Appalachia’s Place In The War On Poverty By Molly Moore

http://appvoices.org/2014/04/09/appalachias-place-in-the-war-on-poverty/

Appalachia’s Place In The War On Poverty
By Molly Moore

Patsy Dowling considers herself a success of the War on Poverty.

As a premature baby born in western North Carolina in 1964 — the same year President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty — Dowling entered a world where the medical bills from her early arrival were a steep financial burden for her parents.

Poverty had a profound impact on Dowling’s youth, as did the Economic Opportunity Act that Johnson signed in 1964. On Valentine’s Day, a second-grade Dowling learned that one of her dearest friends had passed away from illness because her family couldn’t pay for care. She recalls standing beside her friend’s coffin more vividly than she remembers her high school prom dress. Yet she also clearly remembers her excitement when an outreach worker from Mountain Projects, Inc., one of the new community action agencies created to fight poverty, visited her home and offered her a seat in Head Start, an early childhood school-readiness program she saw as “the best thing in the world.”


More at the link.