Giving Thanks

By Denice Spangler Adams

The Thanksgiving Speech That Changed America

Thanksgiving is a good time to remember Lyndon Baines Johnson’s first speech as President on November 28, 1963, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, just six days earlier, on November 22 of that same year.

Time to discuss LBJ’s significant impacts that forever changed America.

In part from LBJ’s historic Thanksgiving Day Address To The Nation: “Let all who speak and all who teach and all who preach and all who publish and all who broadcast and all who read or listen, let them reflect upon their responsibilities to bind our wounds, to heal our sores, to make our society well and whole for the tasks ahead of us.”

LBJ reminded us of peace following Kennedy’s assassination, and his fear of internal divisiveness. I was ten years old at the time and remember well the tense political and family “discussions” — the polite word for argued disagreements.

In LBJ’s six years as President, the War in Vietnam was escalated to become the focus of every male draft-numbered teen’s daily life. In my struggling working-class neighborhood in Canoga Park, families gathered to discuss how to protect sons. Funds were created should a legal appeal be needed, or relocation to Canada or Mexico. My neighborhood lost three well-loved guys in Vietnam, one forever MIA in Mexico, and my first cousin a leg amputee.

Part of our neighborhood fund was used to pay for legal expenses to assign my brother to three years of conscientious objector unpaid service in a mental hospital for ‘incurables,’ in Laconia, New Hampshire (1969-1972). My tiny family forever grateful. My brother’s financial support for his three-year 24/7 alternative service assignment was a family-and friends project as layoffs began after the moon landing.

The Civil and Voting Rights Acts

Beyond the undeclared War, Congress finally passed The 1965 Civil and Voting Rights Acts to codify dignity and rights for every American regardless of race or creed. Having lived in New Orleans post grad school, I saw firsthand its importance: poll workers voted for me as they “showed me how to vote.” Finding a Republican ballot in Southern Democrat country was next to impossible back then.

Of great historic significance to American families, was LBJ expanding his mentor Franklin Roosevelt’s social entitlement programs with passage of The Older Americans Act (Medicare, Medicaid, SS expansion, Departments and Agencies on Aging, etc.). Nine years later, this Act catapulted my career as one of our country’s first trained Gerontologists to developed licensed care and retirement communities.

With the 1965 Older Americans Act, LBJ signed into law entitlements replacing family, church and neighbor helping neighbor with Big Government. I remember the reactions. My Republican father whose ancestors arrived pre-Mayflower, shook his head saying: “On No! More taxes.” My Democrat first-generation immigrant mother said: “This could help us.”

At the time, we – along with their siblings – were helping support both of their widowed mothers, as was our ‘family duty.’ Looking back as elders ourselves, my two surviving cousins agree that this duty taught us values, and unified us while cleaning their homes, doing laundry, mowing yards, and picking berries; our parents did caregiving and paid their bills.

E Pluribus Unum No More?

Beyond laws directly impacting individuals, LBJ forever changed our country in 1965, which remains a topic of ongoing debate.

Local Santa Barbara native and SB High School Hall of Famer Peggy Sands Orchowski wrote the acclaimed book The Law That Forever Changed The Face of America. The 1965 Immigration Act changed both the demographics and culture of America. Exclusions were removed allowing immigration from both the Far East and Middle East. The Chinese Exclusion Act was revoked. (In 1990, President George Bush, along with Senator Ted Kennedy later expanded the 1965 Immigration Act to enable chain migration.)

Questions remain: Can our European-founded-and-settled Judeo-Christian nation assimilate millions from Eastern and Middle Eastern cultures, practices, and beliefs? How many immigrants seek assimilation or rather chose to maintain the culture and traditions of their country of origin in our country that is now also their country?

Can a genie be put back in the bottle?

LBJ’s six-year presidency forever legally changed America and families in many ways. The Acts above plus illegal entry and birthright citizenship — births not “subject to the jurisdiction of” our country, I’m certain will be topics at my Thanksgiving table as some, but not all, give thanks for the results of the election on November 5.