#lbj library

[deadpresidents]

"My name is Lyndon Baines Johnson! I'm your goddamn President and I'm here to tell you my office and the people of the United States are behind you!"

-- President Lyndon B. Johnson, shouting to evacuated citizens as he walked through a shelter in New Orleans with a flashlight following Hurricane Betsy, September 1965.

[jumbojohnson]

A smattering of pictures from the LBJ library. The note he wrote to his student -- "your words are a clear indication to your beautiful character" -- was a highlight, as well as the Johnson Juice.

[juicetrump2]

The LBJ Presidential Library at 50

For five decades, the LBJ Library & Museum has been not only keeping history but also making history

Lyndon Baines Johnson often gets pigeon-holed as “the Vietnam President” for his massive expansion of the Vietnam War that soarked great protests and division in American Society. Vietnam was so unpopular if resulted in Johnson declining to seek a second term.

While criticism of Johnson on Vietnam is valid, to focus solely on it misses his significant domestic successes. LBJ’s Great society achievements include:

The Civil Rights Act if 1964

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

The Economic Opportunity Act

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act

National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Humanities

The War on Poverty

Head Start

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting [PBS]

Amazing what. Democrat President can accomplish with large Democrat majorities in both the House and the Senate and a Republican party that could be bipartisan and act with some integrity. This was also at a time where the income [anything over $400,000] of the rich was taxed at 70% so there was miney for social programs, infrastructure, AND a never-ending, unwinable, foreign war.

LBJ was a complicated character with a loud, oversized Texas personality, but he had also been a teacher and had a strong drive to help the less fortunate and improve society for ALL. Not qualities possessed by recent, RANCIDLY ORANGE, occupants of the White House. Oh yeah, LBJ was a fierce DEAL MAKER and knew how to get things done [unlike trump].

Johnson’s biography:

A timeline of the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President of the United States

[chochokpi]

I was wandering through LBJ Library in Austin, TX and they have an old Battleship Board Game Box. I noticed as I looked closer that the women in the back ground are having just as much fun as the men playing the board game. 

[merelybehowclearly]

LBJ Presidential Library // Austin, TX

[footnoteinhistory]

it’s so nice of Mark Updegrove to step down as director of the LBJ Library to let me take over!! catch me on the next flight to Austin to take my place as the rightful promoter of Lyndon’s legacy

[lbaej85]

When you arrive early to your own party, you get to take a nap. 😂 Candid from the pre-Inaugural Gala, Jan. 18, 1965.

[deadpresidents]

Answering that question about writing to Presidents reminds me of something that I found fascinating. When I lived in Austin many years ago, I went to the LBJ Library a million times obviously, but on one of my visits, I met with the Supervisory Archivist who explained some of the inner workings of the library to me (a really cool experience, by the way). When you walk into the LBJ Library, one of the most incredible things is seeing the several floors of archival materials in their red boxes:

Those are filled with millions of feet of papers -- from the important to the seemingly meaningless -- from President Johnson's Administration and they are available for archivists to research. But to illustrate how LBJ and his Administration archived EVERYTHING, the supervisory archivist told me that if your parent or grandparent (or you, if you were alive at the time) wrote a letter to President Johnson or the White House between 1963-1969, it is archived somewhere in those files. How cool is that?!