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Jul 26, 2016 · There's no question that Lyndon Johnson, despite championing the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and signing it into law, was also a sometime racist and notorious vulgarian who rarely shied...
Apr 11, 2014 · Johnson lifted racist immigration restrictions designed to preserve a white majority -- and by extension white supremacy. He forced FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, then more concerned with...
- Adam Serwer
Apr 10, 2014 · President Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas was lauded by four successor presidents as a Lincoln-esque groundbreaker for civil rights, but President Barack Obama also noted that Johnson also had...
- He Began His Career as A Teacher.
- Johnson’s Career Took Off in The Senate, But He Almost Died in The Process.
- He Was An Outsider in The Kennedy White House.
- In January 1964, He Declared War on Poverty.
- Johnson’s Wife, Lady Bird, Was Key to His Success.
Johnson was born in 1908 in Stonewall, Texas, as the oldest of five children. Though his father had served in the state legislature, he had lost money in cotton speculation, and the family often struggled to make ends meet. The young Johnson drifted for a few years after high school but enrolled at Southwest Texas State Teachers College in 1927. Du...
In 1953, Johnson became Senate minority leader, and after Democrats regained control of the Senate two years later, he became majority leader. Johnson excelled at forming the Senate Democrats into a united bloc, while charming, flattering and otherwise convincing colleagues from both sides of the aisle. In mid-1955, the 49-year-old suffered a sever...
After losing a bitter primary fight in 1960, Johnson shocked nearly everyone by signing on as running mate to Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. As a Protestant Southerner and the consummate insider in Congress, Johnson balanced the ticket, helping Kennedy capture Texas, Louisiana and the Carolinas in his narrow defeat of Richard Nixon. But Joh...
In his first State of the Union address, Johnson declared an “unconditional war” on poverty in the United States, announcing that “Our aim is not only to relieve the symptoms of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.” He spearheaded legislation creating Medicare and Medicaid, expanding Social Security, making the food stamps program...
Claudia Alta Taylor, known as Lady Bird from childhood, married Johnson shortly after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied history and journalism. She became an undeniable asset to his rising political career, not least because of her considerable family fortune. In 1960, Lady Bird Johnson traveled some 30,000 miles ...
- Sarah Pruitt
Jul 28, 2020 · Lyndon B. Johnson used a racial slur for Black people frequently, according to his biographers, including when Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court instead of a...
How racist was Lyndon Johnson, really? It seems like he was racist, with his use of the n-word, but his first job was teaching English to underprivileged Mexican and black children, and he passed more Civil Rights legislation than any President before him.
