Shortly after President John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas in November 1963, Mrs. Johnson, who had degrees in history and journalism from The University of Texas at Austin, realized that she was in a unique position, an eyewitness to history. As she told the Women's National Press Club in 1970, "Nobody else would live through the next months in quite the way that I would and would see events unroll from that vantage point. I wanted to preserve this certain portion of time as best I could."
Each day of her husband's presidency, Mrs. Johnson or one of her staff members, would drop her schedule and other papers associated with the day (such as menus, newspaper clippings, and guest lists) into a manila envelope. Later, and not always on the same day, Mrs. Johnson would use those manila envelopes to jog her memories and then describe the day's activities, conversations, and the people she encountered into an audio recorder. Her recollections produced 123 hours of audio recordings and would later form the basis for her book "A White House Diary," an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at life as First Lady in the Johnson presidency.
Beginning with the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy, Mrs. Johnson recorded the momentous events of her time, including the Great Society's War on Poverty, the national civil rights and social protest movements, her own activism on behalf of the environment, the Vietnam War and her concerns about her husband's health and how the stress of his job impacted him.
Highlights from Mrs. Johnson's audio diary:
November 22, 1963 – (Mrs. Johnson described the day John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas)
https://www.discoverlbj.org/item/ctjd-19631122
January 20, 1965 (LBJ’s Inauguration Day)
https://discoverlbj.org/item/ctjd-19650120
June 5, 1967 (Six-Day War)
https://discoverlbj.org/item/ctjd-19670605
September 30, 1967 (Funny anecdote about taking family pictures)
https://discoverlbj.org/item/ctjd-19670930
October 8, 1967 (Speech at Williams College, Mrs. Johnson encounters protestors)
https://www.discoverlbj.org/item/ctjd-19671008
December 10, 1967 (Day after Lynda Bird Johnson's wedding)
https://discoverlbj.org/item/ctjd-19671210
April 4, 1968 (Assassination of MLK Jr.)
https://discoverlbj.org/item/ctjd-19680404
November 23, 1968 (Tour of Cape Kennedy)
https://discoverlbj.org/item/ctjd-19681123
January 20, 1969 (Leaving the White House on the day of Richard Nixon's inauguration)
https://www.discoverlbj.org/item/ctjd-19690120
