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“This administration today, here and now, declares
unconditional war on poverty in America.”
- Excerpted from Lyndon B. Johnson State of the Union
Address, January 1964
War on • President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the War on Poverty
Poverty in his State of the Union Address on January 8, 1964. At that
time 35 million Americans (nearly 30%) lived in poverty, and
about 25% of black youths could expect to live life without
regular employment.
• He expressed ‘the challenge of the next half century is
whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich
and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of
our American civilization.”
• As a result, he proposed his vision of a Great Society in a
major piece of legislation, the Economic Opportunity Act of
1964.
