Directions: Read the excerpts from President Johnson’s speech, then reread the speech and write the gist of each part of the speech in the column to the right.
Excerpts from “The Great Society”
President Lyndon B. Johnson gave this speech at University of Michigan’s graduation ceremony on May 22, 1964. He directs his speech primarily to the students who were graduating that day.
Excerpts from Speech - Part 1
Your imagination and your initiative and your indignation* will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled* growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.
So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the Great Society—in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms.