the Museum’s librarian/archivist and are carefully selected to help users, unfamiliar with the collections, begin finding information about topics such as Dealey Plaza Eyewitnesses, Conspiracy Theories, the 1960 Presidential Election, Lee Harvey Oswald and Cuba to name a few. The guides are not comprehensive and researchers are encouraged to email [email protected] for additional research assistance. The following guide focuses on President Lyndon B. Johnson and his legislative initiative known as the Great Society, an ambitious plan for progressing the socio-economic well-being of American citizens. Inspired by President Kennedy’s policies, the Great Society enacted a series of domestic programs in education, the environment, civil rights, labor, the arts and health, all aimed toward eradicating poverty from American society. BOOKS Dallek, Robert. Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times 1961-73. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Johnson, Lyndon B. The Vantage Point: Perspective of the Presidency 1963-1969. New York: Rinehart and Winston, 1971. Schenkkan, Robert. All the Way. New York: Grove Press, 2014. Schenkkan, Robert. The Great Society. New York: Grove Press, 2017. Woods, Randall Bennett. Prisoners of Hope: Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Society, and the Limits of Liberalism. New York: Basic Books, 2016.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Record Reporting (512) 450-0342 2
    THE SQUARE ONE PROJECT ROUNDTABLE ON THE FUTURE OF JUSTICE POLICY EXAMINING JUSTICE REFORM AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IN THE UNITED STATES: IMPLICATIONS FOR JUSTICE POLICY AND PRACTICE Zoom meeting 4:00 p.m. EST Wednesday, August 12, 2020 ON THE RECORD REPORTING (512) 450-0342 2 PARTICIPANTS: Aisha McWeay | Executive Director, Still She Rises Tulsa Ananya Roy | Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography and the Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy, UCLA Bruce Western | Co-Founder, Square One Project; Co-Director, Justice Lab; Bryce Professor of Sociology and Social Justice, Columbia University Chas Moore | Founder and Executive Director, Austin Justice Coalition Courtney Robinson |Founder, Excellence and Advancement Foundation Danielle Allen | James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University David Garland | Arthur T. Vanderbilt Professor of Law Professor of Sociology, New York University Deanna Van Buren | Co-Founder, Executive Director, Design Director, Designing Justice + Designing Spaces Dona Kim Murphey | Director of Medical Initiatives, Project Lifeline; Neurologist Eddie Bocanegra | Senior Director, READI Chicago Heartland Alliance Elizabeth Hinton | Associate Professor of History and African and African American Studies, Harvard University Emily Wang | Associate Professor of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine; Director, Health Justice Lab; Co-Founder, Transitions Clinic Network Erik Bringswhite | Co-Founder and Executive Director, I. Am.
    [Show full text]
  • 50Th Anniversary Head Start Timeline
    Head Start Timeline Delve into key moments in Head Start history! Explore the timeline to see archival photographs, video, resources, and more. 1964 War on Poverty: On Jan. 8, President Lyndon Johnson takes up the cause of building a "Great Society" by declaring "War on Poverty" in his first State of the Union Address. The goal of the War on Poverty is to eradicate the causes of poverty by creating job opportunities, increasing productivity, and enhancing the quality of life. Watch this historic State of the Union Address. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 is enacted and includes programs such as: Job Corps, Urban/Rural Community Action, VISTA, Project Head Start and many more. Watch Small Miracles, a short video about these programs. Case for Early Education: As a former teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in Texas, President Johnson believes strongly that education was the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. Moreover, child development experts have found that early intervention programs could significantly affect the cognitive and socio-emotional development of low-income children. State of the Union, 1964 1965 Cooke Report: Dr. Robert Cooke sets up a steering committee of specialists to discuss how to give disadvantaged children a "head start." The committee develops recommendations that feature comprehensive education, health, nutrition and social services, and significant parent involvement. Read the Cooke Report [PDF, 47KB]. Head Start Launch: On May 18, President Lyndon B. Johnson officially announces Project Head Start from the White House Rose Garden. Head Start launches in the summer of 1965, serving more than 560,000 children and families across America in an eight-week summer program through Head Start Child Development Centers throughout the United States.
    [Show full text]
  • Closing Session: Reflections of the History of Head Start Research
    4 Million and Counting: Reflections on 40 Years of Head Start Research in Support of Children and Families Presenter: John M. Love 1965--41 years ago. It’s hard to remember what an amazingly eventful year 1965 was: On January 4, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed the Great Society in his State of the Union address. In February, the U.S. began bombing North Vietnam in operation Rolling Thunder. On Feb. 2, Malcolm X was assassinated. March 7 became known as “Bloody Sunday,” when civil rights marchers began their trek from Selma to Montgomery and were violently confronted by state troopers. A month later, in a one-room schoolhouse in Texas, President Johnson signed into law the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which we all know in its latest incarnation as No Child Left Behind. On August 11, the Watts riots began. That year, in Britain, Winston Churchill died—and J. K. Rowling was born. And at the Grammies, Mary Poppins won best recording for children. So with a spoonful of sugar and a ton of sweat and tears, a vast new program for children and families was underway. Within 3 years, Donald Rumsfeld, the new head of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) would have Head Start as part of his responsibility, guiding the country through an early phase of a different war—the War on Poverty. Research began immediately. One of the first studies in the new Head Start context is a dissertation by an enterprising young University of Chicago doctoral candidate, Diana Slaughter, who investigated the maternal antecedents of African American Head Start children’s academic achievement.
    [Show full text]
  • Law and Order
    THE HAMLYN LECTURES Thirty-seventh series Law and Order Ralf Dahrendorf K.B.E., F.B.A. STEVENS Law and Order by Ralf Dahrendorf K.B.E., F.B.A. Professor of Social Science in the University of Constance; formerly Director of the London School of Economics In this book, based on his 1985 Hamlyn Lectures, Professor Ralf Dahrendorf considers the fundamental questions posed for the social order of free countries by the decline in respect for the law. Taking as his point of departure the terrors of our streets and the riots in our football grounds, Professor Dahrendorf discusses the implication for social order and liberty of such issues as unemployment, the cracks in the party system and the growing disorientation of the young. There are four major themes in the book— • The Road to Anomia—crime statistics are but the most dramatic symptoms of a loosening of social ties and norms. • Seeking Rousseau, Finding Hobbes—a widespread dream of goodness has resulted in the dismantling of some of the institutions designed to protect us from badness. • The Struggle for the Social Contract—underlying social changes have led from the class struggle to conflicts about the boundaries of society. • Society and Liberty—most reactions to the new condition involve threats to liberty—we need to reassert the links between law, order and liberty. Professor Dahrendorf has had a most distinguished career, both in his native Germany and in the United Kingdom. In Law and Order he offers a lively and stimulating analysis of a topic of vital importance in the life of every citizen.
    [Show full text]
  • FALL 2019 NEWSLETTER from the 2019-20 Department Chair, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham
    FALL 2019 NEWSLETTER From the 2019-20 Department Chair, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham The History Department is revving up for department, they contributed greatly to the 2019-2020 academic year. In looking their fields of study, to Harvard, and to the forward to the opening of the semester, we historical profession. In fall 2018, death express excitement about the return of the also took alum Stephen Walsh, who received many faculty members who were on leave his PhD in History in 2014. The faculty last year. We welcome you back! And we voted last spring to honor his memory. One call special attention to Tiya Miles and Derek of the department’s three annual History Penslar, who spent their first year as Prize Instructorships will be called the tenured faculty at Harvard (2018-2019) on Stephen A. Walsh History Prize leave and join us this fall in a full and active Instructorship for the next three years way. Tiya Miles offers courses on African (2019-2022). Americans and Native Americans. She is also attentive to gender as one of her The History Department’s faculty news is course titles reveals—“Native American filled with much to highlight. Kirsten Weld Evelyn Brooks Women: History and Myth.” Derek Penslar was promoted to the rank of full professor Higginbotham offers courses in modern Jewish History. He and Arunabh Ghosh was promoted to Department Chair will teach the Gen Ed course “Is War associate professor. David Howell, Inevitable.” Similarly, Liz Cohen returns to previously an affiliate in the department, Dimiter Angelov the History faculty after her sabbatical, now holds a joint appointment with History Outgoing Director of which followed seven years of stellar and East Asian Languages and Civilizations leadership as the Dean of Radcliffe.
    [Show full text]
  • SAY NO to the LIBERAL MEDIA: CONSERVATIVES and CRITICISM of the NEWS MEDIA in the 1970S William Gillis Submitted to the Faculty
    SAY NO TO THE LIBERAL MEDIA: CONSERVATIVES AND CRITICISM OF THE NEWS MEDIA IN THE 1970S William Gillis Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Journalism, Indiana University June 2013 ii Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee David Paul Nord, Ph.D. Mike Conway, Ph.D. Tony Fargo, Ph.D. Khalil Muhammad, Ph.D. May 10, 2013 iii Copyright © 2013 William Gillis iv Acknowledgments I would like to thank the helpful staff members at the Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library, the Detroit Public Library, Indiana University Libraries, the University of Kansas Kenneth Spencer Research Library, the University of Louisville Archives and Records Center, the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library, the Wayne State University Walter P. Reuther Library, and the West Virginia State Archives and History Library. Since 2010 I have been employed as an editorial assistant at the Journal of American History, and I want to thank everyone at the Journal and the Organization of American Historians. I thank the following friends and colleagues: Jacob Groshek, Andrew J. Huebner, Michael Kapellas, Gerry Lanosga, J. Michael Lyons, Beth Marsh, Kevin Marsh, Eric Petenbrink, Sarah Rowley, and Cynthia Yaudes. I also thank the members of my dissertation committee: Mike Conway, Tony Fargo, and Khalil Muhammad. Simply put, my adviser and dissertation chair David Paul Nord has been great. Thanks, Dave. I would also like to thank my family, especially my parents, who have provided me with so much support in so many ways over the years.
    [Show full text]
  • Armstrong Racial Origins Aug 18 2016 Submitted
    Racial Origins of Doctrines Limiting Prisoner Protest Speech Andrea C. Armstrong* ABSTRACT This article examines the racial origins of two foundational cases governing prisoner protest speech to better understand their impact in light of the Black Lives Matter movement. Two Supreme Court cases provide the primary architecture for the regulation of prisoner or detainee speech. The first, Adderley v. Florida, is (mis)interpreted for the proposition that jails (and by analogy, prisons) are non-public spaces. Under First Amendment doctrine, non-public spaces are subject to heightened regulation and suppression of speech is authorized. The second, Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union, Inc., amplifies the effect of Adderley and prohibits prisoner solicitation for union membership. Together, these two cases effectively provide broad discretion to prison administrators to punish prisoners and detainees for their protest speech. Neither Adderley nor Jones acknowledge the racial origins of the cases. Holdings in both cases relied on race-neutral rationales and analysis and yet, the underlying concerns in each case appear tied to racial concerns and fears. Thus this Article is a continuation of a broader critical race praxis that reminds us that seemingly objective and neutral doctrines themselves may incorporate particular ideas and notions about race. Today’s protesters face a demonstrably different doctrinal landscape, should they protest within the prison or jail walls. While the content of speech by a “Black Lives Matter” activist may not change, the constitutional protection afforded to that speech will be radically different depending on where she speaks. * Associate Professor of Law, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.
    [Show full text]
  • Lady Bird Johnson
    Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Lady Bird Johnson I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty. I awoke and found that life was duty. - - From Mrs. Johnson’s embroidered bedroom pillows. Lady Bird Johnson has lived her life with a quiet determination to experience all that this world has to offer. Her endless curiosity and commitment to duty has led her to expand the boundries of the many roles she has played in life. Whether as a daughter, student, wife, mother, political partner, business person, first lady or environmental activist, she has been a subtle, but powerful influence on the people around her and a subtle, but significant influence on American society. Daughter childhood, but not a lonely one. Claudia Alta Taylor was born to Since her two older brothers were Minnie and Thomas Taylor of away at school she found Karnack, Texas on December 22, 1912. companionship with her Aunt Effie Claudia’s nursemaid described her and in the woods around her home. “as pretty as a lady bird,” an Her father, whom she adored, gave appropriate nickname for a child of her nearly complete freedom to roam nature. After her mother’s death in the small town. This made her self- 1918, the five-year-old Lady Bird reliant, but the lack of social Taylor began her life long love affair interaction made her shy and unsure with nature. Hers was a lonesome of herself in public. Student By 1930, Lady Bird Taylor was majoring in history at the University of Texas in Austin.
    [Show full text]
  • Lassiter Cv March 2020 Copy
    Curriculum Vitae Matthew D. Lassiter Department of History (734) 546-0799 1029 Tisch Hall [email protected] University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Education __________________________________________________ Ph.D., Department of History, University of Virginia, Charlottesville VA, May 1999. Dissertation: “The Rise of the Suburban South: The ‘Silent Majority’ and the Politics of Education, 1945-1975.” M.A., Department of History, University of Virginia, Jan. 1994. Thesis: “Biblical Fundamentalism and Racial Beliefs at Bob Jones University.” B.A., History, summa cum laude, Furman University, Greenville SC, May 1992. Employment/Teaching ________________________________________ Professor of History, University of Michigan, 2017- Arthur F. Thurnau Professor (since 2015) Associate Professor of History, University of Michigan, 2006-2017 Assistant Professor of History, University of Michigan, 2000-2006 Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Michigan, 2017- Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, 2006-2017 Director of Policing and Social Justice Lab, University of Michigan, 2018- Director of Undergraduate Studies, History Department, 2012-2014 Director of Graduate Studies, History Department, 2006-2008 History 202: “Doing History” (undergraduate methods seminar). History 261: “U.S. History Since 1865” (lecture). History 329: “Crime and Drugs in Modern America” (lecture/‘flipped’ class format). History 364: “History of American Suburbia” (lecture). History 467: “U.S. History Since 1945” (lecture). History/American Culture 374: “Politics and Culture of the Sixties” (lecture). History 196: “Political Culture of Cold War America” (undergraduate seminar). History 399: “Environmental Activism in Michigan” (undergraduate seminar). History 399: “Cold Cases: Police Violence, Crime, and Social Justice in Michigan” (undergraduate HistoryLab seminar) History 497: “War on Crime/War on Drugs” (undergraduate seminar).
    [Show full text]
  • Crime, 1966-1967
    The original documents are located in Box D6, folder “Ford Press Releases - Crime, 1966- 1967 (2)” of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. Copyright Notice The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. The Council donated to the United States of America his copyrights in all of his unpublished writings in National Archives collections. Works prepared by U.S. Government employees as part of their official duties are in the public domain. The copyrights to materials written by other individuals or organizations are presumed to remain with them. If you think any of the information displayed in the PDF is subject to a valid copyright claim, please contact the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. Digitized from Box D6 of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library CONGRESSMAN NEWS GERALD R. FORD HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADER RELEASE ••Release in PMs of August 3-- Remarks by Rep. Gerald R. Ford, R-Mich., prepared for delivery on the floor of the House on Thursday, August 3, 1967. Mr. Speaker, America today is shaken by a deep national crisis--a near- breakdown of law and order made even more severe by civil disorders in which criminal elements are heavily engaged. The law-abiding citizens of America who have suffered at the hands of the lawless and the extremists are anxiously awaiting a remedy. This is a time for swift and decisive acti~n.
    [Show full text]
  • Play Guide for the Great Society
    Written by Robert Schenkkan Directed by Ron Pel us o O cto ber 6 —2 8 , 2 0 1 8 P L AY G UI D E THE PLAY It is 1965 and President Lyndon Baines Johnson is at a critical point in his presidency. He is launching The Great Society, an ambitious set of social programs that would increase funds for health care, education and poverty. He also wants to pass the Voting Rights Act, an act that would secure voting rights for minority communities across the country. At each step, Johnson faces resistance. Conservatives like Senator Everett Dirksen are pushing for budget cuts on his social welfare programs. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, is losing patience at the lack of progress on voting rights. With rising discrimination against black communities in America, King takes matters into his own hands, organizing a civil rights protest in Selma, Alabama. Outside the U.S., the crisis in Vietnam is escalating. When the Viet Cong attacks a Marine support base, Johnson is faced with a difficult decision: should he deploy more American troops to fight overseas or should he focus on fighting the war on poverty within the U.S.? Time is ticking and the next presidential election is around the corner. In an America divided by civil rights protests and the anguish of Vietnam War, can Johnson pave the way for a great society? Page 2 MEET THE PLAYWIRGHT — ROBERT SCHENKKAN Robert Schenkkan was born in North Carolina and raised in Texas. He studied theater and discovered his passion for creating original worlds through playwrighting.
    [Show full text]