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The Influence Of Lyndon Baines Johnson: The Great Society

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The Influence Of Lyndon Baines Johnson: The Great Society
In the 1960 campaign, Lyndon Baines Johnson was elected Vice President for John F. Kennedy. Kennedy had always wanted Johnson to be Vice President for him from the very beginning and admitted this to the public later after the election. Sadly on November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson swore in as 36th president with the vision to build "The Great Society." However, Johnson never ran for president; therefore, there was no election. Some of Johnson's key political views would include civil rights, health care criteria, voting rights, and education. Johnson was a set Democrat from Texas, who being from a poor family strived to go to the limits of helping others who were In need of help. Being elected Vice President, one of the …show more content…
The year 1965 probably was the one that required the best balancing act. Johnson was determined on creating his "Great Society", and to many Americans, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not enough. Many people only saw it as the beginning of a comprehensive effort to deal with issues of discrimination, segregation, and equality that wouldn’t just involve where one could eat but access to political and economic power. President Johnson strongly believed with them as well, and he criticized those in power in the South for evading the spirit of the Fifteenth Amendment that prohibited discrimination and argued that all citizens were entitled to voting rights. Johnson finally decided that voting rights legislation was in order. Martin Luther King Jr. And SCLC protesters also motivated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and King led the protesters into Selma and then across Alabama in February and March. This Act gave the federal government the power to invalidate tests or qualifications used to deny persons the right to vote. Such documents included the Literacy Test. This test was a test that was used to see if you would qualify for voting before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Act had immediate impact. Thousands of voters were registered in just weeks. However many people were homeless and without a home. Only weeks after Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, riots in Watts in the summer began. This began to weaken Johnson's hold of the congress; therefore, he was unable to attempt to extend the Civil Rights Act in 1966 into housing and

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