Video: 'Jan. 8, 1964 | LBJ State of the Union Address'

(Wednesday, January 8, 1964, 12:30 p.m. EST) — In his first State of the Union Address, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced today an “unconditional war on poverty in America,” the unofficial name for proposed legislation in response to a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent.

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Asking Congress immediately, “let us work together to make this year’s session the best in the nation’s history… as the session which declared all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States.”

Johnson told Americans watching television, “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that effort.”

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The speech would lead Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty.

The forty programs established by the Act were collectively aimed at eliminating poverty by improving living conditions for residents of low-income neighborhoods and by helping the poor access economic opportunities long denied from them.