LBJ and the Great Society
A larger-than-life President and a transformative moment in American history, revealed through little-known recordings from the White House.
S2 Ep 7 - Post Script
So what do historians think, fifty years out, about LBJ’s Great Society and its long term impact on American life and politics? In early February, series correspondent Melody Barnes put that question to three distinguished scholars, gathered before a live audience at the Miller Center for Presidential Studies, at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Their perspectives are a thoughtful summing up of the Johnson Years, and a good place, we think, to close out this podcast series. The panelists: Kevin Gaines, the Julian Bond Professor of Civil Rights and Social Justice at the University of Virginia; Guian McKee, associate professor in Presidential Studies at the Miller Center; and Julian Zelizer, Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Our thanks to them for their insights, and to you our listeners for your interest.
More episodes from LBJ and the Great Society
S2 Ep 6 - The Engineer
Five decades after Lyndon Johnson first unveiled his lofty vision of a Great Society, politicians and pundits are still arguing about what he …
S2 Ep 5 - Give Us the Ballot
By his own account the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was Lyndon Johnson’s greatest achievement – the jewel in the crown of the Great Society, and widely considered the most effective piece of …
S2 Ep 4 - Medicine Man
FDR, Harry Truman, and JFK all attempted to pass some form of universal health care — but no one had gotten even close. Johnson believed he might succeed where his predecessors had failed, …
S2 Ep 3 - The Bully Pulpit
“We will not win our war against poverty until the conscience of the entire Nation is aroused,” LBJ told an aide. But how to do that when most …
S2 Ep 2 - Mr. Poverty
"I didn't know a damn thing about poverty and didn't want the job," Sargent Shriver would later recall, of his conversation with the president, “and …
S2 Ep 1 - The Great Unveiling
On the night of JFK’s assassination, with the nation reeling, Lyndon Johnson stayed up much of the night with two young aides, and laid out a list of legislative initiatives he proposed to …
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