On January 4, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered the
first televised evening State of the Union Address.

Johnson laid out for Congress a laundry list of legislation needed
to achieve his plan for a Great Society.

As a result Congress enacted sweeping legislation in the areas of
civil rights, health care, education and the environment. 

The 1965 State of the Union address heralded the creation of Medicare/Medicaid, Head Start, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil
Rights Act, the Department of Housing and Urban Development
and the White House Conference on Natural Beauty.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Voting Rights
Act of 1965.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt (L), founder of the March
of Dimes to fight polio, is shown at the White House with
Basil O’Connor, who worked with the president in forming
the charity.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an adult victim of polio, founded the
National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which he later renamed
the March of Dimes Foundation, on January 3, 1938. A predominantly childhood disease in the early 20th century, polio wreaked havoc
among American children every summer. The virus, which affects
the central nervous system, flourished in contaminated food and
water and was easily transmitted. Those who survived the disease
usually suffered from debilitating paralysis into their adult lives. In
1921, at the relatively advanced age of 39, Roosevelt contracted
polio and lost the use of his legs. With the help of the media, his
Secret Service and careful event planning, Roosevelt managed to
keep his disease out of the public eye, yet his personal experience inspired in him an empathy with the handicapped and prompted
him to the found the March of Dimes.

Roosevelt talking with two young fellow polio patients at
Warm Springs.

President Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation.

On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. Attempting to stitch together a nation mired in
a bloody civil war, Abraham Lincoln made a last-ditch, but
carefully calculated, decision regarding the institution of
slavery in America.

On December 27, 1944, as World War II dragged on, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered his secretary of war to seize
properties belonging to the Montgomery Ward company
because they refused to comply with a labor agreement.

In an effort to avert strikes in critical war-support industries,
Roosevelt (below) created the National War Labor Board in
1942.

The board negotiated settlements between management and
workers to avoid shut-downs in production that might cripple
the war effort. During the war, the well-known retailer and
manufacturer Montgomery Ward had supplied the Allies with
everything from tractors to auto parts to workmen’s clothing–
items deemed as important to the war effort as bullets and
ships. However, Ward’s Chairman Sewell Avery (below) 
refused to comply with the terms of three different collective
bargaining agreements which the United Retail, Wholesale
and Department Store Union hammered United Retail,
Wholesale and Department Store Union hammered out
between 1943 and 1944.

President Roosevelt creating the National War Labor Board
in 1942.

After nearly 14 hours of debate, the House of Representatives
approved two articles of impeachment against President Bill
Clinton, charging him with lying under oath to a federal grand
jury and obstructing justice.