"A
Great Society" for the American people and their fellow
men elsewhere was the vision of Lyndon B. Johnson. In his
first years of office he obtained passage of one of the most
extensive legislative programs in the Nation's history.
Maintaining collective security, he carried on the rapidly
growing struggle to restrain Communist encroachment in Viet
Nam.
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, effectively aided by his wife, the former
Claudia "Lady Bird" Taylor, whom he had married in
1934.
During
World War II he served briefly in the Navy as a lieutenant
commander, winning a Silver Star in the South Pacific. After
six terms in the House, Johnson was elected to the Senate in
1948. In 1953, he became the youngest Minority Leader in
Senate history, and the following year, when the Democrats won
control, Majority Leader. With rare skill he obtained passage
of a number of key Eisenhower measures.
In the
1960 campaign, Johnson, as John F. Kennedy's running mate, was
elected Vice President. On November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was
assassinated, Johnson was sworn in as President.
First he
obtained enactment of the measures President Kennedy had been
urging at the time of his death--a new civil rights bill and a
tax cut. Next 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." In 1964, Johnson won the
Presidency with 61 percent of the vote and had the widest
popular margin in American history--more than 15,000,000
votes.
The
Great Society program became Johnson's 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 delinquency, removal of obstacles
to the right to vote. Congress, at times augmenting or
amending, rapidly enacted Johnson's recommendations. Millions
of elderly people found succor through the 1965 Medicare
amendment to the Social Security Act.
Under
Johnson, the country made spectacular explorations of space in
a program he had championed since its start. 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. . . . "
Nevertheless,
two overriding crises had been gaining momentum since 1965.
Despite the beginning of new antipoverty and
anti-discrimination programs, unrest and rioting in black
ghettos troubled the Nation. President Johnson steadily
exerted his influence against segregation and on behalf of law
and order, but there was no early solution.
The
other crisis arose from Viet Nam. Despite Johnson's efforts to
end Communist aggression and achieve a settlement, fighting
continued. Controversy over the war had become acute by the
end of March 1968, when he 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.
-
Lyndon
B. Johnson