LBJ's Gap

What evidence does LBJ offer as proof of the widening economic gap between black and white Americans? How does he explain this gap?


Lyndon B. Johnson was heavily influenced by Michael Harrington's book "The Other America". Johnson wanted to form a "Great Society" in the United States when he came into office. He stated that "the man who is hungry, who cannot find work or educate his children, who is bowed by want, that man is not fully free." He realized that there was a great war on poverty in the United States, and all races felt the affect. Johnson also was not oblivious to the fact that African Americans in the United States were affected more than any other race. He said that it was caused from "past injustice and present prejudice".

Johnson believed that the way people had treated African Americans in the past made it possible for them to rise and hold African Americans down. There was little African Americans could do to rise above this injustice. He knew that during the time he was in office, the prejudice of whites against blacks continued to make rising up their injustices nearly impossible. The gap between blacks and whites was in many different areas of life. From education, to income, to job opportunities, to skills in the workplace, Africans Americans were always having a disadvantage and were not received the equality they were promised by their country.

Cheerful Robots

According to C. Wright Mills, Americans during the 1950s were Cheerful Robots. Using his excerpt, what you've read in the text, and heard in class, why is that description fitting (don't just repeat or rephrase what's in the Mills article).

Americans during the 1950s were stuck on the idea of perfection. They wanted to live the perfect life. Americans lived in cookie-cutter houses, had nuclear families, and were happy all the time. At least that's what they longed for. There were few differences from one family to another on the surface. Most Americans worked hard to maintain their happy, perfect images. They were all the same. The "perfect" family consisted of a husband, wife, son and daughter, or just immediate family members. The husband worked while the wife stayed home and did domestic work. The house they lived in was in a neighborhood along with other houses that looked the same. Inside the house were all kinds of appliances and material things to make them "happy". Outside of the house were nice cars sitting in the driveway when they husband returned home from a hard day of work. If there was any unhappiness or imperfection, Americans did not let it show. They had routines that they practiced on a daily basis. When Mills talks about Americans in the 1950s being "Cheerful Robots", he is not exaggerating by any means.

Reaction 8

Read the excerpt from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The U.S. did not immediately ratify the Declaration. What policies and practices within the U.S. conflicted with many of the principles of the Declaration?

The United States was struggling with slavery and other issues. They were not standing up for what the Declaration was stating. The United States discriminated against blacks and therefore did not treat all their citizen's equally. They also had many labor laws and their citizen's were not treated the way they should have been in the workplace. The United States could not promise all of their citizens the rights that were in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is why they did not immediately ratify it.