ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY ACT

In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson (1963–1969) announced in his first State of the Union address: "This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty." This announcement was predated a few months earlier by a wave of urban riots in U.S. cities. The announced "War on Poverty" became a reality in August 1964 when Congress enacted the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA). This federal act created the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and gave it the responsibility of administrating the Community Action Program (CAP) and the Job Corps. The CAP was designed to administer services to the poor, coordinate poverty functions of the federal, state, and local governments, and to create areas in the program where the poor would have some direct responsibility and power over those new programs. The Job Corps as another part of the EOA was a job training program aimed at disadvantaged youth in the United States. Though both programs were theoretically color-blind the EOA seemed likely to focus on the needs of many urban African Americans. Despite the major initiatives of the EOA the threatening racial tensions in the United States only worsened. Despite urban riots that began in 1967 and continued through the rest of the 1960s President Johnson continued in his efforts to wage war on poverty in the United States through the EOA. Responding to the riots in Detroit, Michigan, in 1967 he said that the only long-range solution for urban poverty was to continue EOA efforts to reduce the conditions of poverty: "ignorance, discrimination, slums, disease, and the joblessness." EOA efforts disappeared with the Richard Nixon (1969–1974) presidency.

See also: Great Society, Poverty