When we arrived in the 1960s, America was really at its zenith. It has won the second World War, it is the only economy that is functioning after the second World War. It is a very rich nation. Some people have been left out. People in the rural South have been left out. People of color have been left out, people leaving in the American cities slums have been left out. And there was a drive amongst Americans to think about how the other half lived and how to address this. Simply giving benefits had not solved the problem. And so there was an increasing movement and desire to see how people could be given charge of their own lives and begin to build a movement to end poverty. So in the 1950s, an organization called Mobilization for Youth came to be. And it was an organization whose task it was to take gang members and resocialize them into active members of the society. Mobilization for Youth was very successful at this by giving gang members and particularly gang leaders training and job opportunities. And by the early 60s actually, American cities did not have gangs, they re-emerged again in the 1980s. But for a period of 30 years really are equal opportunity and community action programs address that. So when President Kennedy was elected President, he asked his brother in law, Sergeant Shriver to go to work and build a program that would address this. And Sargent Shriver picked up on the Mobilization for Youth model and built the Community Action Program which were programs that were funded all around the country where people living in poor communities were given resources to develop their communities. That might be childcare centers. That might be work development and employment training centers. That might be community policing programs. That might have to do with expanding public housing. But efforts that would allow the community to enrich and build its own path. And community leadership groups were formed. Many, many people had their first job in job programs that were built out to help people transition to work. The notion of the community action programs and the model city programs which came along just after was maximum possible participation to really engage people that were left behind in solving the problems of their being left behind. Large community and coalitions were built to drive this. Now these activities really began to change American cities. And a lot of people found their way into the workforce, new businesses were formed. Public opportunity, public employment was established, lots of jobs were made available to people so they can get started. Head Start was a part of this, and then there were programs to address rural poverty. The problem that the war on poverty ran into is that it trained a whole and developed and empowered a whole new community of leaders in the cities. And these leaders challenged the in place leadership. And in most American cities those were democratic mayors and democratic city councils. So the democratic mayors pressured the Johnson Administration to slow down this maximum possible participation, and to shift, giving the money to the mayors and the cities and not directly to the community. There's a famous line, when Mayor Daley of Chicago went in to Johnson and said, Whatcha think you're doing? You're taking away our votes, and so by the end of Johnson's administration and into President Nixon's administration, this effort of the war on poverty was begun to be dismantled. And replaced with a variety of publicly funded initiatives that were controlled by the traditional leadership. And the war on poverty was finally completely dismantled with the election of President Reagan in 1980. So we had a war on poverty, the war on poverty had significant successes. But in fact the war on poverty was ended before it had a chance to prove it's worth.