• LBJ is the 11th ranked president in the 2021 CSPAN Rankings (Down from 10^th in 2017) because of his superior relations with Congress and his impressive Civil Rights record.

• LBJ Background

o Raised in Johnson City, Texas, Johnson was born on August 27, 1908 into a financially poor family with a rich political heritage—Johnson's father and grandfather (for whom Johnson City was named) had served in the Texas legislature.

o Johnson graduated from Southwest Texas State Teachers College in 1930 and briefly taught school in Cotulla, Texas for two years before embarking on his political career.

o In 1935, after working as a congressional aid in Washington DC, Johnson returned to Texas as state director of the National Youth Administration, a New Deal post in which he helped young people secure part-time employment so that they could attend college. In 1937, while campaigning as a fervent supporter of fellow Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, Johnson was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election. He served in the House from 1937 until 1949 and in the U.S. Senate from 1949 to 1961

▪ Johnson joined the navy after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 but served for only six months until President Roosevelt ordered all congressmen on active duty to return to Washington.

▪ Senate Majority Leader in the

▪ Southerner who championed civil rights

o JFK Vice President

o Married Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson in 1934; Two Daughters

• LBJ Administration/Cabinet

o Hubert H. Humphrey (MN) was Vice President (1965-1969)

o Retained Dean Rusk as Secretary of State; Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense

o LBJ appointed the first black Supreme Court Justice (Thurgood Marshall), and the first black cabinet officer (Robert Weaver)

▪ On June 13, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Marshall AKA “Mr Civil Rights” and distinguished NAACP civil rights lawyer to be the first African American justice to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States

o Clark Clifford served frequently as an unofficial White House Counsel during the LBJ years (1963-1968) and secretary of defense (1968-1969)

o Joseph A. Califano, was appointed Special Assistant to the President (1965 to 1969)

▪ In this position, Califano served as LBJ's top domestic aide

2. 1964

o In many ways, especially his personal history and political style, Lyndon Johnson was John F. Kennedy’s opposite.

o “War on Poverty”

▪ The term "war on poverty" generally refers to a set of initiatives proposed by Johnson's administration, passed by Congress, and implemented by his Cabinet agencies. As Johnson put it in his 1964 State of the Union address announcing the effort, "Our aim is not only to relieve the symptoms of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it."

▪ The program was Johnson’s highest political priority, even more than civil rights advances.

▪ Besides Johnson's personal interest in the issue, a number of factors made 1964-65 the ideal time for the war on poverty to start. The 1962 publication of Michael Harrington's "The Other America," an expose which demonstrated that poverty in America was far more prevalent than commonly assumed, focused public debate on the issue.

• Shed light on poor, from farms to cities

o The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which established the Job Corps, the VISTA program, the federal work-study programand a number of other initiatives. It also established the Office of Economic Opportunity (EOA), the arm of the White House responsible for implementing the war on poverty

o Civil Rights Act of 1964

▪ Prohibited discrimination in public accommodations.

▪ Attempted to fight job discrimination.

▪ Barred discrimination based on gender.

▪ Established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

▪ JFK Influence

• Review Roots of Civil Rights Act Timeline during JFK Administration

• Albany Movement/Project C

• JFK Speech in June, 1963

• March on Washington in August, 1963

▪ Johnson Treatment in Spring of 1964

▪ Biggest Civil Rights Legislation Congress every Passed

▪ Ends Segregation in Public Places

▪ A political consequence of the national Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights in 1964

• Many southern whites left the Democratic Party to join the Republican Party in 1964, 1968, and later in the 1970s and 1980s.

o Freedom Summer – 1964

▪ For 10 weeks in 1964, white students from the North (Many from SDS) ) would join activists on the ground for a massive effort to force the media and the country to take notice of the shocking violence and massive injustice taking place in Mississippi

• SNCC and CORE

• White Volunteers

• Impact of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney Murders on Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Impact on Free Speech Movement

o Break in the Civil Rights Movement

▪ Malcolm X pursued a philosophy that differed dramatically from that of Martin Luther King Jr.

o The Harlem riot of 1964 occurred between July 16 and 22, 1964.

▪ It began after James Powell, a 15-year-old African American, was shot and killed by police

o Gulf of Tonkin: August 1964

▪ Accounts of North Vietnamese torpedo-boat attacks on United States destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin during the summer of 1964 were used to justify the escalation of the American war effort in Vietnam

▪ Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

• “Blank Check”

o Election: 1964 – LBJ over Goldwater

▪ Barry Goldwater

• Start of Modern Conservative Movement

• Ronald Reagan Speech for Goldwater

o Johnson’s landslide victory gave him a mandate and majorities in the new 89^th Congress to fulfill his domestic political program called the “Great Society”

3. LBJ’s Leadership and Great Society Domestic Policy

• LBJ laid out his vision for America in a commencement speech at the University of Michigan (May 22, 1964) a domestic program that called for more perfect and equitable society for the United States called the Great Society

o The major objective of the antipoverty programs of the Great Society was to break the cycle of poverty among poor people through education and job training

o Influence of FDR/New Deal

o Influence of Truman/Fair Deal

o Pushing JFK’s Civil Rights Law/New Frontier programs passed into law

o With his eye on re-election in 1964, Johnson set in motion his Great Society, the largest social reform plan in modern history

o “Johnson Treatment” Great Society Programs

o Criticized by Republicans/Conservatives

▪ Created Large Federal Deficits that Conservatives believed would slow economic growth

• Increased spending and a tax cut program

▪ Directed money into unproductive social experiments

▪ Attempted to radically redistribute wealth and income

o Key Programs

▪ Medicare - government-funded health insurance for the elderly

▪ Medicaid - government-sponsored health care for people living below the poverty line

▪ Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965

• federal funds for teacher training

• provided $1.3 billion in aid to schools in poor areas.

▪ Head Start

• Provided free nursery schools to prepare disadvantaged preschoolers for kindergarten

▪ Job Corps

▪ National Endowment for Arts and the Humanities

▪ PBS and NPR

• The Public Broadcasting which set up public broadcasting in the United States, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and, eventually, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and National Public Radio (NPR).

o New Executive Departments (Cabinet)

▪ He established two new federal agencies, the Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Transportation, and increased federal aid to public education

o A major goal of President Johnson’s environmental reforms under the Great Society

▪ Improving the nation’s air and water

• Immigration Act of 1965

o loosened restrictions on immigration on the basis of national origin

o Chain Migration and Special Skills

o Triggered Third Wave of Immigration (Latin America and Asia)

• Highway Safety Act of 1966

o A relatively obscure lawyer named Ralph Nader emphasized the issue of automobile safety in his 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed

o During the next decade, lifesaving shoulder-lap belts, collapsible steering columns, strengthened door latches, shatterproof windshields, and protective dashboards became the mandated standard.

• Impact of 1966 Mid-Term Elections on the Great Society

4. LBJ and the Vietnam War

• Lyndon Johnson believed in the domino effect and feared that his domestic social programs would be undermined if the Communists won in Vietnam.

o Containment of Communism: Truman, Eisenhower, and JFK: 1950-1964

o Truman Doctrine

• A main reason President Johnson refused to order a full-scale invasion of North Vietnam from 1965 to 1968 and followed a “middle way” policy was his fear that it would bring China into the war.

• Vietnam War Context

o Proxy War (Role of Soviet Union, China)

▪ North Vietnam

▪ Vietcong

▪ Ho Chi Minh

• William Westmoreland

• 1^st Ground Combat Troops – March, 1965

• Conscription/Draft System

o Review U.S. Conscription: 1948 to 1967

o Impact on Working Class and Minorities

o Impact on the Middle Class: Starting in 1966

• Operation Rolling Thunder

o Sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam: 1965-1968

o It intensified North Vietnamese nationalism and hardened their will to fight.

• Hawks vs. Doves Split - 1966

• Credibility Gap

o J. William Fulbright (1905-1995) holds the record as the longest-serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, from 1959 to 1974. Elected to the Senate in 1944, he sponsored the Fulbright Scholars Act, creating Fulbright scholarships for Americans to study abroad, and for foreign scholars to study in the United States. In 1964, as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, Fulbright managed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave President Lyndon Johnson sweeping powers to respond to military provocation in South Vietnam. Later, troubled over the gradual escalation of the war in Vietnam, Fulbright held nationally televised "educational" hearings on Vietnam, bringing the Arkansas senator to national attention.

• Living Room War

o Impact of the Nightly news coverage of the Vietnam War on American television from 1966 to 1968 helped create a credibility gap.

• Impact of the Vietnam War on the “Great Society”

o The Vietnam War undermined LBJ administration commitment to the War on Poverty and Great Society,

o By 1968, the U.S. economy was entering a severe inflationary spiral that would last more than a decade.

▪ Note on the rise of inflation under LBJ: The massive tax cuts proposed by Kennedy in 1962, and signed into law by Lyndon Baines Johnson after Kennedy’s death succeeded in stimulating demand, creating growth in the economy… Business was booming, jobs were plentiful...and unemployment was near an all-time low. But as the economy heated up, the prices began raising out of control. Many economists felt a tax increase would take money out of the hands of the consumers and business… Spending would drop… inflationary pressures would retreat.

▪ While his advisors urged Johnson to increase taxes, he didn’t think he could get the votes to support it. While Johnson avowed to create a Great Society and eliminate poverty in American, the biggest item in the federal budget was not war on poverty…it was the war in Vietnam. Because Vietnam was unpopular, he wanted a silent, invisible war and so, therefore, he did not want to raise taxes. He wanted to have the domestic programs and he wanted to be able to run the war as well. The stage was set for the surge of inflation in the late 1960s

5. Civil Rights Movement during the LBJ Administration

▪ The Civil Rights movement in the 1950s to 1965 encompassed many different challenges, including

• 1) the fight to end racial segregation in the United States

o Focus: On De jure segregation

• 2) demands for full voting rights

▪ The Voting Rights Act of 1965

• The Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President LBJ on August 6, 1965, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment (1870) to the Constitution of the United States. The act significantly widened the franchise and is considered among the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.

• Selma Marches – 1965 (Grassroots movements before the Votong Rights Acot of 1965

o March 7, 1965, a date that is known as "Bloody Sunday” in Selma, AL

▪ A shocked nation watched the police brutality live on television and demanded that Washington intervene and protect voting rights for African-Americans in the Deep South.

▪ The Edmund Pettus Bridge, in Selma, AL, became a symbol of the determination of the civil rights movement.

▪ Malcolm X

o Malcolm X emerged in the late 1950s as nation’s best knownadvocate of Black nationalism and offered sharply contrasting ideas regarding the future direction of black politics than MLK and SCLC, CORE, and SNCC (Before 1965).

▪ The Focis of the Movement after 1965

• 1) De facto segregation

• 2) Growth of Poverty

• 3) Police brutality and Racial Profiling

• 4) Employment Discrimination

▪ Stokely Carmichael

• In 1966, Stokely Carmichael was elected head of SNCC and popularized the term “Black power” to characterize the new tactics and goals—including Black self-reliance and the use of violence as a legitimate means of self-defense. He also drew attention to the plight of Blacks in the inner cities

• “Integration . . . has been based on complete acceptance of the fact that in order to have a decent house or education, blacks must move into a white neighborhood or send their children to a white school. This reinforces the notion . . . that ‘white’ is automatically better and ‘black’ is by definition inferior.” —“What We Want,” 1966

o In this statement, Stokely Carmichael is arguing for economic advancement and better schools.

6. Cold War and Foreign Policy during the LBJ Years (Non Vietnam War)

• Lyndon Johnson pledged to continue the Alliance for Progress but also introduced the Mann Doctrine

o Following Kennedy's assassination, Lyndon Johnson pledged to continue the Alliance for Progress but also introduced the Mann Doctrine. Devised by his appointee as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Thomas Mann, this policy diluted the Alliance for Progress. Whereas in theory the Alliance for Progress promoted social progress and stability equally, the Mann Doctrine emphasized economic growth, if necessary, at the expense of social reform. It also pushed for the protection of US business interests and argued that cooperation with military dictators could be necessary in order to prevent the spread of communism

• Six-Day War in 1967

o The 1967 Arab-Israeli War marked the failure of the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations’ efforts to prevent renewed Arab-Israeli conflict following the 1956 Suez War.

o Lyndon Johnson’s presidency witnessed the transformation of the American role in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

o Background:

▪ Until the early 1960s, the United States had adhered to the terms of the Tripartite Declaration of 1950, wherein the United States, United Kingdom, and France had pledged to prevent aggression by Middle Eastern states and oppose a regional arms race. The United States had pressed Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip after Suez, and rejected Israeli requests for all but limited quantities of defensive weapons.

▪ By the time Johnson took office, however, U.S. policymakers concluded that this policy was no longer sustainable. Soviet arms sales to left-leaning Arab states, especially Egypt, threatened to erode Israel’s military superiority. Johnson’s advisors worried that if the United States did not offset this shift in the balance of power, Israel’s leaders might launch a preventive war or develop nuclear weapons

o With the outbreak of hostilities on June 5, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson was faced with a crisis to manage. Already consumed with the war in Vietnam, Johnson now had to prevent a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union, played out on the Israeli-Arab battlefield.

o Between June 5 and June 10, Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

o The administration’s concept of “land-for-peace” solidified following the war.

o Though alarmed by Israeli decisions to absorb East Jerusalem and establish Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, U.S. officials believed that the Arabs remained too inflexible to justify pressing Israel to withdraw.

o The 1967 Six Day War altered the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East. Its aftermath has defined the contours of the Arab-Israeli conflict, inter-Arab politics, Israeli politics, and US relations with the region since.

• Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968

o The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was an agreement signed in 1968 by several of the major nuclear and non-nuclear powers that pledged their cooperation in stemming the spread of nuclear technology. Although the NPT did not ultimately prevent nuclear proliferation, in the context of the Cold War arms race and mounting international concern about the consequences of nuclear war, the treaty was a major success for advocates of arms control because it set a precedent for international cooperation between nuclear and non-nuclear states to prevent proliferation

o After the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, leaders of both nations hoped that other, more comprehensive agreements on arms control would be forthcoming The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was, and continues to be, heralded as an important step in the ongoing efforts to reduce or prevent the spread of nuclear weapons

o By 1964 there were five nuclear powers in the world: in addition to the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom, all of which obtained nuclear capability during or shortly after the Second World War, France exploded its first nuclear bomb in 1960, and the People’s Republic of China was not far behind in 1964.

o Still, it had one major drawback in that two nuclear powers, France and the People’s Republic of China, did not sign the agreement, nor did a number of non-nuclear states. Of the non-nuclear states refusing to adhere, and thereby limit their own future nuclear programs, of particular importance were Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, because these powers were close to being capable of the technology. In fact, in 1974, India joined the “nuclear club” by exploding its first weapon. Pakistan tested its first atomic bomb in 1983

• LBJ and the Green Revolution

o “Green Revolution” is now so firmly entrenched in the history and practice of development that it is easy to forget its haphazard origin. It was coined more as what today we would call an exercise in branding than as part of a good faith effort to soberly describe the agricultural transformation that took place first in Mexico and then in Asia—above all in the Philippines and on the Indian subcontinent—between the late 1940s and the late ’60s.

o The term was the invention of the administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), William Gaud

7. 1968

• ’68 brought shockwave after shockwave—assassinations, urban riots and ugly news from the Vietnam War front.

• The Eugene McCarthy presidential campaign of 1968 was launched by United States Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota in the latter part of 1967 to vie for the 1968 Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States. The focus of his campaign was his support for a swift end to the Vietnam War through a withdrawal of American forces. The campaign appealed to youths who were tired of the establishment and dissatisfied with government

o Early on, McCarthy was vocal in his intent to unseat the incumbent Democratic United States President Lyndon B. Johnson.

• RFK jumps in the race on March 16, 1968

o The brother of JFK, the liberal icon, and Senator from New York who presented the Democratic Party’s best chance for reunification going into general election in 1968

• Tet Offensive in 1968

o Communist forces scored a major political victory.

o Turning Point of the Vietnam War

o Impact on Mainstream Media in the U.S.

o Impact of Tet on LBJ

▪ “I have concluded that I should not permit the presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” —President Lyndon B. Johnson, March 31, 1968

• In 1968, the liberal who presented the Democratic Party’s best chance for reunification was Robert F. Kennedy

• At 6:05 P.M. on Thursday, 4 April 1968, Martin Luther King was shot dead while standing on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. News of King’s assassination prompted major outbreaks of racial violence, resulting in more than 40 deaths nationwide and extensive property damage in over 100 American cities. James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old escaped fugitive, later confessed to the crime and was sentenced to a 99-year prison term.

• The Hubert Humphrey presidential campaign of 1968 began when Vice President of the United States Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota decided to seek the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States following President Lyndon B. Johnson's announcement ending his own bid for the nomination in April, 1968

• Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Immediately after he announced to his cheering supporters that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions, Kennedy was shot several times by 22-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. He was pronounced dead a day later, on June 6, 1968.

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