Biography
Lyndon B. Johnson
Nulla vitae elit libero, a pharetra augue. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur blandit tempus porttitor. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Maecenas sed diam eget risus varius blandit sit amet non magna.
The Early Years
Lyndon Baines Johnson was born just after the turn of the 20th century in the rugged and isolated Hill Country of Texas. It was a character-building, hardscrabble land where he learned the lessons of loyalty, the arts of persuasion and power, and the insecurity of lean times.
On August 27, 1908, the future president was born the first child of Sam Ealy Johnson, Jr. and Rebekah Baines Johnson, former teachers turned farmers. The family's small farmhouse on the Pedernales River near Stonewall had no electricity or running water. By age four, Lyndon's trademark energy, intelligence, and ambition were obvious as he took off running for the nearby one-room schoolhouse.
he liked being a leader, struggled with accepting authority, and hated to lose, especially an argument.
In 1913, the family moved to nearby Johnson City, named for a family relative. Lyndon’s father and maternal grandfather were politicians in Texas, and he loved campaigning across the Hill Country with his father. "Sometimes I wished it could go on forever," he said. Lyndon's father served six terms in the Texas Legislature, holding the same seat once represented by his father-in-law. Friendly and talkative, Sam Johnson was a populist politician. At age 10, Lyndon began accompanying his father to the Capitol in Austin to watch floor debates, listen to behind-the-scenes deal-making, and collect political gossip.
Lyndon's mother was college-educated, not a common achievement for a rural woman in the early 1900s. The idealistic Rebekah Baines Johnson did her best to instill the values of education and culture in all five of her children. She read poetry aloud, wrote newspaper columns, and directed local plays. Her dreams for Lyndon, her adored firstborn, were especially grand, and she never let him forget that she expected great things from him.
In 1924, Lyndon graduated from Johnson City High School as president of his six-member senior class. Despite his parents’ wishes, he did not want to go to college. Restless, he drove with friends to California, where he took odd jobs. About a year later, he came home to work on a road construction gang.
Finally relenting to family pressure, Lyndon borrowed $75 in 1927 and enrolled in Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now Texas State University) in San Marcos. To help cover costs, he worked as a janitor and an office helper for the college president. He left for one year to teach 5th, 6th, and 7th grades at an impoverished, segregated Mexican-American school in the South Texas town of Cotulla. He was also the energetic and demanding school principal. He said the job taught him that education is the key to success as well as “the key to meaning in life.” Nearly 40 years later, his Cotulla experiences would help inspire his presidency’s Great Society legislation. When Lyndon returned to college, he starred on the debate team, edited the school newspaper, and threw himself into the wheeling and dealing of student politics. In 1930, as the Great Depression took hold and teaching jobs paid little, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in education.
Lyndon's world quickly grew much larger. Newly elected US Congressman Richard Kleberg, D-Corpus Christi, asked him to come to Washington to work as his top aide. Kleberg, who was born into the wealthy King Ranch family in South Texas, allowed LBJ to run the office and do much of the political work. Over the next three years, Lyndon established his reputation as a tireless worker on Capitol Hill. In 1933, his political connections and efforts on the Hill were rewarded when, at 23, he was elected speaker of the "Little Congress," an organization of congressional workers. Despite his nearly around-the-clock workload, he added another responsibility in 1934 by enrolling in night classes at Georgetown University Law School.
Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Taylor
In September 1934, on a trip home to Texas, LBJ met Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Taylor through a mutual friend. On their first date, he asked her to marry him. She did not give him an immediate answer.
While LBJ was in Washington, he asked Lady Bird to write him a letter every day while 1,200 miles separated them. Throughout their short courtship, the young couple exchanged nearly 90 letters filled with candor and expressions of love.
On Nov. 17, 1934, after a ten-week courtship, they drove to San Antonio to "commit matrimony," as Lady Bird would later describe it. LBJ did not have a wedding band and asked a friend to get one. The friend bought a wedding band at the nearby Sears, Roebuck & Co. for $2.50, just in time for the ceremony at St. Mark's Episcopal Church. The Johnsons honeymooned in Xochimilco, Mexico, famous for its Floating Gardens.
Lady Bird was the steady calm in LBJ's whirlwind, workaholic life. She was his closest adviser and principal cheerleader. Like him, she was not afraid of hard work. As LBJ moved up the political ranks—US congressman, senator, vice president and then president—Lady Bird took on a steadily growing range of responsibilities as hostess, campaigner, social secretary, office manager, mother, businesswoman, counselor, and environmentalist.
Lady Bird Johnson
She was bold, outspoken, and worked tirelessly for conservation and the environment. Learn why she is one of America's most popular and respected First Ladies.
LBJ and The Art of Politics
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal relief programs during the Great Depression included the National Youth Administration, which provided education and jobs for teens and young adults. In 1935, Johnson was hired as the NYA's Texas director. The job allowed him to travel around Texas seeking financial sponsors for NYA construction projects. Within six months, 18,000 young Texans were working on roads, parks, schools, and other public buildings, and Johnson had a network of supporters in every corner of Texas.
He resigned in 1937 to run against nine opponents for the US House of Representatives after the congressman from his home district died in office. Lady Bird called her father and borrowed $10,000 of her inheritance for the campaign. Johnson won the seat but celebrated from a hospital bed while recovering from an emergency appendectomy. He was 29, and his 10th Congressional District included the impoverished Hill Country he knew so well.
In Congress, Johnson steadfastly supported the New Deal. He worked hard for rural electrification, getting approval to complete the hydroelectric Mansfield Dam on the Colorado River near Austin. He appealed to President Roosevelt to relax electrification rules so the sparsely populated Hill Country would no longer be stuck with the smoky wood stoves and dangerous oil lamps of the 19th century. He then pleaded with constituents to sign up for safe and affordable electricity. In 1939, the first electric lights sparkled in the Hill Country, and his work resulted in the nation's first electric cooperative—Pedernales Electric Cooperative.
At the request of President Roosevelt, Johnson was appointed to the House Committee on Naval Affairs, and on June 21, 1940, he was commissioned Lieutenant Commander in the US Naval Reserve.
In 1941, Johnson ran for the remaining term of US Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas, who had suffered a fatal brain hemorrhage. In the only race he ever lost, he was defeated by conservative Texas Governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel by 1,311 votes but kept his congressional seat. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Johnson became one of the first members of Congress to volunteer for active military duty.
The day after the attack, he asked President Roosevelt to "assign me immediately to active duty with the fleet." He was ordered to report on Dec. 9, 1941, and was sent to the Pacific Theater in May 1942. On June 9, 1942, Johnson received the Silver Star from General Douglas MacArthur for gallantry in action during an aerial combat mission over hostile positions in New Guinea. He returned to Washington in July 1942 and wore the Silver Star service ribbon on his jacket lapel for the rest of his life.
In 1943, the Johnsons bought KTBC, a failing radio station in Austin, using money from Mrs. Johnson's inheritance. The station was dilapidated, so Mrs. Johnson spent time in Austin to get the financial records in order and do badly needed cleanup. The broadcast business made the Johnsons financially secure just in time to start a family. They celebrated the birth of two daughters: Lynda Bird on March 19, 1944, and Luci Baines on July 2, 1947.
The next year, LBJ made history in a dramatic 1948 campaign for the Texas Senate seat being vacated by O'Daniel. LBJ traveled by newfangled helicopter all over Texas, landing 20 times a day on building tops, cattle pastures, and baseball fields. Though exhausted and hospitalized for kidney stones three weeks before the Democratic primary against former Texas Governor Coke Stevenson, he squeaked out a controversial victory by 87 votes, earning the nickname "Landslide Lyndon." He won the general election on Nov. 2, 1948.
LBJ's political ambition and deal-making prowess were on full display in the Senate, where he served for 12 years. Within three years, he was elected Democratic whip, and in 1953 became Democratic minority leader. In 1954, as Democrats won a majority, LBJ was re-elected to the Senate by a three-to-one margin. He made his mark for the next six years as majority leader, the most powerful Senate post. His tireless work ethic caught up to him in 1955, when he suffered a severe heart attack and went home to recuperate at the 243-acre Texas ranch he had bought from his aunt in 1951.
His Senate highlights include the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights law in 82 years. The vote came as the South was scarred by violence over school integration ordered by the US Supreme Court. LBJ deftly negotiated a middle course between Northern liberal senators and the Southern bloc of senators who had opposed such legislation for years.
He also pushed the country ahead on space exploration. After the Soviets launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, LBJ's Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee examined the US space program to determine whether a technology gap existed. The subcommittee's work resulted in the formation of the Senate Special Committee on Space and Astronautics, which led to the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958.
By 1960, LBJ felt politically prepared to run for president. However, the Democratic convention nominated Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who received 806 votes over LBJ's 409. Kennedy then asked LBJ to be his vice-presidential running mate, a strategic move to garner support in the South. Kennedy and LBJ defeated the Richard Nixon-Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. GOP ticket in one of the closest elections in American history.
As vice president and chairman of the Space Council, LBJ headed up the US space program. Just days after the Soviet Union launched the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space on April 12, 1961, President Kennedy assigned Vice President Johnson to investigate the US space program's potential. LBJ, working with NASA's famed rocket architect Wernher von Braun, reported that with an "all-out crash program," America could get to the moon by 1967 or 1968. One month later, on May 25, 1961, Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress to announce the goal of putting an American on the moon by 1970. LBJ's prediction was not far off the mark from America's first moon landing on July 20, 1969.
In the White House, the Kennedy-Johnson partnership was marked by vastly different personal temperaments and cultural backgrounds. By the fall of 1963, preparation began for the presidential campaign of 1964. A joint trip to Texas was set up in an attempt to unite the Democratic Party in the Lone Star State, but tragedy intervened.
"Let us continue..."
Shortly after assuming the Presidency, Johnson used his legislative prowess to pass two bills that Kennedy had endorsed but was unable to get through Congress at the time of his death: a tax cut and a civil rights act. The latter, which would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964, became the first effective civil rights law since Reconstruction, outlawing segregation and discrimination throughout American society. Next he enacted his own agenda, urging the Nation "to build a great society, a place where the meaning of man's life matches the marvels of man's labor." In 1964, with Hubert Humphrey as his running mate, Johnson won the Presidency against Republican challenger, Barry Goldwater, garnering 61 percent of the vote and had the widest popular margin in American history—more than 15,000,000 votes.
President Johnson used his 1964 mandate to bring his vision for a Great Society to fruition in 1965, pushing forward a sweeping legislative agenda that would become one of the most ambitious and far-reaching in the nation's history. Congress, at times augmenting or amending Johnson's legislation, rapidly enacted his recommendations. As a result, his administration passed more than sixty education bills, initiated a wide-scale fight against poverty, saw federal support of the arts and humanities, championed urban renewal, environmental beautification and conservation, enabled development of depressed regions and pushed for control and prevention of crime and delinquency. Millions of elderly people were also given the means for proper medical care through the 1965 Medicare Amendment to the Social Security Act.
Johnson's Great Society also included the continued advancement of civil rights. He realized the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which removed poll taxes and tests that represented an obstacle to the ballot among many Americans of color, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, preventing discrimination in housing sales and rentals. Additionally, he appointed the first African American cabinet member, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Robert Weaver, and first African American U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall.
Mankind walks on the moon
Under Johnson, the U.S. also made impressive gains in its space program, which he had championed since its start. When three American astronauts successfully orbited the moon on Apollo 8 in December 1968, becoming the first to leave earth's orbit, Johnson congratulated them: "You've taken...all of us, all over the world, into a new era." The mission set the stage for the Apollo 11 mission seven months later, which saw men walk on the moon for the first time.
Nevertheless, two overriding crises had been gaining momentum since 1965. Despite the beginning of new antipoverty and anti-discrimination programs, unrest and rioting in black ghettos troubled the Nation. President Johnson steadily exerted his influence against segregation and on behalf of law and order, but there was no early solution.
The other crisis arose from the U.S. war in Vietnam, which the U.S. had committed to under Eisenhower and Kennedy. Despite Johnson's efforts to end Communist aggression by increasing U.S. troop involvement to leverage a peaceful settlement, fighting continued. Controversy and protests over the war—and Johnson—had become acute by the end of March 1968, when Johnson limited the bombing of North Vietnam in order to initiate peace negotiations. At the same time, he startled the world by withdrawing as a candidate for re-election so that he might devote his full efforts, unimpeded by politics, to the quest to strike an honorable peace.
"I want to be the President who helped to end war among the brothers of this earth."
When Johnson left office, peace talks were underway. He died suddenly of a heart attack at his Texas ranch on January 22, 1973. The day before his death, he had learned that peace was at hand in Vietnam.
Today Americans continue to feel the impact of Johnson's legislative legacy in nearly every aspect of American life. Click here to view a list of the landmark laws passed during the Johnson administration.
