Season 2, Ep 1: Taking The Reins and Passage of The Civil Rights Act
Release Date: 01/08/2024
Season 2, Ep 4: The Legacy of The War on Poverty
American Compassion
During Lydon Johnson’s 4 years in office, his administration shepherded through: The Civil Rights Act, The Voting Rights Act, The Economic Opportunity Act, Upward Bound, The Job Corps, Head Start, Community Action Agencies, The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Medicare and Medicaid, The National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS, and NPR, The Urban Mass Transportation Act, Cigarette Labelling and Advertising Act, The Motor Vehicle Safety Act, The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, The...
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Season 2, Ep 3: The Road to Realization for Medicare and Medicaid
American Compassion
Here we are in the third episode of our 4 episode season looking at how Lyndon Johnson, by passing the civil rights bill on July 2nd, 1964, and The Economic Opportunity Act on Aug. 20th, 1964, is continuing the work of Franklin Roosevelt, and doing it as a sort of interim president before he is elected in his own right in November of 1964. An election he’s nervous about, an election that could find him out of politics altogether with an enormous amount of work undone and with no clear path to power within reach. One of the biggest goals left undone by FDR and through the terms of Truman,...
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Season 2, Ep 2: The (Revolutionary) Economic Opportunity Act
American Compassion
It’s the summer of 1964 and Lyndon Johnson has just signed the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It was a continuation of the proposal of John F. Kennedy and LBJ found a way to make it happen, but when it came to the safety net Johnson’s vision encompassed far greater legislation. From healthcare to education, unemployment to the media, the arts, and beyond; and much of that work, as we touched on in the last episode, he began under FDR. By this time LBJ had been a part of the US government for over 25 years with one goal, to become president of the United...
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Season 2, Ep 1: Taking The Reins and Passage of The Civil Rights Act
American Compassion
When we left off last season FDR’s New Deal and the end of WWII meant America was out of the Great Depression. But in 1960 people were waking from dreams of Earth Angels and Chantilly Lace to times that were changing. The Civil Rights movement, The Women's Movement, and Anti-war protests were drawing attention and building momentum. Longer nightly news broadcasts meant Americans were seeing more and gaining consciousness of what life was like not only overseas, but right in their own backyards. People were seeing what it meant to be black in America and to be poor in...
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Season 2: Promo
American Compassion
In season 1 of American Compassion we went back to the turn of the last century to explore poverty and wealth, philanthropy and charity, work, health and politics, and policy at a time when the idea of a safety net was just a dream, and we dove deep into what and who it took to make those dreams a reality. From Workplace safety to fair labor standards and child labor laws, to the New Deal, and with all that we merely scratched the surface of the complex history of the American safety net. In season 2 we continue in our exploration of the safety net from The New Deal to The Great...
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Season 1, Ep 4: Compromise and Concessions
American Compassion
Compromise is at the heart of almost every aspect of life. From what our family wants for dinner, to what subjects are taught in our schools, to what is included in, and left out of, congressional legislation. Yet, sometimes it seems like a “winner takes all” mentality is taking over. Many social media feeds, television shows, and podcasts glorify the winners and prompt accomplishment over compromise, and overwhelmingly our legislative process reflects this as well. In this atmosphere, it’s hard to make progress toward a more comprehensive and effective safety net. So far in our...
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Season 1, Ep 3: FDR and The New Deal
American Compassion
The third episode of American Compassion dives into the story of , exploring who he was and focusing on how FDR, born to wealth and privilege, arrived at the empathetic outlook that guided and in many ways defined his presidency. We investigate how small events allowed FDR to avoid dictatorship at a time when dictatorship was seen as a viable, even desirable response to the economic crises. And we tell the story of how by chance, by character, and by will, FDR and his administration, in their response to , also saved Democracy itself. Through the incredible story of...
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Season 1, Ep 2: The Woman Behind The New Deal
American Compassion
In the second episode of American Compassion, we turn to the story of how the core elements of our safety net began to come together in the lives and minds of Theodore Roosevelt and - especially - in the transformational and criminally-overlooked work of . With historian , author , and as our guides - and with herself - we go back to the fateful day in March 1911 when thirty-one-year-old Frances Perkins happened to witness the . Just as Erine Gray’s conversion experience in Manhattan on , inspired him to focus on public policy, Frances Perkins’s experience on that day inspired her...
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Season 1, Ep 1: Imagining a Safety Net
American Compassion
In 1929, the booming prosperity of the flapper era vanished in the wake of a catastrophic stock market crash. Banks failed, and millions of people lost their life’s savings. Poverty rates soared, and a ten-year depression crippled towns across the globe, setting the stage for the second world war. But what if poverty wasn’t just a result of sudden economic upheaval? Before the Great Depression, many Americans, including children, labored under grueling conditions for 12-15 hours a day. Work came with risks—threatening workers’ safety, and even their lives. At a time when...
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Season 1: Promo
American Compassion
American Compassion - Promo
info_outlineWhen we left off last season FDR’s New Deal and the end of WWII meant America was out of the Great Depression. But in 1960 people were waking from dreams of Earth Angels and Chantilly Lace to times that were changing. The Civil Rights movement, The Women's Movement, and Anti-war protests were drawing attention and building momentum.
Longer nightly news broadcasts meant Americans were seeing more and gaining consciousness of what life was like not only overseas, but right in their own backyards.
People were seeing what it meant to be black in America and to be poor in America. Popular culture, especially music, reflected this, in folk music and protest songs like Odetta’s Oh Freedom, in Bob Dylan’s “Oxford Town” Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam,” and in jazz like John Coltrane’s “Alabama.” These recordings brought the injustices of American life into the public consciousness in a new way.
So on November 22, 1963, when the 35th president of the United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, and Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson assumed the role of president of the United States and wasted no time getting to work on continuing the legacy of not only Kennedy but of FDR. And creating a series of programs that he hoped would define his legacy as well.
In May of 1964, 6 months before he would be elected president of the US in a landslide victory. President Johnson laid out his vision for The Great Society in a speech at the University of Michigan.
And this was no pie-in-the-sky hyperbole. Johnson was the architect of the continuation of the safety net through the great society and that meant. Passing the civil rights bill was crucial for Johnson, not only because he was continuing Kennedy’s legacy, but because it was a foundational piece of his Great Society and the American Safety Net.
But who was LBJ? What motivated his keen focus on domestic policy, poverty, civil rights, healthcare, and education, especially at a time when the Cold War was heating up and the war in Vietnam was on everyone’s hearts, minds, and TVs?
In this episode we explore Lyndon Baines Johnson the man and the president with Pulitzer Prizing-winning biographer Robert Caro, we hear conversations between LBJ with Martin Luther King Jr. and we get a better understanding of the context and the consequences of this monumental moment in American history.
Special thanks to our other guests for this episode H.W. Brands, Julian Zelizer, and Erine Gray, and to The Miller Center at the University of Virginia, The American Presidency Project at The University of California Santa Barbara, and The LBJ Presidential Library and Museum in Austin Texas for their consultation and use of archived materials.
Michael Zapruder arranged and composed the music for this show, and played guitar, with Jeff Olsen on drums, Mike St. Clair on bass, and Sam Lipman on keyboards.
Executive Producer, Rebecca McInroy.
Advising Editor, Jim Tuttle
Intern, Frances Cutter