Lyndon
Baines
Johnson
1908 - 1973
The Great Society
War on Poverty
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Voting Rights Act of 1965
As the thirty-sixth president of the United States,
Lyndon B. Johnson created the Great Society
programs which included antipoverty programs civil
rights legislation, the
creation of Medicare and
Medicaid, the passage of
environmental protection
acts, and the creation of
laws to help protect
consumers.
Lyndon Johnson had a lifelong commitment to the
belief that education was the cure for both ignorance
and poverty, especially for minorities who endured
poor facilities and tight-fisted budgets from local
taxes. He made education a top priority of the Great
Society, with an emphasis on helping poor children.
President No.: 36th
Served: 1963-1969
Party: Democrat
From: Texas
Married: Lady Bird Johnson
Born: August 27, 1908
Died: January 22, 1973
Education: Southwest Texas State College,
Georgetown University Law School
Jobs Before President: Teacher, Rancher,
Congressman, U.S. Senator
Height: 6 feet, 3 inches
Hobbies: Fishing, hunting, riding
Pets: Dogs, beagles named Him and Her
Transportation: Helicopter, airplane, car
Communication Methods: Telephone, typed letter
-born near Stonewall in Gillespie County
Johnson, the first
of five children,
was born in a
three-room
house in the hills
of south-central
Texas.
The Johnson family stands in front of the birthplace in 1897.
Lyndon Johnson's birthplace
was reconstructed in 1964
at his request.
The ranch house as it appeared in 1963, the year
Lyndon R. Johnson assumed the Presidency. It
looks essentially the same today.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, his wife Claudia Alta "Lady
Bird" Taylor, and daughters Lynda Bird Johnson and
Luci Baines Johnson.
Lyndon Johnson’s work for minorities began in 1928
when he obtained his first job as an elementary
school teacher. It was a segregated school attended
by only Mexican Americans. Johnson had 28 pupils
who he recalled were "mired in the slums",
"lashed by prejudice" and
1927
"buried half- alive in illiteracy".
Johnson believed that their only
way out was by education.
“Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.”
Mr. Johnson began as a teacher but quickly moved
into politics. He was the Director of National Youth
Administration in Texas (1935-37) and then elected
as a U.S. Representative where he served from
1937-49.
While a congressman, Lyndon Johnson joined the
navy to fight in World War II. He was awarded the
Silver Star.
In 1949, he was elected to the U.S. Senate,
becoming the Democratic Majority Leader in 1955.
He served until 1951 when he became Vice-President
under John F. Kennedy.
left to right:
Vice President Johnson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and
President Kennedy….
Lyndon Johnson became President in November
1963 after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
After being sworn in as the 36th President of the
United States, Lyndon Johnson announced his
vision of a "Great Society" for America, with "an end
to poverty and racial injustice". Johnson felt he and
Congress owed it to the late president to see his
civil rights bill passed. He was convinced that
discrimination was morally wrong.
In 1964 President Johnson was nominated to run for
the Democratic party for the presidency with Hubert
Humphrey as his vice-president. Johnson easily won
with 61% of the popular vote.
The Head Start Program and the Job Corps are two
programs from President Johnson’s 1964 Economic
Opportunity Act which was in association with the
“War on Poverty”.
Job Corps students
participated in an episode
of Extreme Makeover.
Job Corps is a free, residential education and training
program that helps students between 16 and 24 gain
the experience to get a better job and take control of
their lives. The program offers an opportunity to learn
a trade, the chance to obtain a high school diploma or
GED, and help finding a job after graduation.
“Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning
must offer an escape from poverty.”
“This administration here and now declares
unconditional war on poverty.”
The Great Society program, with its name coined
from one of President Johnson's speeches, became
his 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 removal
of obstacles to the right to vote.
“We have the opportunity to move not only
toward the rich society and the powerful society,
but upward to the Great Society.”
March 17, 1965, President Johnson sent The
National Voting Rights Act of 1965 to Congress.
After the Senate and House passed the bill, and
differences were resolved, President Johnson signed
the Act into law on August 6, 1965.
“A man without a vote is man without protection.”
President Johnson with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
1963
1966
The Voting Rights Act outlawed discrimination in
voting practices (particularly in the South) that
disenfranchised African Americans. Southern states
had historically required otherwise qualified voters to
pass literacy tests, a practice that excluded blacks
and illiterate whites from voting.
Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Civil Rights Bill,
April 11, 1968
Three important pieces of Civil Rights legislation:
1. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 which did not allow
discrimination in employment or in the use of public
facilities.
2. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 which outlawed
discriminatory practices that kept blacks from voting.
3. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 which outlawed
discrimination for housing.
Also during President Johnson's administration,
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968.
“You aren't learning
anything when you're
talking.”
Thurgood Marshall,
nominated in 1967
by President Johnson
for the Supreme
Court -
“Johnson was focused on what the achievement
would say to all the African American children in the
land, what they could aspire to in their own lives.”
Millions of elderly people were aided by the 1965
Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act.
President Johnson gave the first two Medicare cards
to former President Harry S Truman and his wife after
signing the medicare. Lower income people received
medical care funded by the government through the
Medicaid program.
President Johnson did not run for re-election in 1968
and his last public appearance was at a civil rights
conference.
He retired on January 20, 1969
to his ranch in Texas. He did
not return to politics. He died on
January 22, 1973 of a heart attack.
“Doing what's right isn't the problem.
It is knowing what's right.”
Lyndon Johnson was motivated by memories of his
own poverty ridden childhood and also his strong
belief that helping minorities would be of spiritual and
economic benefit to all Americans. Johnson also
believed that racial discrimination was damaging the
economy of his beloved South and that the area
would have to abandon its racist attitudes to gain
economic prosperity.
“We must open the doors of opportunity.
But we must also equip our people
to walk through those doors.”
President Johnson's vision
of "A Great Society" in
America led him to change
the face of America
forever. President
Johnson advocated for
voting rights, civil rights,
education, and Medicare.
“Until justice is blind to color, until education
is unaware of race, until opportunity is
unconcerned with the color of men's skins,
emancipation will be a proclamation but not a
fact.”
“We have talked long enough in this country
about equal rights. It is time now to write the
next chapter - and to write it in the books of
law.”