Office of Economic Opportunity OEO

After President Lyndon Johnson declared an unconditional war on poverty in his January 1964 State of the Union address, Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act, signed on August 20, 1964. It created the Office of Economic Opportunity within the Executive Office of the President to launch and coordinate new antipoverty programs, with Sargent Shriver, the founding director of the Peace Corps, as its first director.

OEO created the Job Corps for disadvantaged youth, Volunteers in Service to America, known as VISTA, Head Start for preschool children starting in the summer of 1965, Upward Bound for college preparation, legal services for the poor, and neighborhood health centers. Its most controversial program, Community Action, funded local agencies required to involve the poor in running them, under the law's call for maximum feasible participation, which sometimes put the agencies in conflict with city halls and local political leaders.

President Richard Nixon moved its most popular programs to other agencies, sending Head Start to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and Job Corps to the Labor Department, and in 1973 his acting director tried to shut OEO down, which a federal court ruled unlawful because Congress had funded it. The Community Services Act, signed on January 4, 1975, replaced OEO with the Community Services Administration, which was itself abolished in 1981, while legal services went to the new Legal Services Corporation. Many OEO programs survive today, and supporters credit the War on Poverty with reducing poverty among the elderly and children, while critics argue that it fostered dependency and did not end persistent poverty.