LYNDON B. JOHNSON | 1963-1969
In his first years of office, Lyndon B. Johnson obtained passage of one of the most extensive legislative programs in the nation's history. Maintaining collective security, he carried on the struggle to restrain Communist encroachment in Vietnam.
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. 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, and during World War II he served in the navy, winning a Silver Star in the South Pacific.
After six terms in the House, Johnson was elected to the Senate. In 1954, he became the majority leader and obtained passage of a number of key Eisenhower measures. He was elected vice president in 1960. When Johnson was sworn in as President after Kennedy was assassinated, he obtained enactment of the measures President Kennedy had been urging - a new civil rights bill and a tax cut. 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."
After Johnson won the 1964 election The Great Society became his agenda for Congress in January 1965. The program advocated 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, and removal of obstacles to the right to vote. Congress, at times augmenting or amending, enacted the recommendations. Millions of elderly people found succor through the 1965 Medicare amendment. Under Johnson, the country also made spectacular explorations of space. 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 . . ."
But two overriding crises had been gaining momentum since 1965. Despite Johnson's best efforts, unrest in black ghettos troubled the nation, and fighting continued in Viet Nam. Controversy over the war had become acute by the end of March 1968, when the president 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.
