President Lyndon B. Johnson

President Lyndon B. Johnson

President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) was born in central Texas on August 27, 1908, not far from Johnson City where he first felt the pain of poverty, both as a child growing up in rural  Texas and as a young man working at Southwest Texas State Teachers College. Nevertheless, in 1937  Johnson, along with  wife  Claudia, left Texas to serve as a member of the United States House of Representatives; a career interrupted by WW2.  During the Second World War, Johnson served  as a Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy, receiving a Silver Star for his actions in the South Pacific. With the end of the war in 1945 Johnson, like the rest of America, tried to return life to normalcy: for him that meant Washington DC.

In 1948, Johnson successfully ran for the United States Senate; five years later, in 1953, he would become the youngest person to hold the position of Minority Leader of the Senate in history. As a result of  his lpolitical skills and ability to lead the Senate, Johnson was selected as Kennedy’s running mate in the 1960 election. After Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth President  and  made it a point to push Kennedy’s agenda, including a  civil rights act and a tax cut.

Introduced to congress in January of 1964, Johnson’s “Great Society” program came to define

not only his second term, but his Presidency and his entire political career as well. The Great Society program included aid for education, an attack on disease, Medicare, urban renewal of the nations neglected inner-cities, beautification (especially along America’s highways, a program lead by his wife Lady Bird), conservation of the nations resources, development of depressed regions, a wide-scale fight against poverty, control and prevention of crime and delinquency, and the removal of obstacles to the right to vote. The accomplishments of Johnson’s Great Society Program have, however, been overshadowed by two self-perpetuating debacles that during Johnson’s term in office emerged to forefront of the American political spectrum and on to the lips of every American.

Despite, or maybe because of, the vast improvements in America’s policy towards poverty and discrimination the continuing strife between America’s ethnic races exploded into mass rioting and violence throughout the nation. During

Johnson’s administration cities burned, people disappeared, and major political figures of the civil rights movement were assassinated.
The other overriding development of Johnson’s presidency was the intensification of the conflict in Viet Nam. In an attempt halt communist aggression in the area, and around the world, Johnson committed hundreds of thousands of American troops to protect the sovereignty of South Viet Nam and to fight to a lasting, meaningful, and peaceful settlement to the dispute. The escalation of the American presence in Viet Nam, however, had the effect of intensifying the anti-war movement within the nation as America’s death toll began to rise. The President Johnson and his administration, however, would never see an end to the conflict in Viet Nam; in 1968, Johnson announced that he would not run for re-election for President. In January 1969 he turned over the presidency to Richard Nixon in the midst of continuing civil unrest and an escalating conflict in Viet Nam. On January 22, 1973, with the conflict in Viet Nam still unsettled, Lyndon Banes Johnson died at his Texas ranch of a heart attack at the age of sixty-four.