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Lyndon B. Johnson
"A Great Society" for the American people and their fellow men elsewhere was the
vision of Lyndon B. Johnson. In his first years of office he obtained passage of
one of the most extensive legislative programs in the Nation's history.
Maintaining collective security, he carried on the rapidly growing struggle to
restrain Communist encroachment in Viet Nam.
Johnson was born on August 27, 1908, in central Texas, not far from Johnson
City, which his family had helped settle. He felt the pinch of rural poverty as
he grew up, working his way through Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now
known as Texas State University-San Marcos); he learned compassion for the
poverty of others when he taught students of Mexican descent.
In 1937 he campaigned successfully for the House of Representatives on a New
Deal platform, effectively aided by his wife, the former Claudia "Lady Bird"
Taylor, whom he had married in 1934.
During World War II he served briefly in the Navy as a lieutenant commander,
winning a Silver Star in the South Pacific. After six terms in the House,
Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1948. In 1953, he became the youngest
Minority Leader in Senate history, and the following year, when the Democrats
won control, Majority Leader. With rare skill he obtained passage of a number of
key Eisenhower measures.
In the 1960 campaign, Johnson, as John F. Kennedy's running mate, was elected
Vice President. On November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson was
sworn in as President.
First he obtained enactment of the measures President Kennedy had been urging at
the time of his death--a new civil rights bill and a tax cut. Next he urged 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, Johnson won the Presidency with 61
percent of the vote and had the widest popular margin in American history--more
than 15,000,000 votes.
The Great Society program became Johnson's agenda for Congress in January 1965:
aid to education, attack on disease, Medicare, urban renewal, beautification,
conservation, development of depressed regions, a wide-scale fight against
poverty, control and prevention of crime and delinquency, removal of obstacles
to the right to vote. Congress, at times augmenting or amending, rapidly enacted
Johnson's recommendations. Millions of elderly people found succor through the
1965 Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act.
Under Johnson, the country made spectacular explorations of space in a program
he had championed since its start. When three astronauts successfully orbited
the moon in December 1968, Johnson congratulated them: "You've taken ... all of
us, all over the world, into a new era. . . . "
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 Viet Nam. Despite Johnson's efforts to end Communist
aggression and achieve a settlement, fighting continued. Controversy over the
war had become acute by the end of March 1968, when he limited the bombing of
North Viet Nam 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, 1973. |
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