Narrator: Johnson continued to pass legislation. Only the president knew that his Great Society was in jeopardy. He hid the costs of the war from Congress and signed more bills.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: When he got into that Great Society mode, he looked at every problem in the society and felt, "I'm going to make it better." He had this desire to perfect everything and to have his stamp on everything. So he saw handicapped people, he was going to make things better for them; retarded people, he was going to make things better for them. Whatever it was, he wanted to make things better. He liked to make everybody feel good.

R. Sargent Shriver, Jr., Office of Economic Opportunity: You could see the progress which was being made for poor people. You could see the transformation of young men and women who were in the Upward Bound program. You could see them going to universities when they never had anybody in their family ever went [sic] to a college in their whole life. You could see that. You could see what was happening to the mothers -- not just to the children, but to the mothers of the children in the Head Start program. You could see mothers who were illiterate and never been to school suddenly starting to learn themselves because they were learning simultaneously with their child who was in Head Start. You could see people sixteen to twenty-one who were in the Job Corps actually graduating and going out and getting jobs and beginning to lead useful lives. People were coming out of poverty, and we could see it.

Donald Malafronte, Aide to Mayor of Newark: It's like largesse, it's like a miracle. Something comes from the sky. There's a bunch of bills that say, "We understand your problem and we're going to send you a ton of money, 'cause it's the right and the American way."

President Johnson: I want economic opportunity to be spread across this land -- north, south, east and west, to all people, whatever their race, whatever they work, wherever they live.

Donald Malafronte: Television wasn't fair to Johnson. He looked funny with those big ears and all that sort of stuff, but in person, he was really a handsome guy -- big, tall, handsome man. And he came and he puts an arm right on -- I was kind of just a city aide, you know, happy to be looking on, and then he puts his arm around you and says, "You're doing a great job, son." Well, that's pretty heady stuff. You just loved the guy.

President Johnson: This is not a time for timid souls and trembling spirits.

Donald Malafronte: [audio interrupt] "...about people programs," he said. "People. I'm talking about people. I mean, p-e-e-p-u-l. I'm talking folks!"

Rebecca Doggert, Newark Head Start: Yeah, it was an exciting time. We were being challenged by the president of the United States to go into our local communities and make a change. And not only was it rhetoric, there were dollars coming into local communities to make it happen. Lyndon Johnson was saying that this is something that has to be done, and we believed it could be done.

President Johnson: Washington should not be telling your hometown what to do to solve its problems of poverty. You ought to be telling us what we can do to help you carry out your plans.

Sargent Shriver: It was an attempt to energize and empower poor people. That's rarely, if ever, done by an elected government.

Donald Malafronte: It had a galvanizing effect on a lot of community persons who might not have been involved in government and in politics and the American life in the way that the poverty program committed them to do, and that was great.

Rebecca Doggett: Certainly, this was a great opportunity for minorities, for women who, up till then, had really not had a chance to play a significant role in running a large organization. So I very early had an opportunity to become an administrator of a very large corporation, a multimillion-dollar corporation, which, of course, was really unique in those days. We were young, we were gifted, we were black, and we saw resources there, we saw national will there, and then there was certainly this local energy of people who wanted to make a change in their lives. And it came together all at the same time.

Ed Herlihy, Newsreel Announcer: In the same room where President Lincoln signed the first emancipation order in 1861, President Johnson signed the 1965 Voter Registration Act and pledged to millions of Americans a new chance to find a political voice.

Narrator: The crowning achievement of the Johnson presidency was the Voting Rights Act of 1965. One hundred years after the end of the Civil War, with a stroke of his pen, Lyndon Johnson guaranteed black Americans the right to vote.

But the sense of triumph and accomplishment was short-lived. Just five days after Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, riots erupted in Watts, a black neighborhood in Los Angeles. Five days of rioting left thirty-four people dead. Johnson was shattered.

As one aide described him, "He just wouldn't accept it. He refused to look at the cables from Los Angeles describing the situation. He refused to take the calls from the generals. They needed decisions from him, but he simply wouldn't respond."

Roger Wilkins: He reacted very badly. How would you react? You're sitting there in the White House, you're in charge of the country and people think you have all this power, and the country starts burning up. Johnson had a good heart, but he wasn't a civil rights expert. He knew Texas, but he didn't know big-city guys. He wanted black people to be grateful. "I did this," and he'd pull out a bill and he would tell what he did on it, "and I did this," and he'd pull another bill and tell, "and I did this, I'm doing this. How can they do this to me?" And people would try to tell him, and it was hard to tell him.

Harry McPherson, Special Assistant to the President: American racism was still there. The laws had not suddenly eliminated how people really felt.

Donald Malafronte: I think the gap between the expectations of the early Johnson years and the ability of the government to perform created a potential explosion in every city in America. People were disappointed and angry, and responded by attacking whatever was handy.

Narrator: "How is it possible," Johnson asked, "after all we've accomplished? How could it be?"

Speaker: [meeting] Is it too much to ask you to grant us human dignity? Should we be put down and shot to death for this request? If so, you can aim your guns. What the hell do you think we care about dying if you're going to deny us the right to live?

James Farmer, Civil Rights Activist, Congress of Racial Equality: Lyndon Johnson could not understand that the civil rights movement had changed its class content. Johnson felt particularly uncomfortable with this new group of poorer blacks from the inner cities of the North. They were not like the poor blacks and Mexican Americans that he had had contact with down in Texas. These were different. They were raucous people, they were angry people, they were belligerent folk. They did not see Lyndon Johnson as a friend. They saw Lyndon Johnson as a white man.

Stokely Carmichael: We want black power. We want black power. We want black power. We want black power.

Narrator: Integration was no longer the battle cry. "Too little, too late," is what new black voices were saying about Johnson's achievements. The civil rights movement as Johnson knew it was over.

Roger Wilkins: He never understood it, black consciousness. He did not understand that the generations of heaping inferiority into our souls needed to be purged, and if you're going to put that awful stuff into people, when people begin to expel it it's not coming out pretty. You're not going to stand up and preach pretty sermons. You're going to say some ugly things, which people did.

Stokely Carmichael: You go sit in front of your television set and listen to LBJ tell you that "Violence never accomplishes anything, my fellow Americans." But, you see, the real problem with violence is that we have never been violent. We have been too non-violent, too non-violent.

Narrator: The optimism of the civil rights movement had gone up in flames. Justice, fairness, the war on poverty had been too long delayed in America's ghettos. Not even a politician of Johnson's genius would be able to hold the country together.