I.

Introduction

Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973), 37th vice-president (1961-1963), and 36th president (1963-1969) of the United States.

Johnson was born on a farm near Stonewall, Texas, on August 27, 1908, the son and grandson of state legislators. He was reared in Johnson City, Texas, where he excelled in studies and debate at the local high school. After a period of wandering he enrolled in Southwest Texas State Teachers College, graduating in 1930. He taught high school for a year in Houston and then went to Washington, D.C., as a congressional aide. In 1935 he returned to Texas with a bride—Claudia Alta (“Lady Bird”) Taylor—and gained praise as a state director of the National Youth Administration.

In 1937 Johnson was elected as a Democrat to the US House of Representatives, where he was a supporter and protégé of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His years in the House were interrupted in 1942 by a term of active duty as a naval officer. In 1948, in his second Texas Democratic senatorial primary election, he won by a contested margin of 87 votes, thereby acquiring the nickname “Landslide Lyndon”; he went on to win the US Senate seat in the general election. His energy and powerful southern friends helped him become Senate minority leader in 1953 and majority leader in 1955, when congressional power passed back to the Democrats. He recovered from a heart attack suffered in July 1955 to resume full duties, most notably helping to engineer the passage (1957) of the first national civil rights legislation since the American Civil War (1861-1865). He was renowned for his abilities of political bargaining in patiently winning over enough colleagues to ensure the passage of legislation.