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78-598: The gardens were established in 1974 to a design by F. M. Mooberry . In 1979 Lady Bird Johnson dedicated the gardens to Ford B. Draper and Henry A. Thouron for their contributions to the Brandywine Conservancy . The gardens include wildflowers, trees, and shrubs set within landscaped woodlands , wetland, flood plain , and meadow . 39°52′12″N 75°35′35″W  /  39.86990°N 75.59314°W  / 39.86990; -75.59314 This Delaware County, Pennsylvania state location article

156-658: A First Lady; she also served as Lady Bird's staff director. Lady Bird's tenure as First Lady marked the beginning of hiring employees in the East Wing to work specifically on the First Lady's projects. President Johnson had initially said he would turn down the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1964, having been unhappy during his service in President Kennedy's administration and believing

234-475: A White House luncheon, Eartha Kitt , when asked by the First Lady what her views were on the Vietnam War , replied: "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot ." Kitt's anti-war remarks reportedly angered Lyndon and Mrs. Johnson, and this resulted in the derailment of Kitt's professional career. Toward the end of Johnson's first term, Lady Bird

312-463: A great deal of land but no liquid assets to pay for labor. They also maintained the "belief that gangs afforded the most efficient means of labor organization", something nearly all formerly enslaved people resisted. Preferring "to organize themselves into kin groups", as well as "minimize chances for white male-black female contact by removing their female kin from work environments supervised closely by whites", black southerners were "determined to resist

390-728: A sharecropping basis. In South Africa the 1913 Natives' Land Act outlawed the ownership of land by Africans in areas designated for white ownership and effectively reduced the status of most sharecroppers to tenant farmers and then to farm laborers. In the 1960s, generous subsidies to white farmers meant that most farmers could afford to work their entire farms, and sharecropping faded out. The arrangement has reappeared in other African countries in modern times, including Ghana and Zimbabwe . Economic historian Pius S. Nyambara argued that Eurocentric historiographical devices such as "feudalism" or "slavery" often qualified by weak prefixes like "semi-" or "quasi-" are not helpful in understanding

468-727: A significant institution in many states for decades following the Civil War. By the early 1930s, there were 5.5 million white tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and mixed cropping/laborers in the United States; and 3 million Blacks. In Tennessee, sharecroppers operated approximately one-third of all farm units in the state in the 1930s, with white people making up two thirds or more of the sharecroppers. In Mississippi, by 1900, 36% of all white farmers were tenants or sharecroppers, while 85% of black farmers were. In Georgia, fewer than 16,000 farms were operated by black owners in 1910, while, at

546-601: A solo electioneering tour. She advocated beautifying the nation's cities and highways ("Where flowers bloom, so does hope"). The Highway Beautification Act was informally known as "Lady Bird's Bill". She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1984, the highest honors bestowed upon a U.S. civilian. Johnson has been consistently ranked in occasional Siena College Research Institute surveys as one of

624-496: A step up in school readiness. Lady Bird created the modern structure of the First Lady's office: she was the first in this role to have a press secretary and chief of staff of her own, and an outside liaison with Congress. Her press secretary from 1963 to 1969 was Liz Carpenter , a fellow alumna of the University of Texas. As a mark of changing times, Carpenter was the first professional newswoman to become press secretary to

702-608: A substitute for Jacqueline Kennedy at official events and functions. Within her first year as Second Lady, she had substituted for Mrs. Kennedy at more than 50 events, roughly one per week. This experience prepared Lady Bird for the following challenges of her unexpected years as First Lady. On November 22, 1963, the Johnsons were accompanying the Kennedys in Dallas when President Kennedy was assassinated ; they were two cars behind

780-429: A variable rental payment, paid in arrears . There are three different types of contracts. According to sociologist Edward Royce, "adherents of the neoclassical approach" argued that sharecropping incentivized laborers by giving them a vested interest in the crop. American plantations were wary of this interest, as they felt that would lead to African Americans demanding rights of partnership. Many black laborers denied

858-477: A women's honorary service organization, and believed in student leadership. Her goal was to become a reporter, but she also earned a teaching certificate. The summer after her second graduation, she and a girlfriend traveled to New York City and Washington, where they peered through the fence at the White House. Dallek described Lady Bird as having undergone a boost in her self-confidence through her years at

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936-716: A young Houston reporter, Lady Bird followed Rather in her car. Stopping him, she invited him to return and have some punch, explaining, "That's just the way Lyndon sometimes is." During the years of the Johnson presidency, Lyndon, in one incident, yelled at the White House photographer who failed to show up for a photo shoot with the First Lady. She consoled the photographer afterward, who said that, despite his feelings against President Johnson, he "would walk over hot coals for Lady Bird." In January–February 1943, during World War II, Lady Bird Johnson spent $ 17,500 of her inheritance to purchase KTBC , an Austin radio station. She bought

1014-481: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to a garden in the United States is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Lady Bird Johnson Claudia Alta " Lady Bird " Johnson ( née   Taylor ; December 22, 1912 – July 11, 2007) was first lady of the United States from 1963 to 1969 as the wife of then president Lyndon B. Johnson . She had previously served as second lady from 1961 to 1963 when her husband

1092-401: Is a legal arrangement in which a landowner allows a tenant (sharecropper) to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping is not to be conflated with tenant farming , providing the tenant a higher economic and social status. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have used a form of

1170-404: Is not as exploitative as it is often perceived. John Heath and Hans P. Binswanger write that "evidence from around the world suggests that sharecropping is often a way for differently endowed enterprises to pool resources to mutual benefit, overcoming credit restraints and helping to manage risk." Sharecropping agreements can be made fairly, as a form of tenant farming or sharefarming that has

1248-589: The Driskill Hotel , Lyndon proposed. Lady Bird did not want to rush into marriage, but he was persistent and did not want to wait. Ten weeks later, Lady Bird accepted his proposal. The couple married on November 17, 1934, at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in San Antonio, Texas . After she suffered three miscarriages, the couple had two daughters together: Lynda Bird (born 1944) and Luci Baines (born 1947). The couple and their two daughters all shared

1326-616: The Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona , fulfilling a goal that both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had sought to accomplish. She said the dam belonged to all Americans amid an increasing concern for water that affected every American "no matter whether he lives in New York or Page, Arizona ." In late-August 1967, Lady Bird traveled to Montreal , Quebec, Canada, to attend the Expo 67 , a White House aide saying she had been urged by

1404-505: The Warren Commission as testimony. LBJ advisor Abe Fortas had made notations on her document to add detail. In their plans for their trip to Texas, the Johnsons had intended to entertain the Kennedys that night at their ranch. In the days following the assassination, Lady Bird worked with Jacqueline Kennedy on the transition of her husband to the White House. While having great respect for Jacqueline and finding her strong in

1482-485: The Western United States during World War II . By the end of the 1960s, sharecropping had disappeared in the United States. About two-thirds of sharecroppers were white, the rest black. Sharecroppers, the poorest of the poor, organized for better conditions. The racially integrated Southern Tenant Farmers Union made gains for sharecroppers in the 1930s. Sharecropping had diminished in the 1940s due to

1560-581: The 1960s. She worked to beautify Washington D.C. by planting thousands of flowers, set up the White House Natural Beauty Conference, and lobbied Congress for the president's full range of environmental initiatives. In 1965, she took the lead in calling for passage of the Highway Beautification Act . The act called for control of outdoor advertising , including removal of certain types of signs, along

1638-526: The Great Depression, farm mechanization, and other factors. Sharecropping may have been harmful to tenants, with many cases of high interest rates, unpredictable harvests, and unscrupulous landlords and merchants often keeping tenant farm families severely indebted. The debt was often compounded year on year leaving the cropper vulnerable to intimidation and shortchanging. Nevertheless, it appeared to be inevitable, with no serious alternative unless

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1716-460: The President in his motorcade. Lyndon was sworn in as president on Air Force One two hours after Kennedy died, with Lady Bird and Jacqueline Kennedy by his side. Afterward, Lady Bird created a tape on which she recorded her memories of the assassination, saying it was "primarily as a form of therapy to help me over the shock and horror of the experience." She submitted a transcript of the tape to

1794-708: The President to travel there since his own trip three months prior. In mid-September 1967, Lady Bird began touring the Midwestern United States as part of a trip that one White House described as "mostly agriculture during the day and culture at night." President Johnson was then declining in support by farmers, months before a planned re-election bid. Speaking to a crowd in Minneapolis , Minnesota, on September 20, Lady Bird said problems within American cities were creating crime. In January 1968 at

1872-521: The Southern states. It is still used in many rural poor areas of the world today, notably in Pakistan , India , and Bangladesh . In settler colonies of colonial Africa, sharecropping was a feature of the agricultural life. White farmers, who owned most of the land, were frequently unable to work the whole of their farm for lack of capital. They, therefore, had African farmers to work the excess on

1950-544: The U.S. increased during the Great Depression with the creation of tenant farmers following the failure of many small farms throughout the Dustbowl . Traditional sharecropping declined after mechanization of farm work became economical beginning in the late 1930s and early 1940s. As a result, many sharecroppers were forced off the farms, and migrated to cities to work in factories, or became migrant workers in

2028-605: The United States originated in the Natchez District , roughly centered in Adams County, Mississippi with its county seat, Natchez . After the war, plantations and other lands throughout the South were seized by the federal government. In January 1865, General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 15 , which announced that he would temporarily grant newly freed families 40 acres of this seized land on

2106-412: The aftermath of the murder, Lady Bird believed from the start of her tenure as First Lady that she would be unfavorably compared to her immediate predecessor. On her last day in the White House, Jacqueline Kennedy left Lady Bird a note in which she promised she would "be happy" there. As First Lady and trusted presidential confidant, Lady Bird Johnson helped establish the public environmental movement in

2184-652: The antecedents and functions of sharecropping in Africa. Prior to the Civil War, sharecropping is known to have existed in Mississippi and is believed to have been in place in Tennessee . However, it was not until the economic upheaval caused by the American Civil War and the end of slavery during and after Reconstruction that it became widespread in the South. It is theorized that sharecropping in

2262-534: The classics aloud to tiny Lady Bird [... and who] scandalized people for miles around by entertaining Negroes in her home, and once even started to write a book about Negro religious practices, called Bio Baptism." Her husband, however, tended to see black people as nothing more than "hewers of wood and drawers of water", according to his younger son Anthony. Lady Bird had two elder brothers, Thomas Jefferson Jr. (1901–1959) and Antonio, also known as Tony (1904–1986). Her widowed father married twice more. His second wife

2340-507: The college. Her time there marked a departure from her timid behavior in her youth. A friend in Austin introduced her to Lyndon B. Johnson , a 26-year-old Congressional aide with political aspirations, working for Congressman Richard Kleberg . Lady Bird recalled having felt "like a moth drawn to a flame". Biographer Randall B. Woods attributed Johnson's "neglect of his legal studies" to his courting of Lady Bird. On their first date, at

2418-475: The core Johnson radio properties survived and prospered. Emmis Communications bought KLBJ-AM , KLBJ-FM , KGSR , and three other stations from LBJ Holding in 2003 for $ 105 million. Eventually, Lady Bird's initial $ 41,000 investment turned into more than $ 150 million for the LBJ Holding Company. She was the first president's wife to have become a millionaire in her own right before her husband

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2496-471: The country. She became the first president's wife to advocate actively for legislation when she was instrumental in promoting the Highway Beautification Act , which was nicknamed "Lady Bird's Bill". It was developed to beautify the nation's highway system by limiting billboards and by planting roadside areas. She was also an advocate of the Head Start program to give children from lower-income families

2574-548: The crop was harvested, the planter or merchants who held the lien sold the harvest for the sharecropper and settled the debt. Sociologist Jeffery M. Paige made a distinction between centralized sharecropping found on cotton plantations and the decentralized sharecropping with other crops. The former is characterized by long lasting tenure. Tenants are tied to the landlord through the plantation store . This form of tenure tends to be replaced by paid salaries as markets penetrate. Decentralized sharecropping involves virtually no role for

2652-448: The cropper received half of cash paid for the crop on his parcel. Sharecroppers also often received their farming tools and all other goods from the landowner they were contracted with. Landowners dictated decisions relating to the crop mix, and sharecroppers were often in agreements to sell their portion of the crop back to the landowner, thus being subjected to manipulated prices. In addition to this, landowners, threatening to not renew

2730-408: The croppers left agriculture. Landlords opt for sharecropping to avoid the administrative costs and shirking that occurs on plantations and haciendas . It is preferred to cash tenancy because cash tenants take all the risks, and any harvest failure will hurt them and not the landlord. Therefore, they tend to demand lower rents than sharecroppers. Some economists have argued that sharecropping

2808-548: The election that November, with Lady Bird helping the Democratic ticket carry seven Southern states. Reflecting later, Lady Bird said that the years her husband served as vice president and she as Second Lady were "a very different period of our lives." Nationally, the two had a kind of celebrity, but they both found the office of Vice President to lack power. As the Vice President's wife, Lady Bird often served as

2886-419: The inefficiency of agricultural share-contracting. Steven N.S. Cheung (1969), challenged this view, showing that with sufficient competition and in the absence of transaction costs, share tenancy will be equivalent to competitive labor markets and therefore efficient. He also showed that in the presence of transaction costs, share-contracting may be preferred to either wage contracts or rent contracts—due to

2964-619: The initials LBJ. Their daughters lived in the White House during their teenage years, under media scrutiny. Lynda Bird married Charles S. Robb in a White House ceremony. He was later elected governor of Virginia and U.S. Senator. Luci Baines married Pat Nugent in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and, later, Ian Turpin. Lady Bird had seven grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren at

3042-448: The islands and coastal regions of Georgia . Many believed that this policy would be extended to all formerly enslaved people and their families as repayment for their treatment at the end of the war. In the summer of 1865, President Andrew Johnson , as one of the first acts of Reconstruction, instead ordered all land under federal control be returned to the owners from whom it had been seized. Southern landowners thus found themselves with

3120-482: The job of the modern first lady. She was the first one to have a big staff, the first one to have a comprehensive program in her own name, the first one to write a book about the White House years, when she leaves. She had an important role in setting up an enduring role for her husband with the LBJ Library. She's the first one to campaign extensively on her own for her husband. Sharecropping Sharecropping

3198-408: The landlord: plots are scattered, peasants manage their own labor and the landowners do not manufacture the crops. This form of tenure becomes more common when markets penetrate. Farmers who farmed land belonging to others but owned their own mule and plow were called tenant farmers ; they owed the landowner a smaller share of their crops, as the landowner did not have to provide them with as much in

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3276-516: The lease at the end of the growing season, were able to apply pressure to their tenants. Sharecropping often proved economically problematic, as the landowners held significant economic control. In the Reconstruction Era, sharecropping was one of few options for penniless freedmen to support themselves and their families. Other solutions included the crop-lien system (where the farmer was extended credit for seed and other supplies by

3354-490: The merchant), a rent labor system (where the farmer rents the land but keeps their entire crop), and the wage system (worker earns a fixed wage but keeps none of their crop). Sharecropping as historically practiced in the American South was more economically productive than the gang system plantations using enslaved workers, though less productive than modern agricultural techniques. Sharecropping continued to be

3432-434: The merchant. If there was any cash left over, the cropper kept it—but if their share came to less than what they owed, they remained in debt. A new system of credit, the crop lien , became closely associated with sharecropping. Under this system, a planter or merchant extended a line of credit to the sharecropper while taking the year's crop as collateral. The sharecropper could then draw food and supplies all year long. When

3510-482: The mitigation of labor shirking and the provision of risk sharing. Joseph Stiglitz (1974, 1988), suggested that if share tenancy is only a labor contract, then it is only pairwise-efficient and that land-to-the-tiller reform would improve social efficiency by removing the necessity for labor contracts in the first place. Reid (1973), Murrel (1983), Roumasset (1995) and Allen and Lueck (2004) provided transaction cost theories of share-contracting, wherein tenancy

3588-615: The momentous events of her times, including the Great Society 's War on Poverty ; the national civil rights and social protest movements; her activism on behalf of the environment; and the Vietnam War . Johnson was acquainted with a long span of fellow First Ladies, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Laura Bush . She was protected by the United States Secret Service for 44 years. Biographer Betty Boyd Caroli said in 2015 of Johnson that She really invented

3666-667: The money to launch his campaign. She took $ 10,000 of her inheritance from her mother's estate to help start his political career. The couple settled in Washington, D.C., after Lyndon was elected to Congress. After he enlisted in the Navy at the outset of the Second World War , Lady Bird ran his congressional office. Lady Bird sometimes served as a mediating force between her wilful husband and those he encountered. On one occasion after Lyndon had clashed with Dan Rather , then

3744-674: The most highly regarded American first ladies per historians' assessments. Claudia Alta Taylor was born on December 22, 1912, in Karnack, Texas , a town in Harrison County , near the eastern state line with Louisiana. Her birthplace was "The Brick House", an antebellum plantation house on the outskirts of town, which her father had purchased shortly before her birth. She was a descendant of English Protestant martyr Rowland Taylor through his grandson Captain Thomas J. Taylor II. She

3822-473: The nation's growing Interstate Highway System and the existing federal-aid primary highway system . It also required certain junkyards along Interstate or primary highways to be removed or screened and encouraged scenic enhancement and roadside development. According to Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall, she single-handedly, "influenced the president to demand-and support-more far-sighted conservation legislation." Her capital beautification project turned

3900-672: The national capital into a showcase for the nation. It was intended to improve physical conditions in Washington, D.C. for residents and tourists by planting millions of flowers, many of them on National Park Service land along roadways around the capital. She said, "Where flowers bloom, so does hope." She worked extensively with the American Association of Nurserymen (AAN) executive Vice President Robert F. Lederer to protect wildflowers and promoted planting them along highways. Her efforts inspired similar programs throughout

3978-540: The oath of office on January 20, 1965, starting a tradition which continues. On September 22, 1965, Lady Bird dedicated a Peoria, Illinois , landscape plaza, with the president of the Peoria City Beautification Association, Leslie Kenyon, saying during the ceremony that Lady Bird was the first presidential spouse "who has visited our city as an official guest in our 140 years of existence." On September 22, 1966, Lady Bird dedicated

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4056-524: The old slave ways". Not with standing, many formerly enslaved people, now called freedmen , having no land or other assets of their own, needed to work to support their families. A sharecropping system centered on cotton , a major cash crop , developed as a result. Large plantations were subdivided into plots that could be worked by sharecroppers. Initially, sharecroppers in the American South were almost all formerly enslaved black people, but eventually cash-strapped indigent white farmers were integrated into

4134-550: The party did not want him. Although aides could not sway him, the First Lady convinced him otherwise, reassuring him of his worthiness and saying that if he dropped out, the Republicans would likely take the White House. During the 1964 campaign, Lady Bird traveled through eight Southern states from October 6 to 9 in a chartered train , the Lady Bird Special , at one point giving 45 speeches over four days. It

4212-764: The radio station from a three-man partnership that included Robert B. Anderson , a future U.S. Secretary of the Navy and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury , and Texas oilman and rancher Wesley West . She served as president of the LBJ Holding Co., and her husband negotiated an agreement with the CBS radio network. Despite Lyndon's objections, Lady Bird expanded by buying a television station in 1952. She reminded him that she could do as she wished with her inheritance. The station, KTBC -TV/7 (then affiliated with CBS as well),

4290-678: The same time, African-Americans managed 106,738 farms as tenants. Around this time, sharecroppers began to form unions protesting against poor treatment, beginning in Tallapoosa County , Alabama in 1931 and Arkansas in 1934. Membership in the Southern Tenant Farmers Union included both blacks and poor whites, who used meetings, protests, and labor strikes to push for better treatment. The success of these actions frightened and enraged landlords, who responded with aggressive tactics. Landless farmers who fought

4368-399: The sharecropper, and usually provided other necessities such as housing, tools, seed, or working animals . Local merchants usually provide food and other supplies to the sharecropper on credit. In exchange for the land and supplies, the cropper would pay the owner a share of the crop at the end of the season, typically one-half to two-thirds. The cropper used his share to pay off their debt to

4446-631: The sharecropping system were socially denounced, harassed by legal and illegal means, and physically attacked by officials, landlords' agents, or in extreme cases, angry mobs. Sharecroppers' strikes in Arkansas and the Missouri Bootheel , the 1939 Missouri Sharecroppers' Strike, were documented in the newsreel Oh Freedom After While . The plight of a sharecropper was addressed in the song Sharecropper's Blues , recorded by Charlie Barnet and His Orchestra in 1944. The sharecropping system in

4524-636: The summer session, where she took her first journalism course. But, homesick for Texas, she stayed home and did not return for the fall term at Alabama. Instead, she and a high school friend enrolled at St. Mary's Episcopal College for Women, an Episcopal boarding junior college for women in Dallas. It influenced her to "convert to the Episcopal faith", although she waited five years for confirmation. After graduating from St. Mary's in May 1930, Lady Bird toyed with returning to Alabama. Another friend from Marshall

4602-410: The system. During Reconstruction, the federal Freedmen's Bureau ordered the arrangements for freedmen and wrote and enforced their contracts. American sharecroppers worked a section of the plantation independently. In South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, the dominant crop was usually cotton. In other areas it could be tobacco , rice , or sugar . At harvest time the crop was sold and

4680-687: The system. Some are governed by tradition, and others by law. The French métayage , the Catalan masoveria , the Castilian mediero , the Slavic połownictwo and izdolshchina, the Italian mezzadria , and the Islamic system of muzara‘a (المزارعة), are examples of legal systems that have supported sharecropping. Under a sharecropping system, landowners provided a share of land to be worked by

4758-712: The time of her death. Their marriage, however, suffered due to Lyndon's numerous affairs —in particular, the relationship between Lyndon and socialite Alice Marsh . This relationship was on and off between 1939 and the early years of his presidency and was eventually ended due to Marsh's opposition to the Vietnam War. Lady Bird Johnson's awareness of these infidelities was included in her 2007 obituary, noting that Lady Bird "was openly humiliated". Her husband would even brag that he had slept with more women than his predecessor, John F. Kennedy . When Lyndon decided to run for Congress from Austin's 10th district, Lady Bird provided

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4836-476: The town of Jefferson, Texas , since there was no high school in the Karnack area. (Her brothers were sent to boarding schools in New York.) She graduated third in her class at the age of 15 from Marshall Senior High School in the nearby county seat. Despite her young age, her father gave her a car so that she could drive herself to school, a distance of 15 miles (24 km) each way. She said of that time, "[I]t

4914-563: The train in Marshall and ride to the part of the world that meant watermelon cuttings, picnics at the creek, and a lot of company every Sunday." According to Lady Bird, her Aunt Effie "opened my spirit to beauty, but she neglected to give me any insight into the practical matters a girl should know about, such as how to dress or choose one's friends or learning to dance." Lady Bird was a shy and quiet girl who spent much of her youth alone outdoors. "People always look back at it now and assume it

4992-481: The unilateral authority that landowners hoped to achieve, further complicating relations between landowners and sharecroppers. Sharecropping may allow women to have access to arable land , albeit not as owners, in places where ownership rights are vested only in men. The theory of share tenancy was long dominated by Alfred Marshall 's famous footnote in Book VI, Chapter X.14 of Principles where he illustrated

5070-649: The way of supplies. Historically, sharecropping occurred extensively in Scotland , Ireland and colonial Africa . Use of the sharecropper system has also been identified in England (as the practice of "farming to halves"). It was widely used in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877) that followed the American Civil War , which was economically devastating to

5148-653: Was Austin's monopoly VHF franchise and generated revenues that made the Johnsons millionaires. Over the years, journalists have revealed that Lyndon used his influence in the Senate to influence the Federal Communications Commission into granting the monopoly license, which was in Lady Bird's name. LBJ Holding also had two small banks; they failed and were closed in 1991 by the FDIC . But

5226-515: Was Beulah Taylor, a bookkeeper at a general store. His third wife was Ruth Scroggins, whom he married in 1937. Lady Bird was largely raised by her maternal aunt Effie Pattillo, who moved to Karnack after her sister's death. She also visited her Pattillo relatives in Autauga County, Alabama , every summer until she was a young woman. As she explained, "Until I was about 20, summertime always meant Alabama to me. With Aunt Effie, we would board

5304-457: Was a sharecropper's son. He became a wealthy businessman and owned 15,000 acres (6,070 ha) of cotton and two general stores. "My father was a very strong character, to put it mildly", his daughter once said. "He lived by his own rules. It was a whole feudal way of life, really." Her mother, born Minnie Lee Pattillo (1874–1918), loved opera and felt out of place in Karnack; she was often in "poor emotional and physical health". When Lady Bird

5382-464: Was an awful chore for my daddy to delegate some person from his business to take me in and out." During her senior year, when she realized that she had the highest grades in her class, she "purposely allowed her grades to slip" so that she would not have to give the valedictorian or salutatorian speech. After graduating from high school in May 1928, Lady Bird entered the University of Alabama for

5460-492: Was anxious for her husband to leave office. In September 1967, Lady Bird voiced her concerns that a second term would be detrimental to his health. Health concerns may have been one of the reasons why President Johnson decided not to seek re-election . In 1970, Lady Bird published A White House Diary , her intimate, behind-the-scenes account of her husband's presidency spanning November 22, 1963, to January 20, 1969. Beginning with President Kennedy's assassination, she recorded

5538-450: Was elected to office. She remained involved with the company until she was in her eighties. John F. Kennedy chose Lyndon Johnson as his running mate for the 1960 election. At Kennedy's request, Lady Bird took an expanded role during the campaign, as his wife Jacqueline was pregnant with their second child. Over 71 days, Lady Bird traveled 35,000 miles (56,000 km) through 11 states and appeared at 150 events. Kennedy and Johnson won

5616-421: Was five years old, Minnie fell down a flight of stairs while pregnant. She died of complications of miscarriage in 1918. In a profile of Lady Bird Johnson, Time magazine described Lady Bird's mother as "a tall, eccentric woman from an old and aristocratic Alabama family, [who] liked to wear long white dresses and heavy veils [...] fussed over food fads, played grand opera endlessly on the phonograph, loved to read

5694-445: Was going to the University of Texas , so she chartered a plane to Austin to join her. As the plane landed, she was awed by the sight of a field covered with bluebonnets and instantly fell in love with the city. Lady Bird received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history with honors in 1933 and a second bachelor's degree in journalism cum laude in 1934. She was active on campus in different organizations, including Texas Orange Jackets,

5772-432: Was lonely," she once said about her childhood. "To me it definitely was not. ... I spent a lot of time just walking and fishing and swimming." She developed her lifelong love of the outdoors as a child growing up in the tall pines and bayous of East Texas , where she watched the wildflowers bloom each spring. When it came time to enter high school, Lady Bird had to move away and live with another family during weekdays in

5850-650: Was named for her mother's brother Claud. During her infancy, her nursemaid, Alice Tittle, said that she was as "pretty as a ladybird". Opinions differ about whether the name refers to a bird or a ladybird beetle , the latter of which is commonly referred to as a "ladybug" in North America. The nickname virtually replaced her first name for the rest of her life. Her father and siblings called her Lady, and her husband called her Bird—the name she used on her marriage license. During her teenage years, some classmates would call her Bird to provoke her since she reportedly

5928-556: Was not fond of the name. Nearly all of her maternal and paternal immigrant ancestors arrived in the Virginia Colony during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, likely as indentured servants as were most early settlers in the colony. Her father, a native of Alabama, had primarily English ancestry and some Welsh and Danish. Her mother, also a native of Alabama, was of English and Scottish descent. Her father, Thomas Jefferson Jonson Taylor (August 29, 1874 – October 22, 1960),

6006-568: Was the first solo whistle-stop tour by a First Lady. In the same month, Lady Bird continued her campaign tour by airplane, with stops in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Indiana, and Kentucky. In the November 1964 presidential election, Johnson won a landslide victory over his Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater . At the ceremony to swear in the new president, Lady Bird held the Bible as her husband took

6084-518: Was vice president. Notably well educated for a woman of her era, Lady Bird proved a capable manager and a successful investor. After marrying Lyndon Johnson in 1934 when he was a political hopeful in Austin, Texas , she used a modest inheritance to bankroll his congressional campaign and then ran his office while he served in the Navy. As First Lady, Johnson broke new ground by interacting directly with Congress , employing her press secretary, and making

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