Final Project

Shelly K., Tierney L., and I chose the theme of the women's rights movement because we realized that the women today would not be where they are without the feminist movement that occurred during the 1970s and 1980s. It was important to us to learn about and realize what the women had to go through and how they gained the rights that we have today. We used many different items on our box including movie covers, pictures, quotes, and items to go with each topic that we talked about. Some of the topics that we included in our project were Title IX (which gave women the right to play professional sports), Roe vs. Wade (gave women the right to have abortions as well as use different types of birth control), the women's rights magazine called Ms. and the woman who founded it (Gloria Steinmen). We also talked about famous women such as Bella Abzung who was the first woman in the House of Representatives, Sara Evans, Betty Lahan Harragan, Marilyn Chambers, and Sally Ride. These women were important because they took steps to show other women that they could participate in the community and work towards equal rights. Some of the items we used were a copy of Ms., a rocket ship to signify Sally Ride going in space, pictures of women playing sports, a clothes hanger to show how women had to abort their pregnancies before Roe vs. Wade, pictures from the women's rights protest as well as statistics on women's discrimination. We obtained these items using the internet as well as items that we found in our houses to signify the struggle that women had to go through and how it has improved and affected our society today. I think that if we did the project again we would research and learn more about other women that helped with the movement and use more physical objects to signify their contributions. We should also have used more short statements to describe our items so that people understand what they signify. I would suggest that for the students next year, that they spend a little time outside of class preparing their boxes and items before the assemble day so that there is not as much to do on that one day in class. It is hard to get it all done so try and organize yourself prior to the class period and paint your boxes so that during class you only have to put on the final touches. 

The Great Society Programs

President Lydon Baines Johnson viewed the United States as a Great Society and he created many different programs in order to achieve the goal of having a Great Society. He began working towards his goal when he gave a speech at the University of Michigan and outlined the legislative program that he had planned in order to end poverty as well as racial discrimination.

President Johnson started with education and passed the Elementary and Secondary School Education Act of 1965 that gave over 1 billion dollars to help public schools. This money was devoted to buying textbooks and helping to fund new libraries for students. Johnson continued helping society and he changed Social Security by creating both Medicare and Medicaid programs. Medicaid brought health insurance to welfare recipients while Medicare provided hospitals with low insurance and cost for people over the age of 65. He then went on to help with housing and built over 240,000 new low cost apartments to help get people off the streets. He created the Department of Housing and Urban Development to continue to help get people into homes. Johnson created the Immigration Act of 1965 to end the immigration quotas that had been going on for people outside of Europe. Johnson was not only involved in helping the people of the United States but also the environment. He helped to create the Water Quality Act of 1965 to preserve the cleanliness of rivers throughout the states. Finally he created the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967 to ensure the safety of the food that consumers were buying and eating.

Overall Congress passed 206 of President Johnson's measures in order to help build a "Great Society" in the United States of America. This resulted in the number of poor people in the United States falling from 21% to 11% during Johnson's term