Remembering Ladybird

Surely any decisions that a president makes on
major policies probably first starts in the bedroom.
Thats because no matter who sits on the prez's
cabinet his closest advisor will more than likely
be his wife. With that said Lyndon Baines Johnson
was greatly influenced by his wife Ladybird when
it came time to pass civil rights legislation. Only
now is it being revealed how much of a role this
great lady played in the civil rights movement.
Thank you Ms First Lady for standing tall.


Lady Bird Johnson, the widow of Lyndon B. Johnson, whose tumultuous presidency often overshadowed her considerable achievements as an activist first lady, environmentalist and founder of a multimillion-dollar media business, died Wednesday at her home in Austin. She was 94.Johnson had been in failing health for several years, weakened by a series of strokes and other ailments, including a low-grade fever that kept her in the hospital for a week last month. A family spokeswoman said the former first lady's daughters, Lynda Johnson Robb and Luci Baines Johnson, were by her side when she died at 2:18 p.m. PDT.

As the wife of the 36th president, Johnson was often portrayed by contemporaries and some historians as a meek woman who silently endured her husband's volcanic outbursts and infidelities. Yet she, perhaps more than any presidential wife since Eleanor Roosevelt, expanded the terrain of the first lady by taking a visible role in her husband's administration, most memorably in her national beautification efforts.

Her love of nature was enshrined in law when her husband signed the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. Conceived primarily to restrict junkyards and unsightly signs along the nation's highways, it was the first major legislative campaign launched by a first lady.Although often eclipsed by protests over the Vietnam War and civil rights — the dominant issues of President Johnson's tenure from 1963 to 1969 — her effort to replace urban blight with flowers and trees prepared the way for the environmental movement of the 1970s."I think there is no legacy she would more treasure than to have helped people recognize the value in preserving and promoting our native land," Luci Baines Johnson said in a statement shortly before her mother's death.

Johnson also broke new ground by campaigning independently of her husband. During the 1964 presidential campaign, she undertook a courageous whistle-stop tour of the South, where his civil rights agenda was widely reviled. Two months later, President Johnson won one of the largest landslides in U.S. history. She held the Bible at his swearing-in, a precedent followed by all her successors.





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