[reporter] Let's give a mighty welcome
to the First Lady of our land, Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson.
[Lynda] Well, I don't think mother
ever would have chosen politics for her career.
[Lady Bird] Here am I with Luci,
and there is Lyndon.
[Lynda] But she married him
for better or for worse.
My parents, they were a team.
[reporter] It appears as though
something has happened in the motorcade route.
[Brower] They were thrust into this position
-in a very violent way. -[camera shutter]
She assures him that he is the right man
to push America forward.
[Califano] Lyndon Johnson had great highs,
and great lows.
[Marton] Lady Bird couldn't escape...
-[crowd shouting] -...the tentacle of that war.
[troops shout]
She was the only person who would always tell him the truth.
Lyndon Johnson's mood shifts were gargantuan.
[Marton] Lady Bird knew how to stabilize him.
[Sweig] Who privately ran the psychological show?
Clearly, Lady Bird.
[Brower] Without her, he would never have been President.
[applause]
[camera shutters]
[narrator] Throughout her time in the White House,
Lady Bird Johnson recorded an audio diary.
It's a unique insight into her life as First Lady.
[Lady Bird] Friday, November 22nd:
It all began so beautifully.
[crowd cheering]
The sun came out bright and beautiful.
[crowd cheering]
We were going into Dallas.
[reporter] And here they come, right down towards us...
-[crowd cheering] -...I can, uh, see Mrs. Kennedy.
Then comes the Vice President, and Mrs. Johnson, smiling.
-Boy, this is something. -[crowd chattering]
[Updegrove] The Johnsons were products of Texas
with outsized pride in their state.
[Johnson] It is my high honor
to present to the good people of Fort Worth,
our beloved President of the United States.
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] Over the past year,
Lady Bird has watched her husband
fall into a deep depression.
[Marton] Lyndon Johnson was
possibly the most miserable
vice president in American history.
He did not like being second fiddle to anybody,
not even the President of the United States.
-[slide clicks] -[Updegrove] As always,
Lady Bird was there to lift him up,
but LBJ had episodes of depression throughout his life,
in times of great uncertainty.
And the one thing that LBJ was uncertain about,
when he was vice president to John F. Kennedy,
was his own political future.
[crowds cheering]
-[melancholic music] -[Lady Bird] Suddenly...
there was a sharp...
loud report...
[gunshot]
...and then two more.
-[gunshot] -[eerie music]
[gunshot]
[reporter] It appears as though
something has happened in the motorcade route.
Something, I repeat, has happened
in the motorcade route.
[Lady Bird] And our SS man vaulted over the seat...
on top of Lyndon,
threw him to the floor,
and said, "Get down!”
[car engine revving]
-[Tires squeaking] -The cars accelerated
faster and faster.
I looked up...
and saw...
-hospital. -[Tires squeaking]
Only then did I believe
that this might be what it was.
As we ground to a halt,
Secret Service men began to hustle us out.
I cast one last look back over my shoulder...
and saw a bundle of pink, just like a drift of blossoms,
lying in the back seat.
I-- I think it was Mrs. Kennedy...
lying over the President's body.
[Luci] I was in Washington D.C....
and a young girl in my class came in saying,
"I just been listening to the radio,
the President's been shot! The President's been shot!"
[Lynda] I knelt on the floor,
and prayed that it wasn't going to be so because...
um, I loved President Kennedy.
[reporter] President Kennedy has been assassinated,
it's official now,
-the President is dead. -[woman crying]
[Luci] I saw a member of my father's
Secret Service detail walking towards me...
And he said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
[crying in crowd]
[Lady Bird] Suddenly, I found myself face to face with Jackie
in a small hall...
I don't think I ever saw anybody...
so much alone in my life.
I went up to her...
put my arms around her, and said something like...
"God help us all,"
because my feelings for her were
too tumultuous to put into words.
[plane engine starting]
[Updegrove] Lyndon Johnson,
of course he wanted the presidency.
He didn't want the presidency in the manner in which he got it.
[Lady Bird] I went in to see Mrs. Kennedy...
I asked her if I couldn't get...
somebody to help her change,
and she said, "Oh, no,
I want them to see what they have done to Jack."
-[judge] I do solemnly swear... -[Johnson] I do solemnly swear.
[Lady Bird] I tried to express something of how we felt.
[judge] ...as the president of the United States...
[Lady Bird] I said, "Oh, Mrs. Kennedy,
you know, we never even wanted to be Vice President,
and now, dear God, it's come to this."
[Updegrove] Lady Bird was keenly aware
that she, like her husband,
was so dramatically different
than her predecessor.
[slide clicks]
She had an East Texas accent that was that was as thick as
gravy on a chicken fried steak.
And in the Kennedy White House they were mocked...
as Uncle corn pone and his little mutton chop.
[celluloid flickering]
[reporter] The privacy of life draws to a close
as the new first family prepares
for the ceaseless spotlights of the White House.
[Luci] When we moved into the White House,
it was all draped in black.
There were a lot of mixed emotions, but...
it was the beginning of letting go of limbo.
[Lady Bird] I feel as though I'm suddenly on stage
for a part I never rehearsed.
[Updegrove] Lady Bird Johnson said,
people were looking at the living
and wishing for the dead.
They were looking at the new president and first lady,
but their hearts were aching for President and Mrs. Kennedy.
[somber music]
In that moment of crisis
after he takes the presidency,
while she might have felt insecure,
I think Lady Bird Johnson put that on the backburner.
[Marton] Lyndon Johnson called the people around Kennedy,
"the Harvards,"
and they brought out all his innate insecurities
that he hadn't gone to an Ivy League school.
They made him feel every inch a country bumpkin.
[Updegrove] Lady Bird Johnson has to reassure him
that he is made for this moment,
that if anyone can carry on in the wake of John F. Kennedy,
it's Lyndon Baines Johnson.
[Johnson] An assassin's bullet...
has thrust upon me the awesome burden...
of the Presidency.
[Updegrove] He realizes he has this moment
to push through the first meaningful
civil rights legislation.
[applause]
[narrator] In his first address to Congress as President,
Johnson announces he will enact
Kennedy's stalled Civil Rights Bill.
[Johnson] Let us resolve
that John Fitzgerald Kennedy did not live or die...
in vain.
[applause]
[Califano] It was very shrewd.
He brilliantly used the death of John Kennedy.
[Updegrove] He tells them,
this is what your slain president would have wanted.
It is time now to write the next chapter.
[APPLAUSE]
[Dickerson] She may well be
the hardest working first lady in history.
None before has ever been so closely identified
with her husband's career.
[Brower] Lady Bird would tell the White House Chief Usher,
"Whatever he needs comes first,
my daughters second, and I'll take what's left over."
[Sweig] They were, in fact, much more equals in terms of
building that political career,
and it became hers, as well.
She called it, "our presidency."
I envision my job
to be balm, sustainer, and sometimes critic
to my husband.
[reporter] You mentioned basic misunderstandings...
[Updegrove] There's a very revealing phone conversation
that happens after a press conference.
Lady Bird Johnson gives him a very specific critique...
on how he performs.
[Lady Bird] You want to listen for about one minute...
-[Johnson] Yes, Ma'am. -...to, uh, my critique.
Or would you rather wait 'til tonight?
[Johnson] Yes, Ma'am, I'm-- I'm willing now.
I thought that you looked strong, firm,
and like a reliable guy....
All he wanted to hear was, "I was wonderful." [laughs]
And all she was going to do was tell him the truth.
[Lady Bird] ...During the statement,
you were a little breathless,
and there was too much looking down,
and I think it was a little too fast.
Not enough change of pace;
a drop in voice at the end of sentence.
-[pen clatters] -[Brower] And he's accepting it.
He wouldn't accept that from anybody else.
...I really didn't like
the answer on De Gaulle because...
[Brower] She was the only person
who could be really blunt with him.
[Updegrove] She's talking to him
about how he's articulating policy.
And you can see he's relying on her.
[Lady Bird] ...because you-- [Johnson] Well, the trouble is
that they criticize you
-for taking so much time. -[Lady Bird] Uh-huh
In general, I'd say, uh, it was, uh, a good B plus.
[Luci] She gave him an overall grade.
But it was just a B plus.
And my father was aiming for the As in life,
all his life.
[narrator] It's the Spring of 1964,
and Johnson is still pushing
for Kennedy's proposed Civil Rights Bill
to end segregation.
[Rigueur] John F. Kennedy had been incredibly cautious
on issues of civil rights.
[slide clicks]
So, Johnson sees this as an opportunity
to be on the right side of history,
and to make really significant change.
[Updegrove] Despite growing up in Texas,
very prejudiced state,
Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson were
very committed to racial equality.
[Lady Bird] The brick house, where I was born,
built by slave labor in the 1850s.
[sentimental music]
[narrator] It was Lady Bird's nursemaid, Alice Tittle,
who declared that baby Claudia Alta Taylor
-[slide clicks] -was as pretty as a ladybird...
[slide clicks]
a nickname that stuck for life.
[slide clicks]
[Rigueur] Lady Bird Johnson comes from
an upper-class elite family
with black workers, with black maids.
[Lady Bird] There's Zephyr with Luci and the peonies.
[Updegrove] When her husband was in the Senate,
Lady Bird Johnson had seen first-hand
the scourge of segregation, legal apartheid
when she drove with Zephyr Wright
from Washington DC. back to Texas.
[Rigueur] Lady Bird challenges segregation,
refusing to stay in hotels
if her cook, or her servants, can't stay with her.
[slide clicks]
[Updegrove] Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson know
there's an uphill struggle...
to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
He and Lady Bird talk about this openly.
Southern segregationists are still very much
a core contingency within the Democratic camp.
[Updegrove] The Johnsons cultivated Southern Democrats
throughout LBJ's political career,
they helped him to ascend the ranks.
And now they realize
they're gonna have to run over those same people.
[Califano] His aides said, "Don't do this
because you're running for re-election in November of '64."
[Updegrove] They know that it might cost him
the 1964 election,
and earning the presidency in his own right.
[narrator] Despite what's at stake, the Johnsons press ahead.
[Updegrove] Lyndon and Lady Bird
were wholly complimentary human beings.
Johnson's way of getting things done
was known [laughs] as the Johnson treatment.
[Rigueur] He uses his fiery temper...
[slide clicks]
...but also his physical build to intimidate people,
to broker a bipartisan alliance
between Republicans and northern Democrats.
[Marton] One of Lady Bird's least favorite roles
was going after people who had been insulted,
humiliated, offended by her husband.
[Califano] She was more important
to what he did in the White House
than any staffer.
She was an absolutely essential counterweight
to his brutality.
[Updegrove] He could be extraordinarily cruel
to Lady Bird Johnson,
particularly when she was pushing him to be his best self.
[Brower] He would compare her
to other women he thought were more beautiful and say,
"Oh, that dress looks like a saddlebag. Take that off.”
And, "Why aren't you wearing lipstick?"
[Marton] He would not think twice
about embarrassing her in public.
A person with less steel could not have survived.
I-- I've always wondered
whether Lyndon Johnson let his demons graze...
knowing that Lady Bird Johnson
would inevitably summon his better angels.
[marching band music]
[reporter] Congress passes the most sweeping
civil rights bill ever to be written into the law.
[narrator] Just seven months into his Presidency,
Johnson signs the 1964 Civil Rights Act
ending legalized segregation in America.
[Updegrove] It's the first meaningful
civil rights legislation to allow America
to fulfill its promise of all men are created equal,
long eluded in our history.
But LBJ was never gonna rest on his laurels 'cause he knew
the ephemeral nature of political power.
[Lady Bird] Now, there's me,
and there is Lyndon.
A younger and slimmer Lyndon
[Lady Bird laughs]
[Caroli] The courtship of Lady Bird and Lyndon Johnson
has got to be one of the most unusual in presidential history.
[jaunty music playing]
[narrator] Lyndon proposed to Lady Bird
on their very first date.
She was a 21-year-old college graduate,
he was a 26-year-old congressional aide.
[Updegrove] He sees something in Lady Bird,
and he's smitten right away.
[Sweig] He was ling and working in Washington.
His vitality and sexuality was all just a huge turn on.
[Caroli] Lyndon was a lot like her father,
and she adored her father.
[Lady Bird] There's my daddy, Thomas Jefferson Taylor.
Big man, tall and heavy...
[Caroli] Her mother died when she was five,
and I think it had an enormous effect
on the kind of person she became.
[Sweig] She had to be her own emotional ballast
from very early on.
[Caroli] Lyndon Johnson could
start down the stairs in a good mood,
and arrive at the right at the bottom in a bad mood,
and you can see that in the courtship letters.
[narrator] When Lyndon returned to work in Washington,
the couple wrote each other nearly 90 letters
in less than 90 days.
[Caroli] He writes "I'm very unhappy tonight.
All week I've felt this way."
[Caroli] In another he says,
"This morning I'm ambitious, proud, energetic,
and very madly in love with you."
And at the end, he says,
"How cruel it was to even let you know
how despondent I felt last week."
[Sweig] She discovers
he is an emotionally brittle and needy person.
[Lynda] She loved him.
But she didn't need him as much as he needed her.
[Brower] He was essentially a manic-depressive,
and Lady Bird evened him out.
[narrator] Lady Bird deliberated over Lyndon's marriage proposal
for two and a half months before he forced the issue.
[Caroli] He says, "If we don't do it now, we never will."
[narrator] Twenty-four hours later,
they were married.
[Caroli] She recognized that he was the weaker person
with enormous ambition, enormous possibilities,
and she was willing to put up with the bad side
in order to be part of the good side.
[marching band music]
[reporter] As the Democratic Party delegates
gather in Atlantic City,
all the hoopla begins to build...
[Updegrove] On the eve of the Democratic National Convention,
which is about to crown
its presidential candidate for the election of 1964,
Lyndon Johnson has a profound moment of doubt.
[narrator] It's a chance for Johnson
to secure his own mandate.
But he refuses to leave the White House.
[Johnson] I don't think a white southerner
is the man to unite this nation in this hour.
[indistinct shouting]
[Updegrove] He sees an increasingly divided nation,
the Civil Rights Act jeopardizing the southern states
meaning they may well turn Republican.
[crowd roars]
[Updegrove] He sees that America
is still deeply missing John F. Kennedy,
and they see Bobby Kennedy as an alternative.
[Johnson] There are younger men, and better prepared men,
and Harvard educated men...
[narrator] Johnson writes a statement
saying he is not the man to take the country forward.
[sad music]
[Marton] Lady Bird understood
that he would not be happy
if someone else was in the White House
instead of him.
[narrator] With Johnson's aides at a loss for what to do,
Lady Bird writes her husband a carefully worded letter.
"Beloved, you are as brave as Harry Truman,
or FDR, or Lincoln.
You've been strong, patient,
determined beyond any words of mine to express.
To step out now would be wrong for your country,
and I can see nothing...
but a lonely wasteland for your future."
[Sweig] Suggesting to Lyndon Johnson
that he's a coward
is a brilliant way
of getting him out of bed.
But she also elevates his presidency
to potentially being one of the greats in American history.
[Luci] "I know it is your choice.
But I know you are as brave as any of the 35.
I love you always, Bird.”
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] Within hours of reading the letter,
Johnson is at the Convention in Atlantic City.
[crowd cheering]
[Johnson] My fellow Americans,
I accept your nomination.
[crowd cheers]
[Sweig] Lady Bird was absolutely essential
to his emotional wellbeing,
and that was deeply tied with his ability to perform.
[Johnson] Prosperity for most has not
has not brought prosperity to all.
[Updegrove] If Lady Bird Johnson gets...
-LBJ to Atlantic City... -[crowd cheering]
...she is a crucial part of American history.
Most Americans want an education for every child,
to the limit of his ability, and so do I.
[crowd whistles and cheers]
[Updegrove] If Lyndon Johnson had not won
the presidency in 1965,
we would not have the laws of the Great Society,
which provide the foundation for modern America.
[Johnson] Most Americans want medical care for older citizens,
and so do I.
[Updegrove] Those laws that transform America
at this turning point in our history.
[Johnson] I ask the American people
for a mandate to begin.
[crowd cheers and applauds]
[Updegrove] He needed the reassurance
of the person he most trusted in the world...
and that was Lady Bird Johnson.
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] The 1964 Presidential Election
is only four weeks away.
[reporter] The Johnson family is busy on the campaign trail.
Lynda, and her mother, board the Lady Bird Special
for a whistle-stop tour of the South
where Democratic defection threatens.
[Brower] It's shortly after the Civil Rights Act is passed,
and Southerners are furious.
They think that Johnson is attacking their way of life.
[Luci] Many of my father's advisors said,
"Don't put campaign money into the south...
[crowd cheering]
...they're not gonna support us."
But, my mother couldn't bear
to give the south away...
without a try.
[Lady Bird] I've got too much respect for the south,
and too much in common with it,
and too much love for it, uh, to count it off.
[Brower] It's incredibly dangerous to do this,
and this is at a time when
were three people in Mississippi
who were murdered simply for trying to get
some African Americans registered to vote.
[man] Johnson has no place here, whatsoever.
The whole state of Georgia's for Goldwater.
[Lady Bird] Georgia strains run strong in my family.
[Rigueur] She challenges the very system
she grew up in...
and to say,
"I support Civil Rights, you should as well,"
she ends up being faced with threats
from the Ku Klux Klan.
[Lynda] Oh, it was dangerous,
and there were some threats
-to blow up the train. -[crowd cheering]
[Luci] You'd see signs that said,
"Black Bird, fly away home."
[Brower] Lady Bird's husband was running against Barry Goldwater,
who was trying to
take advantage of this opportunity
to woo Southern Democrats to the Republican Party.
[crowd chanting]
[Lynda] There were a lot of people
who would try to drown you out.
I got mad, and I was ready to go out and...
whip 'em.
-[crowd shouting] -My friends...
this is a country of many viewpoints,
and I respect your right to express your own.
Now it's my turn to express mine.
-Thank you. -[crowd applauds and cheers]
[narrator] LBJ fears he's lost the entire South.
But three of the eight states Lady Bird campaigned in
will buck the trend,
and go for her husband on Election Day.
[crowd cheers]
[Luci] My father met us at the end of the road.
She looked at him, and you could see in his eyes,
"You got an A plus, girl, you got an A plus."
[crowd shouting]
[narrator] Two weeks before the election,
Johnson's Presidential campaign was hit by scandal.
[phone ringing]
[narrator] News is about to break
that chief aide, Walter Jenkins, has been arrested
after being caught having sex with a man in a YMCA men's room.
[Goldwater] There's a President
who must be using every power of his great office
to cover up the sorriest of rumors.
[Updegrove] The arrest of Walter Jenkins
is a crisis of titanic proportions.
At that time, homosexuality was an absolute stigma.
LBJ knew that it would be,
not just stain on his administration,
but on the presidency itself.
[Caroli] Jenkins was so close to the president
he could easily be blackmailed.
He knew everything,
foreign policy, things that nobody else knew.
If this type of man had information...
vital to our survival,
It could be compromised very dangerously.
[Updegrove] Walter Jenkins had been working for LBJ
for 25 years...
and he is suicidal.
[narrator] Lady Bird immediately steps in,
and calls her husband, who is away campaigning.
[Lady Bird] When questioned, I'm gonna say
that this is incredible for a man
that I've known all these years,
a devout Catholic, the father of six children--
[Johnson] I wouldn't say anything,
because it's not something for you to get involved in now.
[Marton] And she is all about humanity,
and he is all about cut him off.
[Brower] Then she appeals to Johnson's own self-preservation.
[Lady Bird] Uh, I think if we don't express
some support to him,
I think that we will lose
the entire love and devotion
of all the people who have been with us.
[Johnson] You just can't do that to the presidency, honey.
The average farmer just can't understand
that your knowing it and approving it.
[Brower] They're going back and forth,
and she is like a rock.
She is not budging.
[narrator] Finally, Lady Bird decides to act alone.
[Lady Bird] My love, I pray for you along with Walter.
You're a brave good guy,
and if you read where I've said some things in Walter's support,
they'll be along the lines of what I just said to you.
Goodbye, my beloved.
[phone line disconnects]
[Caroli] Lyndon wanted her to keep quiet.
But she was like a ship under sail.
It was absolutely defiance of Lyndon's orders.
[narrator] Lady Bird summons
the editor of the Washington Post,
and issues a personal statement.
[Sweig] "My heart is aching today
for someone who has reached the end point of exhaustion
in dedicated service to his country.
He is now receiving the medical attention he needs...
Nothing could persuade her not to issue the statement.
She is Johnson's moral compass.
[Sweig] ...I know our family, and all of his friends,
and I hope all others, pray for his recovery."
In that moment, you see the steel magnolia
that is Lady Bird Johnson.
[marching band music]
[narrator] The Johnsons win the election,
-a landslide victory. -[crowd cheering]
[reporter] An overwhelming mandate
is handed to Lyndon Baines Johnson.
It is an historical sweeping victory.
[crowd cheers]
[Updegrove] Getting the greatest landslide
in American history, to that point,
gave Lyndon Johnson the mandate he needed
to push through
the most ambitious legislative agenda
since Franklin Roosevelt pushed through the New Deal.
I, Lyndon Baines Johnson, do solemnly swear
that I will faithfully execute the office of the president...
[narrator] Handed a clear mandate,
Lyndon Johnson pushes through one
of the most ambitious legislate programs in American history.
[Johnson] In a land of great wealth,
families must not live in hopeless poverty.
[Califano] If today, a president passes one bill
it's considered a great achievement.
Lyndon Johnson passed hundreds of bills:
Medicare and Medicaid, the Fair Housing Act,
all the Civil Rights acts, clean air, clean water.
We are living in Lyndon Johnson's America today.
[slide clicks]
[Lady Bird] Head Start is an exciting experience for me,
to know that hundreds of thousands of children...
[children chanting]
...are being given the devotion and attention they need.
[Califano] Head Start was a program to give poor children
preschool education that affluent children were getting,
and Lady Bird was a major factor
in getting the Head Start program passed.
It's one of the most popular programs
the Government has today.
[crowd applauding and cheering]
[narrator] But at the same time,
Lady Bird watches a dark cloud descend over her husband.
[jet engine staring]
[reporter] US Navy Films show our jet fighters' bombers
plastering North Vietnam facilities.
[narrator] Johnson approves
sustained bombing in North Vietnam,
and deploys the first American combat troops.
But privately, he has been harboring doubts
about the war for the past year.
[Bundy] It just worries the hell out of me.
I don't think it's worth fighting for,
and I don't think we can get out,
and it's just the biggest damn mess.
[Lady Bird] Lyndon lives in a cloud of troubles
with few rays of light.
Every moment a new struggle, every moment a new direction.
[Updegrove] Lyndon Johnson didn't start the Vietnam War.
This was a conflict that Truman was involved in,
and then Eisenhower, and then John F. Kennedy.
[Marton] Johnson was out of his depth,
and listening to the so-called experts
who were cooking the numbers.
[Updegrove] They all said,
"Just a few more troops, Mr. President,
and we've got this thing won."
But he's getting reports every single day
about how many troops won't come back.
[Luci] Ours was the last presidential family
that had two sons-in-law that went to war.
So, my father felt it not just as a president,
but as a father, and a grandfather.
[Lynda] Chuck left for Vietnam,
and my father did see me worrying,
and I represented all those other mothers,
and wives, of all the men that were over there.
[Sweig] Lynda and Luci's men going off to war,
even though Lady Bird never quite gets herself to say,
"my husband can't be responsible
for the deaths of my sons-in-law,"
that's the oxygen she begins to breathe.
[whirring]
[birds tweeting]
[Luci] Nature had always been my mother's solace.
It was her first love.
When her mother died,
and she was three months shy of six...
she knew that nature could lift the spirits of all our people.
[reporter] The scenic countryside
sprang to life today
with the arrival of Mrs. Johnson and her entourage.
[Lady Bird] This is my first trip
to the Redwoods.
But I've been wanting to come here all my life.
[crowd applauds]
[narrator] Lady Bird looks to heal a nation divided by war,
racial tensions, and urban decay.
She embarks on a campaign to beautify America.
[Lady Bird] Getting on the subject of beautification
is like picking up a tangled skein of wool,
all the threads are interwoven:
recreation and urban renewal,
and mental health and the crime rate,
and the war on poverty.
[Sweig] When she talks about urban poverty,
and race, and access to natural beauty,
these are big ideas!
[Marton] Lady Bird made the connection
between an impoverished, blighted environment,
and how people behave.
She was an environmental pioneer.
[narrator] In an effort to clean up the dilapidated capital,
Lady Bird builds recreation areas,
-and landscaped parks. -[children chattering]
It's a model for other cities to follow.
She also saw how billboards scarred the earth,
and she wanted them removed.
[narrator] Lady Bird leads the fight
for a Highway Beautification Act
to restrict billboards, and relocate junkyards.
[Califano] it was a very controversial
piece of legislation,
and a terrific battle with the billboard lobby,
which had a tremendous amount of power.
[Brower] The billboard industry
targeted her as someone who was overstepping;
she was not an elected figure.
[narrator] When Republicans try to sink the bill,
her husband steps in.
[Brower] Johnson said, "I love this woman,
this is what she wants, and we're gonna get it done."
[Jones] Johnson's relentless.
There was a congressional party at the White House;
he would not let members of Congress come down
until they passed Lady Bird's bill.
[narrator] The Highway Beautification Act
is the result of the first open political partnership
between a President and a First Lady.
[Califano] Thank God for that bill.
If you're driving in the United States today,
you can see the land.
The key to getting that done was Lady Bird.
[crowd] LBJ, LBJ,
[crowd chanting]
[narrator] As the death toll from Vietnam mounts,
protestors converge on Washington.
[crowd chanting]
[Luci] We could hear
people marching down Pennsylvania Avenue,
and the next morning that was our wake-up call as well.
[crowd chanting outside]
[Califano] Lyndon Johnson signed a letter to the spouse,
or mother, of everybody that was killed in Vietnam.
It took an enormous toll.
[Marton] He really only had Lady Bird as his solace...
[chanting continues]
...and Johnson was unraveling in the White House.
[Sweig] She's worried that the stress of Vietnam
is going to kill him.
[Updegrove] Just five years before
we had lost John F. Kennedy to an assassin's bullet.
Lyndon Johnson nearly died
of a heart attack in 1955,
and she doesn't wanna to put the nation
through a crisis like that.
[plane engine whirring]
[explosion]
[Marton] Lady Bird couldn't escape the tentacle of that war.
Sometimes she would go down to the basement
where there was a bowling alley,
and she would release some of her tension.
[thudding]
That was the tragedy of the Johnson era,
that it was completely swamped by this distant war
that tore the nation apart.
It was the deepest rupture in our country
since the Civil War.
[reporter] This was the largest pacifist demonstration
in New York's history.
Best estimates were around 50,000...
[crowd chanting on news report]
[narrator] Johnson is under attack over Vietnam
by both doves and hawks.
His popularity has plummeted.
Polls show he would lose an election by a landslide.
[Jones] She was concerned about the split in the nation,
and intense feeling for and against the Vietnam War,
and I think she felt that he couldn't unite it.
[narrator] Lady Bird feels it's time
for them to leave the White House.
She urges Johnson to declare he will not seek a second term.
[Updegrove] This is the same man
who has this hunger for power and what it can do for America,
and he sees a little more juice in the presidency.
[reporter] Ms. Kitt did you go to the White House today
with a personal anti-Vietnam war protest?
I did not go to the White House with a personal anything.
[narrator] As the President continues to agonize
over whether to seek a second term,
Lady Bird walks into a storm.
[Kitt] What I said to Mrs. Johnson upset her?
I was telling her the truth.
[crowd applauds]
[narrator] When Eartha Kitt is invited
to a White House luncheon to discuss juvenile delinquency,
she confronts Lady Bird.
[Lady Bird] She said, "You send the best of this country off
to be shot and maimed.
They rebel in the street,
they don't want to go to school
because they're going to be snatched off
from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam."
Civility is irrelevant to Eartha Kitt...
when people are dying,
and when those people are disproportionately black,
disproportionately poor,
and disproportionately working class.
[Kitt] The parents themselves are angry,
"I have borne a child that is going to be taken away from me,
and get thrown into something that I don't even understand."
[crowd applauds]
Lady Bird being called out
for something she had no control over.
She had no way of changing the course of this war,
and I that think she saw no end in sight.
[crowd] Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did ya kill today?
[Johnson] Since the middle of January,
more than 48,000 South Vietnamese have...
[Lady Bird] Today was a crescendo of a day.
At nine o'clock in the evening
Lyndon was to make his talk on the war.
The speech was not yet firm;
there were revisions.
I can't read this substitute you've got here, "work"?
[narrator] Only Lady Bird and a few White House insiders
know about Johnson's deliberations
over whether to seek a second term.
Even Lady Bird Johnson doesn't know
whether he's going to actually do it or not.
[Califano] We all wanted him to run.
Nobody in Washington
could do things with Congress that he had done.
...good, we can change it but it's...
[Lady Bird] And I, what did I feel?
There was much in me that cried out to go on,
right up to the last,
and if we lost, well and good, we were free!
But, we could be free without all this.
[narrator] Daughter, Lynda Johnson,
is three months pregnant.
That morning, her husband had boarded a plane for Vietnam.
[Lynda] I was just scared to death to let him go.
If I could have run up the stairs of the airplane,
I would have done it.
[Caroli] Lynda said to her father,
"If he gets killed, I'll never forgive you,"
And Lady Bird said, "I had never seen
such a hurt look in Lyndon's face
since his mother died.
[Luci] We wanted our father to live,
and we saw it was killing him.
But, he was our husband's commander in chief
and he would desperately fight
to bring all of our boys home.
[Lady Bird] And there was Lyndon.
I went to him and said quietly,
"Remember pacing and drama,"
and I did not know what the end would be.
Good evening, my fellow Americans.
[tense music]
Tonight, I want to speak to you
of peace in Vietnam and South East Asia.
[narrator] Johnson announces a partial halt to the bombing,
and calls for Hanoi to join peace talks.
But, that's not the end of his address.
[Johnson] With American sons in the field far away,
I do not believe that I should devote an hour,
or a day, of my time...
to any personal partisan causes...
or to any duties other...
than the awesome duties...
of this office.
[Updegrove] The speech takes a turn
wholly unexpected by the American people.
I shall not seek...
and I will not accept...
the nomination of my party
for another term as your president.
That is colossal news
to the American people, and to the world.
[Lynda] We all went up to him,
and told him how much we cared about him.
[Luci] It looks like a thousand pounds
has been lifted off of his shoulders.
[Updegrove] Just as Lady Bird Johnson plays
this pivotal role
in her husband getting the presidency
in his own right in 1964,
she also plays a-- just as pivotal a role
in ensuring that he steps down from the presidency with honor.
[Lynda] He wanted to give all of his attention
to trying to get peace, and not trying to get elected.
[Updegrove] Lady Bird Johnson had inserted
in the speech, "I will not accept."
She is putting a definite closure
on the situation by saying, "Not only will I not seek it,
but I won't accept it either,"
and I think the American people saw it rightfully
as an act of political courage.
[slide clicks]
[Lady Bird] At last,
the decision had been reached and stated.
although the actual exit is still nine months away.
[slide clicks]
To these nine months
I'm going to bring the best I possibly can.
[TV tunes in]
[reporter] Martin Luther King Jr.
was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
Shot on the...
[narrator] The Johnsons' last months in the White House
are some of the most tumultuous in American history.
The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
sparks riots across the nation.
[crowd commotion]
[thudding]
[people screaming]
[Mankiewicz] Senator Robert Kennedy
-died at 1:44 a.m. today. -[crowd commotion on TV]
[man] Where's Johnson? Where's Johnson?
[Lady Bird] The three faces of the television
kept repeating the hideous story.
This can't be happening.
[somber music]
Remembering Martin Luther King just two months ago today,
and President Kennedy,
what is happening to our country?
[slide clicks]
[Califano] Thank God Lyndon Johnson
was not running for re-election.
That was like the hand of God
was on the shoulder of the United States
because he was able to say,
"I'm just tryin' to hold this country together."
In the wake of Bobby Kennedy's assassination,
Lyndon Johnson uses that moment
to push through much needed gun control legislation;
the most comprehensive America has ever had.
[piano music]
[Lady Bird] The golden coin is spent.
This is the last full day in the White House.
[narrator] Peace in Vietnam has eluded Johnson.
But by the time they exit the White House,
the administration has left behind
the greatest legacy of social reform
in American history.
[Lady Bird] I went to bed...
-[crowd cheering] -...with a line of poetry
ringing in my mind,
"I celebrate my glad release, the Tents of Silence,
-and the Camp of Peace." -[camera shutters]
And yet, for me, it's not quite the exit line
because I have loved almost every day of these five years.
[Marton] It's hard to overrate
Lady Bird's importance in the Johnson presidency.
I can't even imagine Lyndon Johnson
operating in the White House without Lady Bird.
She had a great deal of power...
but she worked very hard to conceal it.
He could never have done what he did without her.
[jaunty music]
[dog barks]
[narrator] Lady Bird never stopped working
to protect the environment.
On her 70th birthday,
she founded the National Wildflower Research Center,
dedicated to preserving native landscapes,
the culmination of her lifelong love of nature.