Lyndon B. Johnson: The Civil Rights President

this episode is brought to you by curiosity stream a subscription streaming service that offers over 2000 documentaries and nonfiction titles unlimited access starting at just $2.99 a month and 30 days for free if you sign up through the link below and use the channel code biographic s' more on them two bits here is a question for you what would you call a man who spends all day as eagerly brown-nosing his superiors as he does bullying of those below him a man who swears like a sailor gropes his secretaries and is so obsessed with toilet humor that he considers it the height of hilarity to make employees watch him urinate would you call him crude boorish an abuser or would you call him a great man a reformist hero when talking about the 36th president the answer is well all of those things born in Texas in 1908 lyndon b johnson was a strange and complex man elevated to the presidency following john f kennedy's assassination johnson was notorious for treating those around him like trash mere decoration to his relentless pursuit of power he bullied staffers exposed himself to colleagues and emotionally abused everyone yet he was also the president who forced through the civil rights and voting rights act ended segregation and Riaan franchised millions of non-white Americans both enoguh and a saint a monster and a man this is the fascinating tale of Lyndon Johnson America's most complicated presidents when Lyndon Baines Johnson was born on the 27th of August 1908 there was almost no bigger backwater of in Texas Hill Country the first of five children Johnson grew up in a house with no electricity in a world in which indoor plumbing was probably slang for genitalia but while the family lived in circumstances best described as humble they weren't nobodies Johnson's father Sam Ely Johnson jr. was a one-time member of the State House of Representatives among his ancestors Sam could count both Texas revolutionaries and Confederate soldiers but Sam was also a dreamer with little head for business by the time Johnson was born dad had already sent the family into debt with cotton market speculation the indignity of being from an educated family on hard times seems to have seeped its way into Johnson's soul for his entire life the 36th President would be alternately morose and prickly about what happened to his daddy still the family's fortunes recovered enough that in 1913 Sam was able to move into a bigger house in Johnson City but this was only an improvement in Texas Hill Country tons Johnson still had to ride a mule three miles to his one-room school each day yes even at this early age the boy I was getting a taste for politics in 1918 Sam decided to run for his old seat in the Texas House of Representatives he brought his boy along on the campaign aged only 10 Johnson got his first look at the rough-and-tumble world of electoral politics when his daddy won it made a big impact a little while after the boy told his classmates you know someday I'm gonna be President of the United States by the early 1920s the now teenaged Johnson was sitting in on legislative sessions watching Sam work unfortunately the early 20s was also when the u.s. plunged into its sharpest recession yet Sam who'd reinvested in cotton lost everything again Johnson would like to say that he decided then and there that I was not going to be the victim of a system which would allow the price of a commodity like cotton to drop and destroy the homes of people like my own family however he did very little to actually escape the system in 1924 Johnson graduated as president of a six pupil class and applied to Southwest Texas State Teachers College only to be rejected and see his life grind to a miserable by now the boy had grown into a huge man of 6-foot 3-inches he weighed 200 pounds so any responded to his college rejection by turning to drinking and fighting you better believe that he caused a raucous arrested after a brawl Johnson left Texas in bitterness buying a car with five friends and heading to California but he fared little better in the Sunshine State where he failed to make any friends he was just too certain that people were looking down on him not physically that would have been difficult but for his rural background his vulgar ways for the rest of his life Johnson would never escape his insecurities about who he was and where he came from after three aimless years Johnson reapplied for college in 1927 this time he was accepted and began studying to be a teacher as part of his training he was assigned to a mexican-american school in Cotulla Texas what he saw there would shake the bitter giant to his core the school was a dump the children lived in poverty so grinding it made Johnson's own upbringing seem positively luxurious it wasn't long after that that Johnson made a crucial decision forget teaching he was going to go into politics in 1931 Sam's political friend Richard kleeberg announced that he would run for Congress Johnson already looking for ways out of the teaching world quit to help the campaign this move kick-started his career after Clare Berg won Texas's 14th congressional district he invited Johnson to accompany him to Washington DC Johnson didn't so much grass but this opportunity as he did pull it into a gigantic bear hug and wrestle it to the ground for the next two years Johnson spent every waking moment learning the ropes on Capitol Hill the sense of power seems to have intoxicated him he barely slept instead digging deep ins a congressional protocol and furiously sucking up to anyone and everyone this included fellow Texan Sam Rayburn while it was their shared origin that drew Johnson and Rayburn together it was ray burns connections to the establishments that kept the younger man hanging on his every word in no time at all this friendship would pay Johnson dividends but not before it made some major changes to his private life when Johnson announced in 1934 that he was going to marry Claudia Alta Taylor better known by her childhood nickname Lady Bird it must have caused a few raised eyebrows Johnson was notorious for having an overactive sex drive how his friends must have wondered was Johnson gonna keep his Johnson tucked away for marriage the simple answer was that he wasn't throughout his married life Johnson would cheat on Lady Bird with a frequency as regular as it was depressing not that Johnson's bad behavior did any damage to his career under Sam Rayburn swing Johnson began to shine when FDR's New Deal set up a National Youth administration in every state to provide jobs and educate the young rather ensured his protege became the Texas director but don't go thinking Johnson's only skill was his commitment licking every but that crossed his path as Texas National Youth administration director Johnson did a sterling job for two years he put in heart-attack inducing hours to make sure that his program overperformed ever since Sid witnessed real poverty in the Cotulla school Johnson had felt a kinship with America's dispossessed he may have been power-hungry horndog but he was also one that wanted to help by February 1937 Johnson's work had made him famous in Texas so when a special election was held in his home district Johnson was a shoo-in he convinced ladybird to sing ten thousand dollars of her own inheritance into his campaign which is about 180 thousand dollars in today's money and he promoted himself as a supporter of the New Deal the election was a cakewalk that year aged just 28 Johnson returned to the house no longer an aide but a representative one of his first victories was finally bringing electricity to Texas Hill Country until the day he died Johnson would insist that that was his greatest achievement but Johnson wasn't happy to stop at a seat in the house in 1941 Texas senator Morris Shepard and his replacement Andrew Jackson Houston both obligingly died leaving a seat wide open Johnson declared he had run for it certain that he was going to win this time he was gonna meet his match w Lee Pappy O'Daniel was Texas's populist governor and a stunning weasel when Johnson dabbled in voter fraud during the primary happy responded by pulling off fraudulent voting on a breathtaking scale unable to compete Johnson was forced to watch in horror as the Senate seat he felt was his birthright just slipped through his fingers in the aftermath of his defeat Johnson pulled some strings and had himself made a lieutenant commander in the Navy maybe he wanted to bolster his public image maybe he just wanted to shake off the bitter taste of losing unfortunately that Navy was about to be dragged into the biggest war in history but before we get into that war I want to take a quick moment to tell you about a day sponsor curiosity stream curiosity stream is a subscription streaming service that offers over 2000 documentaries and nonfiction titles from some of the world's best filmmakers including exclusive originals 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more videos and I just think curiosity streams a great fit for videos like this I mean we make educational content they make educational content mmm great fits and let's get back to today's video [Music] until the day he died Lyndon Johnson would proudly wear his Silver Star awarded in 1942 it showed that it served under hostile fire a distinction marked him out from most of his fellow congressmen what it didn't show was that it only ever flown a single mission while hundreds of thousands of others were sent off to die in the waters of the Pacific representative Johnson was able to earn his medal and then be all like well I was fun bye guys medals aside the war was good for Johnson in other ways as well he shrewdly invested in new war technologies turning a substantial profit by the time he returned to Congress it was wealthy and he was decorated but he was also precarious in the aftermath of the war Johnson ran for his sixth house term although he won he was shaken up by the way as opponents painted him as a war profiteer it got rich while others died if his career was going to continue it need to escape the house fast luckily an opportunity was about to present itself in the summer of 1948 one of Texas's two Senate seats again fell empty the frontrunner for it was Koch Stevenson a man so beloved in Texas that he was literally known as mr. Texas but Johnson had learned his lesson from his earlier failed Senate 'but this time he would get that seat no matter what to say Johnson played dirty would be an insult to dirt he engaged in voter fraud so massive it could probably be seen from space there's even a rumor that he tried to paint Stevenson as someone a little too friendly with his pet pigs but it was the voter fraud that carried the day three extremely suspicious tallies at the last minute swung the race Johnson won by 87 votes out of nearly a million cast he also won himself the ironic nickname landslide Lyndon but what did Johnson care it set his sights on a Senate seat and had won it nor was he content to stop there in no time at all Lyndon Johnson was gonna rise so fast even Lyndon Johnson would be surprised and things got rolling in 1950 that year the Republicans toppled many of the Democrat old-guard in the Senate with the seniors gone Johnson was able to get promoted to democratic whip this meant he was perfectly poised when the 1952 election felled even more senior Democrats in the aftermath the Democrats made Lyndon Johnson minority leader the up shots when the Democrats took the Senate in 1954 Johnson aged only 46 automatically became majority leader the youngest person to hold the role in history but almost as soon as he reached the top of the Senate Johnson almost lost everything in mid 1955 the chronic smoker suffered a heart attack so massive it was described as the worst a man could have and still live in the aftermath Johnson was confined to his house for months where he fell into a deep depression those who knew him say that he spent those black months wondering what would have happened if it died what is a bitter 'i would have said and he came to a terrifying conclusion it would say here is a man who wanted power for powers sake and got what he wants it he did nothing for anyone else and soon no one will remember him when Johnson finally returned to work he was a changed man he quit smoking started trying to lose weight but the changes were more than superficial from now on Johnson would no longer pursue power merely for powers sake it would use it to change the way people saw him to change the way that they would remember him in doing so he would also change history [Music] the rest of Johnson's Senate career reads like a cross between an inspirational Lifetime TV movie hands the arrest record of Harvey Weinstein if Johnson had already had a reputation as a bully a Senate Majority Leader he was a thousand times worse he liked to force his secretaries to take notes while he urinated occasionally showing them his organ and declaring have you ever seen anything as big as this he scratched his private parts while speaking on the Senate floor threatened those who stood in his way speaking of threats Senate Democrats soon learned to fear the Johnson treatment anyone who might break ranks was taken to one side there this giant of a man would trapped them in a corner and repeatedly jab him in the chest with his finger threatening them with worse and worse fates until they finally cracked it was unpleasant it was unacceptable yet it was also effective under Johnson the Senate Democrats became the United Army and Johnson used this military discipline to do undeniably great things with his old mentor Sam Rayburn now Speaker of the House Johnson pushed through bills most Democrats but have previously never dreamed of voting for in 1957 he forced through Eisenhower's Civil Rights Act the first civil rights legislation passed since reconstruction while Eisenhower was the driving force passing the bill it would have been impossible without Johnson he was able to soothe the fears of his fellow southerners when that didn't work he simply browbeat them into submission by 1960 Johnson's reputation in the Senate had grown so vast that he felt confident enough to take part in the Democratic primaries his only serious opponent was some Catholic greenhorn from Massachusetts you can always imagine Johnson giving a snort of laughter a Catholic leading the Democrats this was gonna be easy but of course Johnson had miscalculated John Fitzgerald Kennedy may have been both Catholic and young but he was anything but green JFK absolutely crushed the primary Johnson whose plan had involved not actively campaigning but simply hoovering up delegates thanks to his Senate reputation was left eating the young man's dust come summer the telegenic senator from Massachusetts was his party's candidate almost an afterthought JFK offered Johnson the VP place honesty everyone's amazement Johnson said yes it turns out to be a shrewd move on both of their parts despite his disappointment and not being top of the ticket Johnson campaigns like hell in the south his presence calmed Democrats skittish about Kennedy's northern roots it made all the difference that November JFK won the presidency by the closest margin since 1916 just edging out Nixon in the popular vote but a win is a win and in January of 1961 Johnson became vice president of the United States it was an exercise in bitter disappointments although Kennedy gave Johnson important roles in the space program a military policy he kept to the loudmouth Texan firmly out of his inner circle all of Johnson's insecurities came bubbling back up he envied Kennedy's slick charm raged that his own southern backgrounds meant that he was looked down on he wasn't wrong Bobby Kennedy openly regarded him as an uncouth hick but Johnson was also frustrated that his decades of congressional experience weren't being put to use when JFK introduced a sweeping civil rights bill in 1963 it stagnated precisely because Kennedy was unwilling to engage in the kind of horse trading that Johnson was so adept at by that November Lyndon Johnson was frustrated disillusioned and likely unsure what future he had left as he traveled to his home state with the presidency might have wondered if he would ever fulfill his dream of being a great man of history of being remembered well he needn't have worried fate was about to throw him a helping hand in the bloodiest and most tragic way possible [Music] Lyndon Johnson's life changed forever at 12:30 p.m. on November the 22nd 1963 the Vice President was riding just two cars behind as Kennedy was shot by the time Johnson reached the hospital the president had been pronounced dead barely two hours later 2:38 p.m. Johnson took the oath of office on board Air Force One Lady Bird and Jacqueline Kennedy were his side below in the cargo hold the remains of John Fitzgerald Kennedy waited to be flown back to Washington that same afternoon Johnson gave his first speech as president I will do my best he told the shocked nation that is all I can do the days that followed were a maelstrom of confusion on November the 24th Jackie B killed Lee Harvey Oswald that same day Johnson appointed the Warren Commission to investigate behind the scenes two things were in turmoil Johnson chose not to replace any of JFK's cabinets giving the grieving nation a sense of continuity but there was still the weird uncomfortable drama of moving Jackie and the family out of the White House and Johnson and Lady Bird in one advisor said that the site of JFK's rocking chair being taken out just as Johnson's cowboy saddle was brought in made him comprehend the enormity of what it happens yet in the midst of the crisis Johnson's political cunning did not desert him Southern Democrats had stalled Kennedy's civil rights build to the point of killing us but Johnson realized that were a to pin the act on the memory of the slain presidents no one would dare oppose it in a heated debate during the early hours of November the 27th Johnson's advisors begged him not to do it not to squander his goodwill as JFK's successor on rights for Negroes well what the hell's the presidency for Johnson replied and that was that that same winter Johnson reframed the Civil Rights Act as Kennedy's legacy he began pushing it forward daring Congress to stand against him that spring 1964 the House passed a version of the Act even stronger than what JFK had envisaged Southern Democrats were horrified and so with Johnson's staff it was election year civil rights were a vote loser why not wait until after November but Johnson knew it was Now or Never over the next few months Johnson hammered away at the Senate rather than play it safe he chased down every damn bastard and made sure that he got his vote as a southern senator later said we could have beaten John Kennedy on civil rights but not Lyndon Johnson or more accurately not a Lyndon Johnson who was cynically brilliantly using Kennedy's memory to get what he wanted at last following a near record 83 day filibuster by southerners the bill cleared the Senate on July the 2nd 1964 lyndon b johnson sat down in front of an audience including luminaries like martin luther king and signs the civil rights act into law the most significant piece of legislation passed in post-war America the civil rights act ended Jim Crow segregation and the rights of employers to discriminate on grounds of race while racism would still infect many parts of US society it was a massive step in the right direction later that day Johnson remarks to an aide it is an important gain but I think we just delivered the south to the Republican Party for a long time to come yet he still signs the bill despite knowing it would hobble his party despite knowing it would cost him reelection that right there that is why despite all the bullying all the nastiness there are still people who respect the 36th President [Applause] [Music] in the end the Civil Rights Act didn't hurt Johnson's reelection chances at all there at Lincoln's made the mistake of nominating Barry Goldwater a guy is so right-wing the Democrats easily painted him as a trigger-happy extremist that November Johnson won the presidency with 61 percent of the popular vote still the highest margin in history Johnson took his landslide as a mandate to transform the country he declared a war on poverty increased welfare established Medicaid and Medicare began the headstart program in schools appointed the first African Americans to both the US cabinet and the Supreme Court he built new homes and granted huge tracts of wilderness federal protection as far as Johnson was concerned he was picking up where the New Deal left off creating what he called the Great Society some of it like Head Start is still widely used today yet while it would be social programs that built his legacy in his era Johnson would be known for two things war and race relations and let's start with race relations despite the Civil Rights Act a whole bunch of southern states were still doing what they could to keep non-white people from participating in democracy on a state level this often played out with ridiculous voter registration laws which used the fig-leaf of literacy tests to disenfranchise millions of black Americans so Johnson did what Johnson did best using his gigantic frame and uncouth personality as a weapon he bullied pressured and browbeat Congress into passing the 1965 Voting Rights Act as one slightly hyperbolic source put it Abraham Lincoln struck off the chains of black Americans it was Johnson who led them into the voting booths of course this telling ignores all the black activists on the ground doing the hardest work of all and getting the bruises to show for it bruises because Johnson's presidency was plagued by race rats over for long hot summers from 1965 to 1968 race rats exploded everywhere from LA to Ohio to Washington DC when Johnson set up the National Advisory Commission on civil disorders they returned with a stark warning thanks to decades of inequality America was in danger of dividing into two societies one white and one black for the pro Civil Rights Johnson this was appalling news if racial tensions were running high in the cities things were even worse abroad after swearing on the campaign trail not to increase the US presence in Vietnam Johnson opened his first full term with a massive influx of soldiers and bombing raids by 1968 over half a million u.s. servicemen would be in Vietnam in a conflict that would eventually claim over 58,000 American lives and millions of Vietnamese as the war grew Johnson's popularity dropped eventually plummeting to 40% everywhere he went the president would encounter protesters chanting hey hey LBJ how many kids did you kill today but while by 1968 the honeymoon period was definitely over Johnson still wasn't done constitutionally he had a right to run for another full term and why not he was unpopular but no more so than Harry Truman had been Wayne had pulled off his surprise 1948 win but Johnson wasn't going to have a chance to put his legendary campaign skills to the test as 1968 dawned something was about to happen that would make his chances of another term sink from unlikely to utterly impossible [Music] in terms of losing the battle that winning the propaganda war it's hard to think of a more successful campaign than the Tet Offensive starting in January 1968 the Vietcong engaged in a whirlwind of kamikaze attacks bringing carnage in their wake militarily it was useless one estimate puts the North Vietnamese casualties as high as a hundred thousands but in terms of objects oh boy was it ever a winner caught on the back foot the Johnson White House was left unable to explain the sudden increase in Americans coming home in body bags in its failure to win a war it had said was almost over less than a month later the Democratic primaries got underway in New Hampshire outside challenger Eugene McCarthy management at 41% of the vote a huge blow to any sitting president by now Johnson could barely leave the White House without getting booed or hackles then Bobby Kennedy announced that he would be entering the race and Johnson realized the game was over he could have maybe bounced back truman style from an unpopular war in 1967 but after the Tet Offensive he was toast on March the 31st 1968 Lyndon beat Johnson made a surprise TV announcement as well as instructing the military to begin peace talks with North Vietnam he declared that he would not seek a second term as president any elation Democrats felt at Johnson's exit was quickly countered by a series of disasters just days later Martin Luther King jr. was assassinated in Memphis sparking a fresh wave of rotting two months after that Bobby Kennedy was shot dead in California when the Democratic convention finally met in August massive riots and battles with police all contributed to the feeling of a country's living out of control come November the electorate voted for the man who promised law and order Richard Nixon Lyndon Johnson left office under a cloud of abysmal approval ratings and a recent Republican landslide he retired back to his ranch in Texas but it wasn't a long life post presidency On January the 22nd 1973 Lyndon Johnson died of a heart attack it was 64 today the Lyndon Johnson legacy is a complicated one while the similarly unpopular Truman would be reassessed as one of America's greatest presidents opinion on Johnson still goes up and down like some sort of demented yo on the one hands he was a prize-winning [ __ ] guy he would slip his hand up a secretary skirt he would reduce his staffers to tears and he wasn't afraid of using physical violence on the other hands he genuinely did care abouts America's racial minorities in the alternative universe where JFK survives Dallas you have a weaker civil rights act and no Voting Rights Act at all the legacy of Johnson then is a mixed one both truly great and truly awful depending on which part you're looking at but then you couldn't have one without the other it was Johnson's bad side his terrible ego that drove him to the top that made him desperate to be remembered yet it was only thanks to that dark drive that he was eventually able to end Jim Crow for all his myriad faults Lyndon Johnson wound up being that rare beast a demonstrably bad man who devoted his life to doing good his legacy may be a complex one but without him America would undoubtedly be a worse place than it is today so I really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe for brand new videos several times a week thank you for watching

Channel: Biographics

Views: 341,465

Keywords: biographics, biography, biographies, people, famous people, simon whistler

Id: NBb9zMEoRHY

Length: 27min 37sec (1657 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 08 2020