Sixty years ago, the first programs of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” were signed into law. They were part of a massive set of legislation that was designed to eliminate poverty and racial injustice.

The road to the great society had started in Athens the year before, when the president first laid out his plan from the College Green of Ohio University. The president’s brief stop in Athens was part of a five-state, 30-hour tour of areas that would be included in the War on Poverty program.

Johnson spoke a few hundred feet from Cutler Hall, named for Manasseh Cutler who not only helped established Marietta in 1788, but also co-founded Ohio University in 1804 with Rufus Putnam. Johnson’s visit was part of the commemoration of the 160th anniversary of the establishment of the university.

The president outlined on May 7, 1964, his plan to help raise up the region of the country that struggled with poverty. A few weeks later, at a speech at the University of Michigan he outlined more details of his plan.

He arrived in Athens by helicopter, landing at the football stadium before traveling up Richland Avenue in an open car to the College Green where he addressed thousands who had been gathered since early morning.

Waving his arms above his head, speaking directly to students he said “This is a young land and it is a land of young people. There are 2 1/2 times more Americans under the age of 25 than our total population 100 years ago. By the end of the next decade …, one-half of our people will be younger than 25. So to you of this student body, I say merely as a statement of fact, America is yours, yours to make a better land, yours to build the Great Society.”

“And with your courage and with your compassion and your desire, we will build a Great Society. It is a society where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled,” he told the crowd of students and local citizens.

As quickly as he arrived, he was gone, rushed back to the football stadium to board his helicopter to travel back to Air Force One in Columbus to continue his, as he called it, “poverty tour.”

Nearly a year later, on March 9, 1965, Johnson signed into law the Appalachia Bill. The headline in The Marietta Times outlined that the “program would work no miracles overnight” to solve the problems of the region. Improved highways in the area were part of the bill. The four-lane highways that connect to Athens were later funded and constructed because of that bill.

Eventually Johnson would sign 84 bills into law that improved civil rights, voting rights, job training, health care, the environment, education, rural poverty and much more. From the laws came scores of programs. One of which, the Pell Grant program, which was part of the Higher Education Act of 1965, made it possible for me to attend Ohio University more than a decade after Johnson spoke there.

Johnson, blessed with an agreeable house and senate, was able to pass an incredible amount of legislation in his five years in office, much of which still benefits our area.

Art Smith is online manager of The Marietta Times and Parkersburg News and Sentinel, he can be reached at asmith@mariettatimes.com