Salvaging Marginalized Men: How the Department of Defense Waged the War on Poverty

Abstract Architects of social welfare policy in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations viewed the military as a site for strengthening the male breadwinner as the head of the “traditional family.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Robert McNamara—men not often mentioned in the same conversations—both spoke of “salvaging” young men through military service. The Department of Defense created Project Transition, a vocational jobs-training program for GIs getting ready to leave the military, and Project 100,000, which lowered draft requirements in order to put men who were previously unqualified into the military. The Department of Defense also made significant moves to end housing discrimination in communities surrounding military installations. Policymakers were convinced that any extension of social welfare demanded reciprocal responsibility from its male citizens. During the longest peacetime draft in American history, policymakers viewed programs to expand civil rights and social welfare as also expanding the umbrella of the obligations of citizenship.