According to political historians such as Barbara Cruikshank , `` the poor '' did not particularly conceive of themselves as a unified group until President Lyndon Johnson 's War on Poverty ( declared Expressing_publicly in 1964 ) identified Check them as such .

By 1968 , the War on Poverty seemed like a failure , neglected by a Johnson administration ( and Congress ) that wanted to focus Aiming on the Vietnam War and increasingly saw Self_motion anti-poverty programs as primarily helping Assistance African Americans .