President Johnson

Lyndon B. Johnson was president of the United States from 1963 until 1969. He became president after President Kennedy was assassinated. During his presidency, Johnson oversaw civil rights legislation, and social service programs, and expanded US involvement in the Vietnam War.

What impact did Johnson have on the US? What did he accomplish, and what was his downfall?

Facts about President Johnson

Johnson was born in 1908 in Texas. He lacked direction until he enrolled in the Southwest Texas State Teachers College in 1928. During his studies, he spent a period teaching at a predominantly Mexican-American school where many of the students came from poverty. This experience would inform his political career.

Fig. 1 - Lyndon B. Johnson's boyhood home in Johnson City, Texas.

In 1930, Johnson was involved in the congressional campaign of Richard Kleberg. When Kleberg was successful, Johnson moved to Washington DC with him as his legislative assistant. Having entered the world of politics, Johnson also got married in 1934 to a woman called Claudia Alta Taylor.

Johnson then worked as director of the National Youth Administration in Texas, which was a program of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. In 1937, Johnson was elected to the US House of Representatives as a Democrat, where he remained for 12 years. During this period, he served in the Second World War for six months as a lieutenant commander in the Navy.

Fig. 2 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt (left), Governor James Allred of Texas (middle) and a young Lyndon B. Johnson (right) in Galveston, Texas, on 12 May 1937

In 1948, Johnson was elected to the US Senate. He quickly gained power as a senator, and by 1951 he was the Democratic whip. By 1953, he was the minority leader, and when the Democrats won a majority in 1955, Johnson became the youngest man to be the majority leader.

In the Senate, Johnson worked to secure the passage of the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts, as well as leading the way in the US space race after the Soviet Union launched the satellite, Sputnik.

Johnson lost the presidential nomination to John F Kennedy in 1960 but accepted Kennedy’s invitation to run as his vice-presidential candidate. As Vice President, Johnson was involved in the space program, and military policy, and was the chair of the President’s Committee for Equal Employment Opportunity.

How did Johnson become President?

On 22 November 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The same day, Johnson was sworn in as president and began working to calm the national hysteria which came from Kennedy’s assassination.

On 27 November, Johnson urged Congress to pass Kennedy’s legislative agenda, which he had been unable to do during his lifetime. Two days later, Johnson created a special commission to investigate Kennedy’s assassination.

President Johnson’s domestic policy

In 1964, Johnson gave a speech outlining his domestic agenda. He called it the Great Society.

The Civil Rights Act signed by President Johnson

As part of the Great Society, he placed huge importance on Kennedy’s civil rights bill. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was signed into law on 2 July and was actually a much stronger version of Kennedy’s initial proposal. The Act:

• Prohibited segregation and discrimination in public accommodations.
• Prohibited discrimination in employment and union membership.
• Created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to ensure the above.
• Furthered guarantees of equal voting rights.
• Authorised the Office of Education to help with school desegregation.

Johnson also passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act in August. A few months prior to this, he called on white Americans to come together with African-Americans to secure civil rights. The Voting Rights Act outlawed literacy tests and other practices which were designed to prevent African Americans from voting. Three million African American voters were registered in the South by 1968, compared to only one million in 1964.

Other domestic policy

Johnson’s Great Society also involved the ‘war on poverty’. This comprised programs to help the unemployed, funding for education, and the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid to provide health benefits to the elderly and the poor. The 1965 Immigration Act abolished the National Origins Formula, which had discriminated against Asians and Southern and Eastern Europeans.

Other key domestic policies included:

• The 1964 Economic Opportunity Act, which created the Office of Economic Opportunity.
• Allocating huge funding to housing reform and education.
• The creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1965.
• The creation of the National Endowment for Humanities and the National Endowment for Arts in 1965.
• The creation of the Department of Transportation in 1966.
• The 1965 Water Quality Act and the 1967 Air Quality Act.

President Johnson’s foreign policy

Johnson’s popularity was not to last, however, as foreign policy was his downfall. He increased American involvement in the Vietnam War, which earned him huge opposition.

In August 1964, North Vietnamese gunboats supposedly attacked US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. In response, Johnson ordered bombing raids on North Vietnam, and Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed Johnson to take any measure to prevent further aggression.

Johnson increased US troops in Vietnam, and in February 1965, he ordered a series of huge bombing raids on North Vietnam known as ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’. By the end of 1965, there were around 180,000 US military personnel in Vietnam which increased further to around 550,000 in 1968.

In January 1968, the crew of a US intelligence vessel were captured by North Korea and was held for 11 months. The following week, the Tet Offensive involved coordinated attacks by the North against the South. Although it was a military failure, it eroded support for the war at home.

The casualties of the Vietnam War, and the huge financial cost led to opposition. Student demonstrations began in 1965, and this sentiment grew since 1967. Johnson became vastly unpopular.

How did the Vietnam War affect the Great Society?

The huge cost of the war diverted finances away from Johnson’s domestic policies. His involvement in Vietnam also cost the Democrats greatly in the 1966 congressional elections, and by late 1966, Johnson was struggling to get his domestic measures through Congress.

Discontent grew as the prosperity promised by the Great Society was not achieved. Many African-Americans particularly continued to suffer from poverty, which contributed to the intensification of the Civil Rights movement. Violence erupted in the mid-60s, and there were fears of a ‘race war’.

Other foreign policy

Although Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union were high due to the Vietnam War, Johnson was able to ease tensions in some other areas. In January 1967, he signed the Outer Space Treaty with the Soviets, which banned nuclear weapons in space. The US was also involved in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which prevented transferring nuclear weapons to other countries. Johnson also met with the Soviet leader Aleksej Kosygin to mediate their conflicting interests in the Middle East.

Johnson also faced a series of issues in Latin America:

• Cuban leader Fidel Castro demanded the US return Guantanamo Naval Base to Cuba and shut off its water supply. Johnson directed the Navy to create its own water supply, and the Cubans retracted their demand.
• Johnson put down a riot in Panama against US control of the Panama Canal Zone but entered into negotiations about the issue.
• Johnson sent 20,000 marines to the Dominican Republic after an uprising attempted to restore the elected leader Juan Bosch to power; Johnson backed the right-wing Reid Cabral.

The end of Johnson’s presidency

On 31 March 1968, Johnson gave a nationally televised address in which he announced that he had reduced the bombing of North Vietnam, was requesting peace talks, and would not seek renomination for President. His presidency ended on 20 January 1969, and he retired in Texas.

Lyndon B Johnson’s cause of death

Johnson suffered a heart attack in January 1973 and died. He died less than a week before the Vietnam War ended.

Lyndon B Johnson’s presidency: a timeline

Let's look at a timeline of Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency.