The Hill News

When Lyndon Baines Johnson decided to declare a war on poverty, he set up an ad-hoc group to create a national program. There was no agency to do this, so he appointed Sargent Shriver, head of the Peace Corps, to direct a group of officials who were assigned from relevant government agencies â€" Labor, Agriculture, others (I was delegated by the Justice Department) â€" to create a program. We were joined by experts who were volunteered by the private sector and from not-for-profits, and we all worked at Shriver’s Peace Corps premises. In several months, we proposed the legislation that created the Office of Economic Opportunity.

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