Lyndon Baines Johnson: “Great Society” Speech

Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency in the wake of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November of 1963. He gave his Speech to Congress on Assuming the Presidency five days after the assassination, pledging to advance the domestic programs and initiatives of his predecessor and, in foreign affairs, to balance U.S. military strength with restraint. He met with success on the first front but is considered to have failed on the second. In his Commencement Address at the University of Michigan, delivered six months after taking office, he put forward his domestic agenda—his vision of how to grapple with the underlying problem of economic deprivation by creating ambitious antipoverty programs collectively termed the Great Society.