War on Poverty

Cultural  

1. A set of government programs, designed to help poor Americans, begun by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The War on Poverty included measures for job training and improvement of housing.

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Example Sentences

He says the act and the War on Poverty enabled black America to make a mistake: “We traded self-respect and conservatism for identity and humiliation. The guilt of white people is our power. We work them. And yet we won’t look at our own people and ask, ‘Why are we not teaching our children to read?’

From The Wall Street Journal

The white consensus that segregation created stood for a century until it was shattered again, this time by civil rights advocates whose victories provided the nation with redemptive political possibilities such as the passage of the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, and establishing the War on Poverty.

From Salon

But hopes of radical change evaporated as the Vietnam War intensified and wars on drugs and welfare largely replaced the War on Poverty.

From Salon

Head Start was founded in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” and has served more than 40 million children over the past six decades.

From Los Angeles Times

Dr. King’s steadfast commitment to economic justice prompted his pivotal relationship with President Lyndon B. Johnson and the subsequent passage of the most significant civil rights legislation of the 20th century, as part of Johnson’s newly declared War on Poverty.

From Salon