Lyndon Baines Johnson was pure Texan. His family included some of the earliest settlers of the Lone Star State. They had been cattlemen, cotton farmers, and soldiers for the Confederacy. Johnson’s parents, Samuel Ealy Johnson and Rebekah Baines, were married in 1907 and lived in a small farmhouse along the Pedernales River in the Texas Hill Country. Rebekah was college educated, rare for a woman in those times, and she was reserved and genteel while Sam was a talker and a dreamer, a man who thought he was cut out for more than farming.

Lyndon was born on August 27, 1908, the first of their five children. On the day of his birth, his father rode up and down the Pedernales River announcing his son would be elected governor of Texas someday. Sam Johnson won election to the Texas legislature when he was twenty-seven, and he served from 1905 to 1909 and again from 1918 to 1923.

In 1913, the Johnsons abandoned the farm and moved to nearby Johnson City. The family house, while comfortable by the standards of the rural South at the time, had neither electricity nor indoor plumbing. Sam Johnson decided to run for the state legislature again in 1918, when Lyndon was ten years old, and Lyndon accompanied him when he campaigned. Politicians regularly visited the Johnson home, and young Lyndon made sure to hide where he could hear all the conversations. Lyndon, like his father, wanted more for his future than life in Johnson City. When he was twelve, he told classmates, “You know, someday I'm going to be president of the United States.”

In 1919, Sam Johnson bought the 433-acre family farm on the Pedernales River from relatives and tried to make a living growing cotton. However, the Texas Hill Country was a hard place to farm, and he ended up selling the farm in 1922, deeply in debt. Sam Johnson’s financial troubles took a toll on his health and his family. Later in life, Lyndon Johnson remembered: “When I was fourteen years old, I decided I was not going to be the victim of a system which would allow the price of a commodity like cotton to drop from forty cents to six cents and destroy the homes of people like my own family.”

Education and Teaching Career

The climb out of the Texas Hill Country, however, proved steep. School, at first, was a one-room, one-teacher enterprise. Johnson City High School was a three-mile mule ride away from home. Lyndon graduated in 1924, president of his six-member senior class. The Johnsons scrimped to send Lyndon to summer courses at Southwest Texas State Teachers College in San Marcos to supplement his meager rural education, but Lyndon returned to Johnson City.

After deciding not to go to college, Lyndon drifted. With four friends, he bought a car and drove to California, where he did odd jobs and briefly worked in a cousin's law office. Lyndon then returned to Texas and performed manual labor on a road crew. He fell into drinking and fighting. In 1927, he decided to refocus his energies on a teaching career and was accepted to Southwest Texas State Teachers College.

Johnson was an indifferent student, but he eagerly pursued extracurricular activities such as journalism, student government, and debating. For his student teaching, he was assigned to a tiny Hispanic school, Welhausen School in Cotulla, Texas, a deeply impoverished area. Johnson arrived at the school full of energy and ambition and pushed the long-neglected students, giving them hope and pride in their achievements. He excelled at his student teaching and earned glowing references. He then returned to San Marcos to finish school, graduating in 1930.

When Johnson graduated, however, America was just entering the Great Depression. His first teaching job in Pearsall, Texas, lasted only a short time before he moved to a teaching job at a school in Houston, Texas, where his uncle was the principal. Johnson again did an exemplary job, but his teaching career was brief.

In his free time, Johnson had been helping a friend of his father’s with some local campaigns, and this unpaid political work fueled Johnson’s ambitions. By late 1931, he had won a job as an aide to U.S. Congressman Richard Kleberg of Corpus Christi. He left Texas and traveled to the nation’s capital. In Washington, D.C., Johnson's work ethic was astounding. He poured over every detail of congressional protocol and answered every letter from Kleberg's constituents. He was, in short, a model assistant. His drive, ambition, and competence made him stand out in Washington.

Marriage and Congressional Career

In 1934, Johnson returned to Texas to visit family and met a twenty-one-year-old woman named Claudia Alta Taylor, a recent University of Texas graduate from a wealthy East Texas family. They married three months later. As a very young girl, Claudia’s black childhood friends, “Stuff” and “Doodlebug,” had nicknamed her “Lady Bird.” Later the origin story was changed to suggest that a black nurse had given the nickname to Claudia. Deeply shy but genuine and charming, Lady Bird became a refining balance to her boisterous, hyperactive husband and was a gracious hostess to Johnson's powerful friends. She was initially uncomfortable in the role of the politician’s wife, but grew into it, becoming a powerful force in modern American politics.

By 1933, the new president, Franklin Roosevelt, had begun combating the Great Depression with dozens of social programs. One such program was the National Youth Administration, a federal program to educate and train young people. Johnson, with the support of future Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, won appointment as Texas director of the National Youth Administration in 1935. He and Lady Bird moved to Austin, Texas, and Johnson went to work throughout the state helping young people stay in school, get job training, and find employment. Again he fully devoted himself to the effort, and his work was superb.

When James Buchanan, the congressman in Johnson’s home district, died in 1937, Johnson quickly entered the race. He tapped his new wife's inheritance, aligned himself with President Roosevelt's sweeping social policies, and won election in Texas's Tenth District. He was just twenty-eight years old.

Soon after entering Congress, Johnson was winning federal housing projects and dams for his district. He managed to bring electrical power to the lonely Texas Hill Country of his youth, something he claimed for the rest of his days as his proudest achievement.

When one of Texas's two U.S. senators died in 1941, Johnson hoped to win the seat. He confronted a large field of aspiring candidates in the special election, more than 25 in total, and the top aspirants had as much or more political experience as Johnson. In early polling, Johnson trailed the other three leading contenders, including conservative former radio-star-turned-governor named W. Lee "Pass the Biscuits, Pappy" O'Daniel. Johnson, though, enjoyed the support of President Roosevelt.

By election day, Johnson was leading in the polls, and his campaign instructed that the vote tallies in the counties they controlled be reported. That decision gave O’Daniel’s allies the number of votes that needed to be stolen. It was widely alleged that both candidates used fraudulent votes, but O'Daniel finagled more than Johnson and carried the election.

Johnson did not have to give up his House seat to run for the Senate, so he still held office in Washington, D.C. As the country was moving closer to war, he used his contacts with President Roosevelt to obtain an officer's commission in the Naval Reserve, thinking military service would bolster his political resume. When the United States entered World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Navy appointed Johnson as a congressional inspector of the war's progress in the Pacific, thus allowing him to maintain his seat in the House.

On a tour of the southern Pacific in 1942, Johnson flew one combat mission, and it provided a fateful moment in presidential history. Before takeoff, he left one B-26 bomber, the Wabash Cannonball, to use the restroom. On his return, he found his seat taken and so boarded another plane, the Heckling Hare. During the bombing mission, the Heckling Hare was forced to run back to base, while the Wabash Cannonball crashed into the sea, killing all on board.

Johnson received the prestigious Silver Star for his participation. In July 1942, when President Roosevelt insisted that members of Congress leave active service, Johnson returned to his duties in Washington. While he was away in the military, Lady Bird Johnson ran his congressional office and demonstrated her political talents. She proved herself a shrewd businesswoman and a not-so-secret political weapon for her husband.

Observing wartime industrial and technological trends, Johnson invested and became well-to-do for the first time. In 1943, the Johnsons used part of Lady Bird’s inheritance to purchase KTBC in Austin, which then was the only radio station in town and was failing. The merger of media and politics helped Johnson expand his political base. His family also expanded when Lady Bird gave birth to two daughters: Lynda Bird born in 1944 and Luci Baines born in 1947.

By the time World War II ended, the world was a very different place—and so was America. Its uneasy ally from the war, the Soviet Union, refused to withdraw its armed forces from Central and Eastern Europe. The Cold War had begun. Many of Johnson's countrymen were weary of the New Deal's activist social and economic policies at home and the threat of more war overseas; the new communist expansion abroad frightened them.

The Democrats were losing their longtime grip on political power. Republicans briefly claimed control of Congress in the 1946 midterm elections only to lose in 1948. In 1952, the GOP won the White House with President Dwight D. Eisenhower and control of Congress.

While Johnson easily won a sixth term in 1946, his opponent painted him as an old-style liberal, a career politician who had profited from the war while exposing himself to little risk. The charges lingered into the following year, when Johnson once again ran for the U.S. Senate.

Yet again a popular Texas governor was in Johnson’s way. His name was Coke Stevenson, and his presence and character were so impressive that he was widely known as "Mr. Texas." Johnson and Stevenson battled endlessly for the Democratic nomination and forced a runoff. The young congressman waged an all-out, rough-and-tumble Lone Star State campaign, which included using a helicopter to travel throughout the state. He showed that he had learned lessons since his earlier Senate defeat. Three counties along the Texas-Mexico border provided highly suspicious vote tallies that aided Johnson’s narrow margin of victory in the Democratic primary by just 87 votes[BSM(5]  out of 988,295 cast.

Just as important for securing Johnson’s victory, though, were the legal, above-board votes of newly enfranchised black voters in Houston, Texas. A 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawed the Texas mode of disenfranchisement, the white primary, which had declared primary elections to be private affairs. As a result, African Americans in urban Texas were starting to vote in sizeable numbers, and they preferred Johnson over Stevenson because of Johnson’s civil rights record.

Since Republicans were few and far between in Texas, winning the Senate primary assured victory in the general election. Indeed, Johnson easily defeated his Republican opponent and won the Senate seat, but the cost to his credibility was high. Everyone knew the primary had been rife with fraud, and his slim, questionable margin of victory was certainly no popular mandate. Critics began calling him "Landslide Lyndon," and the new senator found their disdain hard to shake.

Senator par Excellence

As a senator, Johnson found his true calling. The Senate, with only a quarter of the membership of the House, gave him a higher national profile. Johnson's ascent was startling; by the end of his first term, he was one of the most powerful senators in America. He used strategies that had enabled his fast climb in the House: wooing formidable members, angling for spots on important committees, and outworking everyone.

Because both Senate Democratic leaders had been defeated by the resurgent Republicans in the recent election, it was a time of rapid advancement for newcomers. Just two years into his Senate term, Johnson was named the whip, or assistant to his party's leader, in charge of rounding up votes. Two years after that, Republicans won a majority in the Senate when Eisenhower took the presidency in 1952. Once again, Johnson's Democratic superiors were election casualties, so he became minority leader in 1953. In the 1954 elections, the Democrats regained control of the Senate, and when the Senate convened in 1955, Johnson became majority leader, the youngest majority leader in the history of the Senate. It was a dizzyingly fast climb, especially considering the importance of seniority for gaining political power in Congress in the twentieth century.

Early in LBJ's Senate career, he had championed military preparedness, but as he rose to power, he increasingly turned his attention to domestic issues. Already contemplating a White House run of his own, he strategically sought to work with, not against, the popular Eisenhower. Laboring almost around the clock, begging and berating to get his way, Johnson was the Senate's master, perhaps its most powerful leader ever.

Working with fellow Texan and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, Johnson was able to compile an impressive record of legislative achievement. LBJ did his homework and had an uncanny ability to know how to approach other senators. He became known for the "Johnson Treatment," in which he leaned close in on a senator, towering over his prey, speaking softly and cajoling, flattering, even bribing, until he won the senator's vote.

Unfortunately, his drive and ambition almost killed him. In July 1955, he suffered a massive heart attack while in the bucolic Virginia countryside. Not yet fifty, he reassessed his lifestyle; he quit smoking, lost weight, and tried to delegate more of his work.

Still serving as the Senate majority leader, Johnson was instrumental in winning passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, working to foster a compromise with northern liberals while soothing southern colleagues who were suspicious of such social change. The act was the first civil rights legislation passed since the 1860s, and while it focused on voting rights, it resulted in little change in the voting rolls in southern states.

When the Soviets launched Sputnik, the world's first man-made satellite, Johnson led the way to get America into the race for space. By 1958, Johnson sensed that he had gone as far in the Senate as he ever would. He turned his sights on the prize of prizes: the presidency.

A Heartbeat from the Presidency

Being from the South was still a handicap to a presidential candidate in 1960; the region had not yet assumed the kind of power that later put Jimmy Carter from Georgia, Bill Clinton from Arkansas, and both George Bushes from Texas in the White House. In 1952 and 1956, Johnson had tried but failed to be named vice president on the Democratic ticket, referring to himself as a "western" candidate. His strategy in 1956 signaled his ultimate ambition, the presidency. That year, he staged a failed favorite son bid for the White House that was designed to improve his chances for the vice presidency.

In 1960, his primary competition for the presidential nomination was his Senate colleague, John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Massachusetts. For the only time in his life, Johnson was out-campaigned. Kennedy announced his candidacy early, spent lavishly, worked local political machines with corporate efficiency, and piled up one primary win after another.

Kennedy focused on the states with primaries, then a relatively new feature in American politics, while Johnson held back, thinking convention delegates and not primary voters would decide the nomination. He believed his greater stature in the Senate would catapult him to victory when balloting took place at the convention. He also believed Kennedy's youth and Catholicism would take a toll, but they never did. The young man from Boston won the party's nomination on the first ballot.

However, Kennedy was a decided underdog to win the White House. The Republicans had nominated a skilled and experienced candidate, Vice President Richard Nixon. The Democrats needed a running mate who would appeal to those who felt uneasy about Kennedy. Lyndon Johnson—southern, Protestant, mature, and the ultimate congressional insider—proved a perfect contrast to the northeastern, Catholic, youthful Democratic nominee.

Kennedy was both amused and awed by the larger-than-life Texan and was mildly surprised when Johnson not only accepted the offer but campaigned hard for the ticket. It paid off because 1960 was a close presidential race; Kennedy defeated Nixon by less than 120,000 votes. Louisiana and Texas, which had defected to the Republicans during the Eisenhower years, returned to the Democratic fold and helped the Kennedy-Johnson ticket win.

President Kennedy relegated his vice president to the outer circles of his New Frontier agenda and did not typically rely on him for advice. Still the president gave Johnson some significant responsibilities. Johnson headed the NASA space program, played a key role in military policy, and chaired the President's Committee for Equal Employment Opportunity.

In foreign policy, Johnson had much less influence although he traveled widely representing the administration abroad. He encouraged acceptance of a diplomatic "trade" of Russian missiles in Cuba for American ones in Turkey to help resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis. Overall, Johnson was frustrated as vice president, particularly when Kennedy and his advisors ignored him and refused to take advantage of his expertise.

In late November 1963, President Kennedy decided to travel to Texas to shore up support for his upcoming reelection bid. The multicity trip included a motorcade through Dallas where Kennedy rode in an open limousine. Johnson was riding two cars behind Kennedy when the bullets struck the young president. A secret service agent forced Johnson onto the floorboard as the car raced off for Parkland Hospital. The Johnsons were placed in a small trauma room and informed at 1:20 pm (CST) that Kennedy was dead.

Aboard Air Force One, before its return to Washington, Johnson was sworn in as president; Lady Bird and Jackie Kennedy were at his side. When the plane landed, Johnson gave a brief speech to a dazed nation, promising, "I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help—and God’s." During these sad days, Johnson showed tremendous compassion and warmth toward Jackie Kennedy. He kept Kennedy's cabinet and top aides, telling them that he and the nation needed them to provide continuity. Within days, Johnson firmly grasped the reins of government.

The new president addressed a joint session of Congress on November 27, 1963, beginning his remarks: “All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.” He asked lawmakers and the country to continue the legislative work begun by Kennedy but stalled in Congress. Passage of Kennedy’s reform agenda, Johnson intimated, would be the ultimate memorial to the deceased president. Johnson spoke of the unfulfilled Kennedy agenda as a series of “dreams” for a better America and a better world: “conquering the vastness of space,” “partnership across the Atlantic” and the Pacific, implementation of a Peace Corps, better public education for “all our children,” “jobs for all who seek them,” “care for our elderly,” “an all-out attack on mental illness,” and “equal rights for all Americans, whatever their race or color.”

Harkening back to Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, when he said, "So let us begin anew," Johnson urged Americans, “Let us continue.” Johnson concluded his speech by urging the country to come together with one purpose: “The time has come for Americans of all races and creeds and political beliefs to understand and to respect one another. So let us put an end to the teaching and the preaching of hate and evil and violence. Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far left and the far right, from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry, from those defiant of law, and those who pour venom into our Nation's bloodstream.”