Speech #930003835

Expanded Federal aid to education had been a dream almost brought to fruition by John Kennedy. Lyndon Johnson succeeded in passing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. the higher education. the Bilingual Education Act. and a series of landmark educational measures. Our outmoded immigration laws had been decried as a national scandal since the 1920s. Lyndon Johnson succeeded in having them changed. All of these measures and more were not the hasty creation of a man bent on revolutionary social change. They were the measures delayed by inaction. �rustration. competing interest groups. and the absence of forceful leadership. And Lyndon Johnson provided the leadership and made these ideas into reality. But it is important to remember that improvements in education. equal rights for our citizens. more humane immigration laws. and the rest of the Johnson program were not abstractions to Lyndon Johnson. When he worked for education. he thought of the individual children who were denied an equal chance. because their schools and their materials did not measure up. When he worked for more adequate medical protection. he thought in terms of the elderly man or woman who cannot pay his medical bills and who is cast away on the fragile mercy of the State.