Nevertheless, two overriding crises had been gaining momentum since 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 Viet Nam. Controversy over the war had become acute by the end of March , when he limited the bombing of North Vietnam in order to initiate 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 for peace.
When he left office, peace talks were under way; he did not live to see them successful, but died suddenly of a heart attack at his Texas ranch on January 22, The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse. Copyright by the White House Historical Association. Learn more about Lyndon B. We'll be in touch with the latest information on how President Biden and his administration are working for the American people, as well as ways you can get involved and help our country build back better.
You have JavaScript disabled. Please enable JavaScript to use this feature. Toggle High Contrast. Johnson City High School was a three-mile mule ride away from home. Lyndon graduated in , president of his six-member senior class. Sam Johnson's financial troubles took a toll on his health and his family.
The Johnsons scrimped to send Lyndon to summer courses at Southwest Texas State Teachers College to supplement his meager rural education. But the boy did not do well, and he was not allowed into the college after finishing high school.
This led to a "lost" period in Lyndon's life, during which he drifted about. With five friends, he bought a car and drove to California, where he did odd jobs and briefly worked in a cousin's law office.
Lyndon then hitchhiked back to Texas and performed manual labor on a road crew. He fell into fights and drinking that eventually led to his arrest. In , he refocused his energies on a teaching career and was accepted to Southwest Texas State Teachers College.
Johnson was an indifferent student, but he eagerly pursued extracurricular activities such as journalism, student government, and debating. He excelled in his student teaching and was assigned to a tiny Hispanic school in a deeply impoverished area. Johnson literally took over the school in Cotulla, pushing the long-neglected students and giving them a shred of hope and pride in their achievements.
He earned glowing references. When Johnson graduated in , however, America was just entering the Great Depression. Johnson again did an exemplary job, but the unpaid political work he had been doing in his free time had fueled other ambitions.
Not surprisingly, his teaching career was brief. Tirelessly, he helped a political friend of his father in some local campaigns, and by late , he had won a job as an aide to U. Congressman Richard Kleberg of Corpus Christi. In Washington, Johnson's work ethic was astounding.
He poured over every detail of congressional protocol. No mail from Kleberg's constituents went unanswered. He was, in short, a model assistant. His drive, ambition, and competence made him stand out among the young people in Washington at that time. When he returned to Texas in to visit family, he met a twenty-one-year-old woman named Claudia Alta Taylor, a recent University of Texas graduate and a member of a wealthy East Texas family.
They married three months later. As a baby, Claudia's nanny had described her as "pretty as a lady bird," and the nickname stuck. Deeply shy but genuine and charming, Lady Bird became a refining balance to her boisterous, hyperactive husband and was a gracious hostess to Johnson's powerful new friends.
The new President, Franklin Roosevelt, was fighting the Depression with dozens of social programs. Johnson, with the support of future Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, won appointment as Texas director of the National Youth Administration, a federal youth-employment program.
Again, his work was superb, and when James Buchanan, the congressman in his home district, died in , Johnson quickly moved to grab the job. He tapped his new wife's inheritance and her increasing assets as owner of a local radio station, aligned himself with Roosevelt's sweeping social policies, and won election in Texas's Tenth District. He was just twenty-eight years old. Because of his age and ambition for even higher office, Johnson's early congressional record produced few results.
By the late s, however, he was winning federal housing projects and dams for his district. He managed to bring electrical power to the lonely Texas Hill Country of his youth, something he claimed for the rest of his days as his proudest achievement. When one of Texas's two U. It was widely alleged that both candidates used fraudulent votes, but O'Daniel finagled more than Johnson and carried the election.
Still a member of the House, Johnson used his contacts with Roosevelt to obtain an officer's commission in the Naval Reserve. When the U. He went on a single bombing mission, securing the "combat record" and a Silver Star for serving under hostile fire. Observing wartime industrial and technological trends, Johnson invested and became well-to-do for the first time. Lady Bird, meanwhile, gave birth to two daughters, one born in and another three years later.
By the time the war ended, the world was a very different place—and so was America. Its uneasy ally from the war, the Soviet Union, refused to withdraw its armed forces from Europe. The Cold War had begun. Many of Johnson's countrymen were weary of the New Deal's activist social policies at home and the threat of more war overseas; the new communist expansion abroad frightened them.
The Democrats were losing their longtime grip on Congress and the White House. While Johnson easily won a sixth term in , his opponent painted him as an old-style liberal, a career politician who had profited from the war while exposing himself to little risk.
The charges lingered into the following year, when Johnson tried once again to enter the U. Yet again a popular Texas governor was in the way.
His name was Coke Stevenson, and his presence and character were so impressive that he was widely known as "Mr. The young congressman then waged an all-out, rough-and-tumble Lone Star State campaign and showed that he had learned lessons since his earlier Senate defeat.
The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, New York: Holt, Rinehart Winston, Johnson, Robert David. New York: Cambridge University Press, Johnson, Sam Houston. My Brother, Lyndon. Edited by Enrique Hank Lopez. New York: Cowles Book Co.
Katzenbach, Nicholas DeB. Kearns, Doris. See also, Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Roell, comps. Johnson: A Bibliography. Austin: University of Texas Press, Mann, Robert. New York: Harcourt Brace Co. Marshall, Paul M. Johnson and the Congressional Election. McPherson, Harry. New ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. Miller, Merle. Lyndon: An Oral Biography.
New York: G. Putnam's Sons, Mooney, Booth. New York: Crowell, The Lyndon Johnson Story. New York: Farrar, Straus Cudahy, Moore, Betty J. Newlon, Clarke. New York: Dodd, Mead Co. Phipps, Joe. Pool, William C. Provence, Harry. Johnson: A Biography. New York: Fleet Publishing Corp.
Pycior, Julie Leininger. Reedy, George E. Johnson, A Memoir. New York: Andrews McMeel, Rulon, Philip R. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, Austin: Thorp Springs Press, Sarantakes, Nicholas Evan.
Schulman, Bruce J. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Shuman, Howard E. Johnson: The Senate's Powerful Persuader. Baker and Roger H. Davidson, pp. Washington: Congressional Quarterly, Sinise, Jerry. Lyndon Baines Johnson Remembered. Austin: Eakin Press, Steinberg, Alfred. New York: Macmillan Co. Stern, Mark. Stewart, J. Polsby, pp. Stewart, John G. Washington: Government Printing Office, Tributes to the President and Mrs. Vaverek, Margaret A. Walker, Philip A.
Welch, June Rayfield. Dallas: G. Press, White, William Smith. The Professional: Lyndon B. Wicker, Tom. New York: William Morrow Co. Williams, T. Woods, Randall Bennett. New York: Free Press, President Lyndon B. Description of the relationship between U. Featured Search Historical Highlights of the House. Learn about Foreign Leader Addresses. Featured Search the People of the House. Majority Leaders. Bean Soup! Featured Black Americans in Congress.
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