Johnson, Lyndon B.

36th president, 1963–1969

Born: August 27, 1908

Died: January 22, 1973

Vice President: Hubert Humphrey

First Lady: Claudia Taylor Johnson

Children: Lynda Bird, Luci

Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, became president in 1963 when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Johnson was born near Johnson City, Texas, where his parents were farmers. He attended Southwest Texas State Teachers College and taught public speaking and debate in a high school. In 1931, Johnson campaigned for Richard M. Kleberg and was named his secretary. In 1937, Johnson won a seat in the Texas 10th Congressional District, and, in 1948, he served in the Senate. In 1951, he was named party whip, and then party leader in 1953. He was widely acknowledged as one of the most effective legislators in Congress during his years there, a skill that would help him pass a great deal of legislation during his presidency.

As Kennedy's vice president, Johnson was an active supporter of the social programs on the so-called New Frontier. When Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Johnson immediately took office as president and later went on to be reelected in 1964. Many of Kennedy's social programs emerged in Johnson's "Great Society" program, including Medicare, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and the Civil Rights Act.

• During his time in Congress, Johnson became the youngest person ever to serve as Senate majority leader, a position he resigned to run for vice president.
• Johnson was the first president to be sworn into office by a woman.
• Johnson was the first president to appoint an African American (Thurgood Marshall) to the Supreme Court.
• Johnson won the popular vote in the 1964 election by the largest margin in history.

Johnson's domestic accomplishments were relatively popular. His decision to widen U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, however, became tremendously divisive. In 1968, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, coupled with the nightly news broadcasts of young Americans dying far away in Vietnam, brought a dark cloud over Johnson and he decided not to seek re-election.

Johnson and his wife, Claudia "Lady Bird" Taylor, were married on November 17, 1934. They had two daughters, Lynda Bird and Luci Baines.

When Johnson Was in Office

1964

The Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination based on color, race, national origin, religion, or sex.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, introduced by Johnson and passed overwhelmingly by Congress, widened U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
The Beatles became the most popular musical group in the world and brought the "British Invasion" of music to the United States.

1965

Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was shot and killed in New York City.

1968

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated.

After retiring, Johnson began writing and editing his memoirs. He died of a heart attack at his Texas home on January 22, 1973.

On Johnson's Inauguration Day

Lyndon Johnson was inaugurated after he had served 14 months in office following the Kennedy assassination. Much of his time in office had been spent presenting his "Great Society" program to Americans. The nation's attention was focused on the struggle for civil rights in the South and on the escalation of the fighting in Vietnam. Unfortunately, things only worsened over the next four years.

Lyndon B. Johnson's Inaugural Address

In Washington, D.C., Wednesday, January 20, 1965

MY fellow countrymen, on this occasion, the oath I have taken before you and before God is not mine alone, but ours together. We are one nation and one people. Our fate as a nation and our future as a people rest not upon one citizen, but upon all citizens.

This is the majesty and the meaning of this moment. For every generation, there is a destiny. For some, history decides. For this generation, the choice must be our own.

Even now, a rocket moves toward Mars. It reminds us that the world will not be the same for our children, or even for ourselves in a short span of years. The next man to stand here will look out on a scene different from our own, because ours is a time of change—rapid and fantastic change bearing the secrets of nature, multiplying the nations, placing in uncertain hands new weapons for mastery and destruction, shaking old values, and uprooting old ways.

Our destiny in the midst of change will rest on the unchanged character of our people, and on their faith.

The American Covenant

They came here—the exile and the stranger, brave but frightened—to find a place where a man could be his own man. They made a covenant with this land. Conceived in justice, written in liberty, bound in union, it was meant one day to inspire the hopes of all mankind; and it binds us still. If we keep its terms, we shall flourish.

Justice and Change

First, justice was the promise that all who made the journey would share in the fruits of the land.

In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In a land rich in harvest, children just must not go hungry. In a land of healing miracles, neighbors must not suffer and die unattended. In a great land of learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and write. ¹

For the more than 30 years that I have served this Nation, I have believed that this injustice to our people, this waste of our resources, was our real enemy. For 30 years or more, with the resources I have had, I have vigilantly fought against it. I have learned, and I know, that it will not surrender easily.

But change has given us new weapons. Before this generation of Americans is finished, this enemy will not only retreat—it will be conquered.

Justice requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow, saying, "His color is not mine," or "His beliefs are strange and different," in that moment he betrays America, though his forebears created this Nation.

Liberty and Change

Liberty was the second article of our covenant. It was self-government. It was our Bill of Rights. But it was more. America would be a place where each man could be proud to be himself: stretching his talents, rejoicing in his work, important in the life of his neighbors and his nation.

This has become more difficult in a world where change and growth seem to tower beyond the control and even the judgment of men. We must work to provide the knowledge and the surroundings which can enlarge the possibilities of every citizen.

The American covenant called on us to help show the way for the liberation of man. And that is today our goal. Thus, if as a nation there is much outside our control, as a people no stranger is outside our hope.

Change has brought new meaning to that old mission. We can never again stand aside, prideful in isolation. Terrific dangers and troubles that we once called "foreign" now constantly live among us. If American lives must end, and American treasure be spilled, in countries we barely know, that is the price that change has demanded of conviction and of our enduring covenant. ²

Think of our world as it looks from the rocket that is heading toward Mars. It is like a child's globe, hanging in space, the continents stuck to its side like colored maps. We are all fellow passengers on a dot of earth. And each of us, in the span of time, has really only a moment among our companions.

How incredible it is that in this fragile existence, we should hate and destroy one another. There are possibilities enough for all who will abandon mastery over others to pursue mastery over nature. There is world enough for all to seek their happiness in their own way.

Our Nation's course is abundantly clear. We aspire to nothing that belongs to others. We seek no dominion over our fellow man, but man's dominion over tyranny and misery.

But more is required. Men want to be a part of a common enterprise—a cause greater than themselves. Each of us must find a way to advance the purpose of the Nation, thus finding new purpose for ourselves. Without this, we shall become a nation of strangers.

Union and Change

The third article was union. To those who were small and few against the wilderness, the success of liberty demanded the strength of union. Two centuries of change have made this true again.

No longer need capitalist and worker, farmer and clerk, city and countryside, struggle to divide our bounty. By working shoulder to shoulder, together we can increase the bounty of all. We have discovered that every child who learns, every man who finds work, every sick body that is made whole—like a candle added to an altar—brightens the hope of all the faithful.

So let us reject any among us who seek to reopen old wounds and to rekindle old hatreds. They stand in the way of a seeking nation.

Let us now join reason to faith and action to experience, to transform our unity of interest into a unity of purpose. For the hour and the day and the time are here to achieve progress without strife, to achieve change without hatred—not without difference of opinion, but without the deep and abiding divisions which scar the union for generations.

The American Beliefe

Under this covenant of justice, liberty, and union we have become a nation—prosperous, great, and mighty. And we have kept our freedom. But we have no promise from God that our greatness will endure. We have been allowed by Him to seek greatness with the sweat of our hands and the strength of our spirit.

I do not believe that the Great Society is the ordered, changeless, and sterile battalion of the ants. It is the excitement of becoming—always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again—but always trying and always gaining.

In each generation, with toil and tears, we have had to earn our heritage again.

If we fail now, we shall have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that democracy rests on faith, that freedom asks more than it gives, and that the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored.

If we succeed, it will not be because of what we have, but it will be because of what we are; not because of what we own, but, rather because of what we believe.

For we are a nation of believers. Underneath the clamor of building and the rush of our day's pursuits, we are believers in justice and liberty and union, and in our own Union. We believe that every man must someday be free. And we believe in ourselves.

Our enemies have always made the same mistake. In my lifetime—in depression and in war—they have awaited our defeat. Each time, from the secret places of the American heart, came forth the faith they could not see or that they could not even imagine. It brought us victory. And it will again.

For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say "Farewell." Is a new world coming? We welcome it—and we will bend it to the hopes of man.

To these trusted public servants and to my family and those close friends of mine who have followed me down a long, winding road, and to all the people of this Union and the world, I will repeat today what I said on that sorrowful day in November 1963: "I will lead and I will do the best I can." ³

But you must look within your own hearts to the old promises and to the old dream. They will lead you best of all.

For myself, I ask only, in the words of an ancient leader: "Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people: for who can judge this thy people, that is so great?"

Quotes to Note

1. "In a land of great wealth..." Johnson explains the reasoning behind his "Great Society" programs. He would go on to great success in having legislation based on these concepts enacted.
2. "If American lives must end..." Johnson refers to the conflict in Vietnam, a country that many Americans in 1964 barely knew. The bitter war there and its effect on all Americans would split the country over the next ten years in ways not seen since the Civil War.
3. "I will repeat..." Johnson refers to the event still etched in most American memories, the assassination of John Kennedy.