(clicking)
♪
CLAUDIA ALTA "LADY BIRD" JOHNSON: Friday, November 22nd.
It all began so beautifully.
After a drizzle in the morning,
the sun came out bright and beautiful.
♪
We were going into Dallas.
REPORTER: We have a brilliant sun overhead,
and the President will be riding in the open.
Its wheels are down,
and the President and Mrs. Kennedy
have arrived at Dallas Love Field.
To accompany the President on these flights,
Vice President and Mrs. Johnson--
LADY BIRD: In the lead car,
President and Mrs. Kennedy,
and then a secret service car, and then our car.
♪
The streets were lined with people,
lots and lots of children, all smiling.
♪
We were rounding a curve going down a hill.
♪
Suddenly there was a sharp, loud report.
A shot and then two more.
- (gunshots) - (people screaming)
(horn honking)
LADY BIRD: I heard over the radio system,
"Let's get out of here."
And this man who was with us
vaulted over the front seat on top of Lyndon,
threw him to the floor and said, "Get down."
The cars accelerated faster and faster.
I cast one last look back over my shoulder,
saw a bundle of pink,
just like a, a drift blossom lying in the backseat.
It was Mrs. Kennedy
lying over the President's body.
♪
(siren wailing)
♪
LADY BIRD: They led us into a quiet room.
♪
It was from Kenny O'Donnell that I first heard the words,
"The President is dead."
♪
Mr. Kilduff said to Lyndon, "Mr. President."
♪
I looked up at a building,
and there already, it was a flag at half-mast.
That was when the enormity first struck me.
We have this from Washington.
LADY BIRD: There was a TV set on,
the commentator was saying,
"Lyndon Johnson, now President of the United States."
NEWSCASTER: There is no longer any doubt
the President is dead.
LADY BIRD: By that time,
Mrs. Kennedy had arrived and the coffin.
Mrs. Kennedy's dress was stained with blood.
Her husband's blood.
♪
I asked her if I couldn't get somebody to help her change,
and she says, "Oh, no,
"I want them to see
what they have done to Jack."
♪
And there, in the very narrow confines of the plane,
with Jackie on his left,
very composed, Lyndon took the oath of office.
♪
I tried to express something of how we felt.
I said, "Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, you know,
"we never even wanted to be Vice President,
and now, dear God, it's come to this."
I would have given anything to help her.
♪
This is a sad time for all people.
I know that the world shares the sorrow
that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear.
♪
I will do my best,
that is all I can do.
♪
I ask for your help and thoughts.
♪
LADY BIRD: I felt like I was walking onto a stage
for a part I had never rehearsed.
Incredible as it might seem,
I was going to be in a unique position,
as the wife of the President of the United States.
And only I would see events unfold,
from that particular vantage point.
♪
Liz Carpenter said, "You ought to record this."
She brought me her son's little recorder,
and so, the first fairly quiet moment,
two or three days after the 22nd,
I began my diary.
♪
It really was too important a thing not to share it.
And it was incredible.
♪
NEWSCASTER: At President Johnson's
Washington home in Spring Valley
the first family of the nation posed for their portrait.
They are photographed in the home
where they will remain until Mrs. Kennedy is able
to move from the White House.
The First Lady,
and standing beside the President is
Lynda Bird, 19,
and Luci Baines, 16.
It might be noted that all of the family have the initials LBJ.
♪
LADY BIRD: Tuesday, November 26th.
I went to see Mrs. Kennedy to discuss the housekeeping details
that any woman moving out would talk over
with any woman moving in.
She told me that she would like to ask a favor of me.
What she wanted was to let Caroline's school
go on in progress on the third floor.
And that was the easiest thing to say yes to.
She went on to say a lot of things, like,
"Don't be frightened of this house.
You will be happy here."
She repeated that over and over as though
she were trying to reassure me.
♪
After I moved into the White House,
for the first three or four weeks,
I was cold all the time.
I didn't have any appetite and I lost about five pounds.
I find myself walking on tiptoe and talking in whispers.
That's about over now, one can't go on doing that.
♪
Has there been any sense of elation
at reaching the job we're now in?
None at all.
Just a sense of how hard this is going to be
and a determination to make these 12 months
as good as I can.
(bells tolling)
NEWSCASTER: President Johnson
attended St. John's Episcopal Church,
said prayers for John F. Kennedy,
and asked the minister of St. John's
to say prayers for him, for Lyndon Baines Johnson,
whom an assassin's bullet had suddenly catapulted into a job
that is the most important and demanding on Earth.
LADY BIRD: Sunday, January the 12th.
One thing that's gone unmentioned
but not unnoticed by me,
Lyndon has been to church every Sunday
since the 22nd of November
and occasionally on some days in between.
It would be the understatement of a lifetime to say
that a man of good sense
doesn't know how much he needs help and solace.
He does.
♪
There was talk that he might be dropped
from the Kennedy ticket next summer.
Now he will almost surely head that election ticket.
His presidency, however long it lasts,
will not be a quiet one,
for his ambitions and determinations
far outrun his modesty or self-doubts.
And that, perhaps, is the way it should be
for the man who wields the ultimate power.
♪
LADY BIRD: Saturday, March the 7th.
I have a brief statement on the economy.
I'm very pleased at the early reaction to the tax cut.
LADY BIRD: The really high point of the day
was Lyndon's press conference on TV.
After it was over I phoned Lyndon
to tell him how good I thought he had done.
♪
When you were in college you trained
to become an expert in several fields.
You trained to be a teacher, to be a journalist,
to be a secretary.
Why did you train for all those things?
Was it insecurity or just a wide range of interest?
I thought being a journalist, from those I knew,
puts you on the forefront of action
in places that were exciting.
A student from a very small town
in Deep East Texas,
all the doors of the world suddenly swung open to me.
♪
I did all sorts of assignments,
but I preferred the feature stories
because I would get to go
and meet interesting characters.
♪
I knew I was gonna buckle down
to some kind of way of making a living,
although I always eventually thought I'd get married,
just assumed I would.
♪
He came on strong, and he was very direct and dynamic.
And I do believe before the day was over
he did ask me to marry him,
and I thought he was just
out of his mind. (laughs)
♪
I suppose it takes a longer time
to confirm a judgment
that's supposed to last a lifetime.
♪
My sense of excitement mounted.
What was gonna happen, I didn't know,
but I knew it was going to be, uh,
something important.
♪
Does-- Does the President talk over
world problems with you?
Does-- Does he discuss the things
that are weighing on his mind?
I think he a-accords me the very, uh,
considerable respect of thinking I have, I have good judgment
and he, he likes to hear what I have to say.
And, uh, it's good to have
one person with whom you can have a, a total, uh,
well, complete freedom in what you talk about.
Sunday, March 22nd.
Lyndon got on the phone
and called up a most delightful bunch of dinner guests.
The talk was of Vietnam.
NEWSCASTER: Two weeks ago Secretary of Defense McNamara
toured the country.
ROBERT MCNAMARA: The position of my government is clear,
we fully support the people of South Vietnam.
LADY BIRD: It's pretty terrifying to hear McNamara
speak of how dedicated the opposition soldiers are over there.
♪
They apparently have an intensive training
and ideas that is lacking on our side.
I saw the irritation and frayed nerves
that I remember from the hardest part
of the majority leader days.
This is my problem.
This is what I must solve.
That I can be tactful enough,
and sometimes even mean enough
to get Lyndon home at a reasonable hour,
bringing with him the components of work
and do it here in a somewhat more relaxed atmosphere.
♪
I did a little more work, and then curled up in bed
for the most luxurious of all things,
a glass of wine and Gunsmoke, my biggest self-indulgence.
All of which, I guess, just proves that you can live
with disaster hanging over your heads.
(march music playing)
Wednesday, April the 8th.
Washington's goodbye
to one of America's great heroes,
General Douglas MacArthur.
We lined up in a solemn single file.
Lyndon was on my right, and on my left
I found the Attorney General.
He looked tanned, healthier,
more relaxed than I had seen him.
And as the casket came by, flag draped,
I felt an echo of the November days
of President Kennedy's funeral.
He said, "You're doing a wonderful job.
Everybody says so."
And then, after a noticeable pause,
almost as with an effort, he said,
"And so is your husband."
♪
I respect Bobby in many ways, I admire him.
But I feel a peculiar unease around him
which I did not feel around his brother.
♪
I haven't the vaguest idea what is going on in his mind.
♪
NANCY DICKERSON: In his State of the Union message,
the President called for an all-out attack on poverty.
Are you going to make it a major focus of your attention?
I think, Nancy, the question that looms foremost
in everybody's mind is the preservation of peace,
and the whole, the-the total picture of poverty,
the black spot in our country,
that too is very important to me.
NANCY: Do you plan to campaign with him in the months ahead?
Yes, Nancy, I want to be on hand in whatever he's doing.
Friday, April 24th.
We helicoptered into eastern Kentucky.
We landed in a meadow close to the community of Inez.
(crowd cheers and applauds)
This is the area where mining once was king.
It's become a sick industry.
Nothing has really come along to replace it.
We arrived at the home
of the Tom Fletcher's and I asked Lyndon
to please keep the photographers
away as much as possible.
This mustn't be a sideshow for these people.
Lyndon hunkered down on the porch
with Mr. Fletcher for a talk.
They talked about keeping the children in school
and how he made out to live
on $400 a year with eight children.
I expect it's a very limited diet,
and enough years of that could be the reason
why Mrs. Fletcher look so faded
and dispirited,
and why there were no steps
up to the front porch of the house.
Hoisting myself up,
I had wondered why somebody
didn't at least go down
and saw off a stump,
and put it down for a step,
and then I realized,
how could I know what it was like
to try to raise eight children on $400 a year?
♪
It seems to me that the Johnson family
should follow the Christian admonition,
put your house, or houses, in order
before trying to preach this Gospel
to the tune of a one billion dollar
a year program.
Uh, good-- a good many years, I believe.
Uh, Lady Bird inherited it on her side of the family.
LADY BIRD: It appears that two Republican congressmen
have made a trip to Alabama,
have gone out to interview some of my tenants,
concealed tape recorders in their briefcases,
have taken pictures of the houses
and quite miserable, indeed they are,
and are all prepared to try to prevent
Lyndon's poverty bill
with a flashy, gossipy, ugly information
that Mrs. Johnson has tenants
who live in squalor.
You pay 25% of your crop to Mrs. Johnson in the rent
Yes, sir, well, that's right.
Have you ever heard of President Johnson's poverty program?
No sir I have-- Well, you mean the--
What do you mean the-- Uh--
REPORTER: It's a program the President is trying
to get passed by Congress, to increase, he says,
"The standard of living of the poor people of this country."
Uh, what do you think this program might do
to increase the standard of living
of the people living in this house?
Well, as far as I know I think it's going to help us.
LADY BIRD: I told Liz that where we used to have
about 20 tenants on the whole place,
we now had about four.
One at least, Charlie Cutler,
has lived on the place since grandfather's time.
Uneducated, unskilled, and I believe in his 80s,
there's no place for Charlie to go.
However, we'll have to batten down the hatches
for a nasty storm.
(beeps)
- (indistinct radio chatter) - (radio static)
NEWSCASTER: War in South Vietnam.
An ugly war in a far-off place.
We do not enjoy losing wars.
It is the official position of the United States
that this one need not be lost.
In a very real sense, it is not even ours to win.
It's someone else's war.
But the vital interests of the United States
and the prestige of this country as a great nation
would be grievously damaged if it were to be lost.
LADY BIRD: Thursday, May 14th
began with a frontal assault on my desk.
The remnants of a Puritan conscience drives me
to read a lot of the mail,
even, and sometimes especially, the bad mail.
And then, when the desk was clearer
than it's been in a long time,
I left for Huntlands.
♪
I called in to the White House
and asked Dr. Hurst if he and Jim
would like to drive out and talk over Lyndon's problems.
I don't know, though, that either one really understands
the depth of his pain,
when and if
he faces up to the possibility of sending
many thousands American boys to Vietnam.
♪
Lyndon called me.
He was lonesome, I could tell from his voice.
It was a sad talk,
largely about the Alabama tenants
and about his restive desire
to seek a way out of the burdens he carries.
♪
I wrote out about a nine-page analysis
of what I thought his situation was.
♪
First, in case he definitely decided he wanted to use it,
there was a suggested announcement
that he wasn't going to run again.
If he does not run,
we will probably return to the ranch
and he will enjoy the country he loves,
and me and Lynda and Luci more than we ever have.
But there would be a wave of hollow disillusionment,
and, "You let us down, Lyndon,"
among those people who really looked to him
as the best candidate of the Democratic Party.
♪
There might well be periods of depression
as he watched Mr. X running the country,
and thought what he would have done instead.
And he might look around for a scapegoat,
and I would not want to be it, then.
Then I put the alternative.
If he does run,
he will probably be elected President.
During the ensuing four years,
he, I, and the children
will be criticized and slandered
for things we have done,
and things we never did at all.
There will be times when he will be frustrated
by the inability to achieve
his vaulting ambitions for this nation.
This will be painful.
My final conclusion was that, I think he ought to run,
and then, some three years and nine months from now,
in February or March of 1968,
announce that he won't be a candidate for reelection.
And by that time,
I think the juices of life
will be stilled enough in him
that he can finish out that term,
return to the ranch to live out the rest of our days quietly.
♪
CAMERA ASSISTANT: Roll 30, sound 19.
INTERVIEWER: Tell me, uh, about your attitude
to the Civil Rights Bill
that's up in Congress and being considered by the Senate?
I feel that it's, it's alright.
But I, I feel one thing, that they should go on and pass it.
(siren wails)
♪
FANNIE LOU HAMER: I don't see how in America
that people can actually say
that America is the land of the free
and the home of the brave,
when right here in America Negroes have died
for no reason at all.
And actually, we are not trying to take anything.
We just want a chance
to be decent human beings and citizens
that we can really say, as the song,
"O Say, can you see,
"by the dawn's early light,
what so proudly we hailed,"
and now I cry, America,
is this actually the land of the free
and the home of the brave?
♪
(indistinct conversations)
LADY BIRD: Thursday, July 2nd.
At 6:30 the big news of the day,
and perhaps of the year, took place.
♪
PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON: My fellow Americans,
I am about to sign into law
the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
LADY BIRD: As I had slipped quietly into a seat,
I had particularly noticed the Attorney General
sitting on the front row,
and wondered what was going on in his mind.
This bill that his brother had sponsored so ardently,
had pinned so much hope on,
and that had finally come to passage,
I believe, with the earnest, dogged help of Lyndon.
I watched the Attorney General's impassive face,
and the very measured clapping of his hands,
which would not have disturbed a gnat sleeping
calmly in his palm.
♪
There was a ceremony in the East Room.
A signing of the Civil Rights Bill, complete with TV,
with all the leaders of the Congress
lined up behind Lyndon
as he signed the bill with some
several scores of pens,
each one could hardly have gotten to do one single letter.
I left the East Room feeling that I had really seen
something start in this nation's history,
fraught with much good and much troubles.
♪
- We will not accept the Civil Rights Bill. - (crowd cheering)
And we will campaign and campaign
until it is repealed.
SENATOR STROM THURMOND: In my opinion, this is not going to stop
Negro demonstrations.
It is not going to solve racial problems,
but it's going to increase tensions.
REPORTER: Are you concerned perhaps, about the Democrats
taking advantage of this?
After Lyndon Johnson the biggest faker
in the United States,
having opposed the Civil Rights Act
for all the years of his life,
this is the phoniest individual that ever came around.
♪
ZEPHYR WRIGHT: I guess because he was a southerner,
they didn't believe him.
♪
When I would speak out for Johnson, they would say
"Well, you are prejudiced because you work for him."
And I'd said "No,"
I said, "In talking with him
I know it is for all of the Negro people."
And I knew what kind of man he was.
LADY BIRD: There's Zephyr and Lynda Bird.
♪
ZEPHYR: One thing I'm gonna say about Mrs. Johnson,
she was very nice about finding nice places to stay.
And if we couldn't stay there, she didn't stay there.
♪
One time we stopped at a place and the woman said
"Yes, uh, we have a place for you."
And she said, "Well, I have these other two people."
She said, "No, we-we work 'em, but we don't sleep 'em."
♪
And Mrs. Johnson said, "Well, that's a nasty way to be,"
and she drove away.
NEWSCASTER: At sea, on land, and in the air,
the awesome United States military machine
is mounting a force that can face up to any threat.
(gunfire)
NEWSCASTER: Reinforcements are being moved
into strategic locations
as part of a new strategy
in this frustrating war.
(phone ringing)
LADY BIRD: Tuesday, August 4th was a momentous day.
You know great decisions are being shaped,
some completely beyond the control of any of us,
some that have to be decided by the man closest to me.
♪
As McGeorge Bundy passed me in the hall,
he was looking extraordinarily grave.
I asked him something which brought a portentous answer.
It left me thinking,
we might have a small war on our hands.
♪
NEWSCASTER: This is the Maddox,
one of the two destroyers that were attacked
while patrolling international waters
in the Gulf of Tonkin near North Vietnam.
My fellow Americans,
it is my duty to the American people
to report that renewed hostile actions
against United States ships on the high seas
in the Gulf of Tonkin
have today required me
to order the military forces of the United States
to take action and reply.
LADY BIRD: Frightening as the situation is,
I had a certain feeling of pride.
♪
Perhaps for Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy,
there were a long series of such days.
Obviously up until now we've survived them all
but it's a perilous path to tread.
♪
INTERVIEWER: Mr. President, it is widely believed
among the reporters around town
that you object rather strongly to being criticized
in the papers and on the air. Is there--
Would you give us what your
true feelings on that subject are?
I assume that almost anyone that is human, uh,
uh, would rather have approval than disapproval.
INTERVIEWER: Uh, some people have thought
that you put in too long and hard a day,
that you might endanger your own health that way.
How do you protect your health from day-to-day?
We do have long days,
and, uh, the problems, uh, that, uh,
require attention, uh, require time.
And, uh, you, you never have as much time as you want to spend
before making these decisions, but you must make decisions.
And I work at a rather feverish rate,
and the first hundred days were, uh,
filled, uh, to almost to the breaking point.
♪
WALTER JENKINS: He told me that he was going to fly
up there the next morning and announce
that he wasn't gonna be a candidate
for reelection in Atlantic City.
And I told him he absolutely could not do that.
I went immediately to Mrs. Johnson.
She has more ability to
reason with him than anyone else.
(static)
NEWSCASTER: Good evening. This convention city by the sea
bustled with political activity today.
A predominantly Negro group
is challenging the all-White delegation from Mississippi.
We want to register
to become first-class citizens.
And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now,
I question America.
(cheering)
♪
NEWSCASTER: For 22 long minutes,
while his wife watches,
the delegates pour out their affection for Bobby,
and for the man who was their President.
(crowd cheering)
NEWSCASTER 1: Mrs. Lyndon Johnson, Luci, and Lynda have just arrived.
NEWSCASTER 2: And there he is.
♪
GOV. JOHN CONNALLY: The President of the United States,
and the next President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson.
♪
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I will begin the march
toward an overwhelming victory for our party
and for our nation!
(crowd cheering)
♪
(upbeat campaign music)
NEWSCASTER: Election year 1964.
The White House is the prize, and it's invaded by the ladies.
Four million more women voters in the country than men,
and both parties are wooing the feminine vote.
It's the year of the woman in Washington.
The ladies are claiming the title,
facing the responsibility.
(inaudible)
♪
LADY BIRD: Friday, September the 11th
began my planning for the whistle-stop trip to the south.
I'm tired of everybody's acting
like the South is the step-child.
I belong to it and it to me,
and I intend to say so, even if I, I get a rebuff for it.
(train whistle blows)
MARLENE SANDERS: I'm on the rear platform here
of the Lady Bird Special
talking with Elizabeth Carpenter,
Mrs. Johnson's press secretary.
Uh, Mrs. Carpenter, what's the main purpose of this trip
as far as Mrs. Johnson is concerned?
(chuckles) Well, Marlene, obviously there's an election on
and she's helping carry the story of this administration
and of her husband's record to eight states.
No one knows the story better than Mrs. Johnson
and so I think that we'll find victory there this fall.
Alexandria has been chosen as the first stop
by one of the greatest campaigners in America,
and I'm proud to announce--
(cheering)
And I'm very proud to announce that I am her husband.
(cheering continues)
(ominous music playing)
♪
MARLENE: You think the state's gonna go for Goldwater?
PERSON 1: I think this whole state will go for Goldwater.
PERSON 2: It will be the first time
Georgia has ever gone Republican.
But they'll do it this time.
Democrats have always controlled Georgia.
So we thought we'd show her that there are a few Republicans here now.
MARLENE: Can you tell me, Mrs. Johnson,
what were your original expectations for this trip
and how have things worked out?
There have been mainly friendly and large audiences
but scattered in there have been some,
uh, hecklers here and there.
Uh, do you feel that you will nevertheless
be able to, uh, help keep the South
in the democratic camp despite this?
That's a large order for a woman.
(laughter)
But I think we have to look at this in perspective.
There have been a few, certainly,
they're entitled to their opinion,
but you were there, you saw the thousands of people
who were cheering and reaching out to shake hands.
CROWD (chanting): We want Barry! We want Barry!
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. - (cheering)
♪
(tense music playing)
DEAN BURCH: The Walter Jenkins episode
raises grave questions of national security
which only the President can and must answer.
Knowing the vulnerability
of morals offenders to blackmail,
the President should tell us
whether Mr. Jenkins was permitted
to sit in on meetings of the National Security Council
and otherwise given access to top military secrets.
(phone ringing)
♪
LADY BIRD: Walter appeared
rather detached and dissociated.
I cannot measure the suffering he's gone through,
it's been one of the most painful things in my life,
more painful than death of many close to me.
♪
NEWSCASTER: The voice of the people was heard in the land.
Sixty eight million citizens of the United States
go to the polls to exercise their cherished franchise
and an overwhelming mandate
is handed to Lyndon Baines Johnson
who becomes 36th president of the United States.
The man who was thrust into office
through the hand of tragedy
captures an overwhelming percentage of the popular vote.
More than 61%,
a plurality over Barry Morris Goldwater
of nearly 16 million ballots.
It is an historical sweeping victory.
♪
LADY BIRD: New Year's Day began for me
with black coffee and orange juice
and good resolutions.
I spent all day in the never-never land of clothes.
The coat I'm wearing
for the inaugural ceremony is elegant.
The dress? Well, we'll have to wait and see.
♪
I'm just not the type for sketches and swatches.
I'm a go in and look on the rack,
put 'em on and wear 'em out type.
That too is one of my New Year resolutions,
to look better at all public appearances
and to remember what is due the job.
I still find it very difficult,
very distasteful to say "First Lady."
Wednesday, January the 20th
dawned beautiful and bright and early.
The day had come.
♪
We rode down the avenue, Lyndon and I in one car,
the one with the bulletproof glass top and sides,
crowds already thick along Pennsylvania Avenue.
♪
Then came the moment toward which
all the days of the last year had been heading,
the moment when Lyndon would take the oath of office
as the 36th President of the United States.
It had been mentioned to me that I should hold
the Bible for his swearing in.
I stood facing the throng,
between the Chief Justice and Lyndon,
while he took the oath.
I, Lyndon Baines Johnson, do solemnly swear...
That you will faithfully execute...
...that I will faithfully execute...
...the office of the presidency of the United States,
so help you God.
...so help me God.
(applause)
LADY BIRD: Monday, February 1st,
begins the busy days again.
I woke about 7:00, and finding Lyndon was awake
crawled into bed with him for coffee.
And heard Luci, mad as a hornet,
discuss an article in a magazine
called Women's Wear,
which had given the three Johnson women
pretty poor marks as dressers.
Luci was inclined to blame it
on Lynda Bird's bobby socks and loafers,
and was really quite heatedly annoyed about it.
♪
It is an endurance contest, this job.
♪
Sunday, February the 7th actually began after midnight.
Lyndon had heard of the Viet Cong attack
on American barracks in South Vietnam.
♪
I was rather startled to hear him say
something I have heard so often,
but did not really expect
to come out of his mouth in front of anyone else.
"I am not temperamentally equipped
to be commander in chief," he said.
They were talking about the necessity of giving orders,
that would produce God knows what cataclysmic results.
He said, "I am too sentimental."
It's odd how you can be so anesthetized
by your own pain or your own problem,
that you don't quite fully share
the hell of someone close to you.
♪
LADY BIRD: Sunday, March 7th.
For quite some time I've been swimming upstream
against a feeling of depression and relative inertia.
Lyndon, too, lives in a cloud
of troubles with few rays of light.
Now it is the Selma situation.
(clamoring)
NEWSCASTER: Six hundred or so Negroes
who marched made little headway
toward the state capital some 15 miles to the east.
They barely left Selma.
They marched in through the city of Selma and were not stopped,
but once they crossed over the Edmund Pettus Bridge,
it was a different story.
OFFICER (over PA): You've got two minutes to turn around
and go back to your church.
♪
- (clamoring) - (screaming)
NEWSCASTER: Scores of the marchers were treated
for tear gas burns,
open wounds and broken bones.
At nightfall, the sheriff of Dallas County
went on the radio
to urge everyone to stay off the streets.
LADY BIRD: It was a day of tension and strain.
Out in front of the White House pickets are marching,
a not unusual sight.
But in this context, with more poignancy
than before, I think.
Because Lyndon is a southern President,
because he won with such a great vote from the Negroes last fall,
because the right to vote has been the key
to the whole civil rights issue
that he has hammered and hammered since '57.
♪ Oh, freedom ♪
NEWSCASTER: Well, it looks as if yesterday's battle in Selma
was rather the end of the beginning.
For King's answer to Governor Wallace is another march.
Same town, Selma.
Same destination, Montgomery.
The date, tomorrow, Tuesday.
And says King, "He'll lead it himself."
♪ Oh, freedom ♪
♪ Oh, freedom over me ♪
LADY BIRD: I heard later that he did not know
when he turned,
whether anyone would be following.
But this was victory, this was sanity.
A temporary restraining lid on the volcano
to grant time for
the strong voting rights bill in Congress
to save us from catastrophe.
♪ Oh, freedom over me ♪
(horn honks)
NEWSCASTER: This is the rhythm of a city,
any big city, anywhere.
Today American cities are facing a crisis.
They are running a high fever of unplanned growth.
They are overcrowded and overwhelmed.
For the first time,
Americans are beginning to seriously examine
how their cities got that way.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Within our cities,
imaginative programs are needed,
to landscape streets and to transform open areas
into places of beauty and recreation.
(applause)
LADY BIRD: Lyndon made a speech,
and it was about the environment, about conservation,
and I-I decided, that's for me.
♪
LIZ CARPENTER: From the time we went into the White House,
you had newswomen saying,
"What is your role? What is your role?"
And Mrs. Johnson's reply at the time was,
"My role as First Lady
will emerge in deeds not words."
♪
Our object was to convince Mrs. Johnson
to take the bull by the horns and to form a committee
that would have the podium of the White House
to air views and efforts
in making the city of Washington more beautiful.
♪
LADY BIRD: I think the time has come
in our national consciousness to look at the environment
and question what man was doing to harm it.
♪
Growing up in the country,
I was pretty much left to my own devices.
And I did not have many constant companions.
♪
Nature was my friend, and sustenance, and teacher.
It was a joy to me and it's, it's never failed me.
♪
Tuesday, March 9th
was the meeting of my Beautification Committee.
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 rapid transit and highway beautification,
and mental health and the crime rate.
LADY BIRD: It's awfully hard
to hitch the conversation
into one straight line
'cause everything leads to something else.
At about 11:30 all 30 or so of us
departed on our field trip.
♪
(horn honks)
LADY BIRD: We stopped at Green Leaf Gardens,
a housing area of modest, little brick row houses.
This was Walter Washington's bailiwick
and his great enthusiasm.
Together, he and I have been frequent visitors
at schools, housing projects
and in the neighborhoods of Washington.
He is a wise and able public servant.
WALTER E. WASHINGTON: We have traveled through this city.
Both of us determined that
a certain part of what she wanted to do
would be regarded as cosmetic,
and that really behind the monuments,
there was a big job to do.
And that there must be equal access
to the greatness and strengths of our nation
and in our neighborhoods.
They must be available to all.
LADY BIRD: I am no authority,
just an interested, enthusiastic citizen.
I recognize I do have a sort of a tool in my hands
by this title I carry, and I want to use it.
Nothing is more important
than my involvement with beautification
but I want a new word for it.
♪
Tuesday, July 13th.
History is my preoccupation,
our niche in it I mean,
for the next year or so.
The most significant part of the day, of course,
the appointment of a new US Solicitor General.
And it's Thurgood Marshall,
the first Negro to hold such a post.
A man with a wonderful record.
He admired Judge Marshall
and spoke of the possibility,
perhaps when a vacancy opened up
he might make him a Justice of the Supreme Court.
♪
July 30th, the Medicare Bill passed.
NEWSCASTER: President and Mrs. Johnson
and Vice President Humphrey arrive
for ceremonies that will make the Medicare bill
a part of social security coverage.
LADY BIRD: That impossible bill.
He has every reason to feel fulfilled and proud.
♪
Friday, August 6th.
I talked to Lyndon that morning,
He reminded me of the signing of the voting rights bill.
(indistinct chatter)
LADY BIRD: Completely inefficient, I forgot to watch,
but later I was proud to see that Luci had not forgotten.
She was right there by daddy's side,
walking in, her hand in his.
It was a dramatic setting, a dramatic occasion.
I recognize that from outside this chamber,
is the outraged conscience of a nation,
but even if we pass this bill the battle will not be over.
What happened in Selma is
part of a far larger movement
which reaches into every section
and state of America.
It is the effort of American Negroes
to secure for themselves
the full blessings of American life.
Their cause must be our cause too.
♪
Here in Saigon--
LADY BIRD: The fact that there had been many pluses
in the legislative achievements of the week
had not prevented Vietnam from dominating the news.
♪
I have today ordered to Vietnam the air mobile division
and certain other forces
which will raise our fighting strength
from 75,000 to 125,000 men almost immediately.
♪
LADY BIRD: He said, "Vietnam is getting worse day by day.
"I have the choice to go in with great casualty lists
or get out with great disgrace."
♪
"It's like being in an airplane, and I have to choose
"between crashing the plane or jumping out.
I do not have a parachute."
When he is pierced, I bleed.
♪
(indistinct chatter)
What do you think, about 11?
Eleven will be fine.
Do you think that's too much exposure? We could do 16?
- REPORTER 1: About eight? - REPORTER 2: I'd go down
towards eight, Mrs. Johnson.
LADY BIRD: Alright. I'll just do another one.
(laughter)
NEWSCASTER: Mrs. Johnson has managed to tread the thin line
between her private role as wife and mother,
and her public stance on beautification
which some special interests groups in this country
have found abrasive.
LADY BIRD: Tuesday, August 17th.
I woke up early and worked with Liz
to talk about how the Beautification Bills
were faring in the House and Senate.
♪
There are four of them, all relating to highways.
♪
There had been much talk in the country and in the papers
and not much action on the Hill.
♪
One of them is a goner.
The others about billboards and junkyards,
with three percent of the money allocated for planting
along the interstate highways have a better chance.
♪
(inaudible)
♪
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: This administration has no desire
to punish or to penalize any private industry
or any private company in this nation.
But we are not going to allow them
to intrude their own specialized, private objectives
on the larger public trust.
♪
And that is why today
there's a great deal of real joy
to sign the Highway Beautification Act of 1965.
♪
LADY BIRD: How many times have I driven
up to the front door of Bethesda?
Really serious times.
Very present in my mind, and I'm sure in Lyndon's mind,
was of his serious heart attack.
For the first few years we passed those milestones
stepping softly with great trepidation.
Now we act almost as though it had not been.
Though Lyndon and I will not forget.
♪
There was a high sense of theater about the whole thing.
♪
They wheeled up a long cart,
and doctors assisted Lyndon on to it,
and then he said, "Let's go."
♪
I felt like he was putting on a performance,
to save us from being worried.
The gall bladder had been just as they suspected, inflamed,
with one stone in it.
This meant a double operation, more hazard,
and longer recuperation.
♪
(tense music playing)
♪
LADY BIRD: I walked into the room to find
Abe sitting quietly by Lyndon's bedside.
♪
He was seeking Abe's advice on how he could escape
from the burdens of the presidency
for the next indefinite period.
So here is the black beast of depression
back in our lives.
He was like a man on whom an avalanche had suddenly fallen.
He said he didn't feel like making
a single decision right now.
"I want to go to the ranch.
"I don't want Hubert to be even able to call me.
"They may demand that I resign,
they may even want to impeach me."
Mostly we sat in an atmosphere of numbed silence,
with Abe offering quiet legal observations
on the alternatives.
Abe began to write out what Lyndon asked him to.
And after Lyndon read it he said,
"Here, you had better keep both these copies.
I don't want anybody to know about them."
I think it quite essential that he have days,
maybe weeks of rest.
But how to buy a little time of quiet
when you are President of the United States?
♪
The question now, of course,
is what happens to the Johnson style in 1966?
It will be a year in which style alone won't solve things.
He has already learned
he can't put the arm on the Viet Cong
and the North Vietnamese
the way he can on a recalcitrant congressman.
And learning this has frequently seemed to produce
a kind of sulkiness in the President.
A resentment at questions he can't answer,
a petulance with the press,
a deviousness at times in his statements
about what has happened and what is going to happen.
♪
LADY BIRD: That inescapable feeling of drama,
what will this new year hold for us all?
♪
Will you tell us what you're sending
to Mrs. Johnson in your telegram?
- Would you like me to read it? - Yes, please.
"We know you share our grief at the loss of life in Vietnam.
"Please add your voices to those calling for negotiation
"instead of bombing.
"There must be an honorable diplomatic solution
to the situation in Vietnam."
♪
LADY BIRD: Sunday, February 13th.
At lunch, Lafayette Park had been full of picketers.
It's such a common thing now.
Lyndon said, this thing is assuming
rather dangerous proportions.
♪
He talked about the individual
feelings of every mother who had a son in Vietnam
and in comparison about his feelings.
He said, "There's not a mother in the world
"who cares as much about it as I do
"because I have 200,000 of them over there
"and they think I am in charge.
And if I am not, God help them. Who the hell is?"
♪
(bells tolling)
(indistinct chatter)
LADY BIRD: Luci's wedding day began clear and
bright and beautiful.
What I remember of the morning was a montage.
♪
One walks up the aisle as though in a play.
Thinking not the deep thoughts that this is the last moment
she belongs to us alone.
She was flawless in her dignity and gentleness.
To his eternal credit I do not remember Lyndon
looking at his watch one time in the service
that lasted longer than an hour.
♪
I myself did not see the pickets.
♪
Only when it is extremely raucous do we notice it.
I feel protective of Luci and Pat,
disgusted by the whole thing, just as a citizen,
and not wise enough to cope with it.
(indistinct conversations)
Would you end all of the speculation for us and tell us
A, if you intend to run in 1968
and B, if Hubert Humphrey will be your running mate?
(scattered laughter)
I didn't know, uh, Ms. Means,
there had been that much speculation about it.
Uh, I'm not ready to make a decision about my future
after Jan '69 at this time.
Down the road several months from now
would be the appropriate time
for an announcement
of what my future plans are.
♪
LADY BIRD: Saturday, May 13th.
Many, many months ago,
I set March of '68 in my own mind
as the time when Lyndon can make a statement
that he would not be a candidate for reelection.
For the first time in my life,
I have felt that Lyndon would be a happy man retired.
I find myself enjoying more and more every return to the ranch,
and I do not know whether we can endure
another four-year term in the presidency.
♪
If life can be said to have a pattern,
as we go into summer, the crescendo of work mounts.
♪
NEWSCASTER: In a Rose Garden ceremony,
a 58-year-old great grandson of a slave
is nominated by President Johnson
to be a Supreme Court Justice.
He is Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: This morning I have welcomed
the members of the Commission on Civil Disorders,
chaired by Governor Kerner of Illinois.
The American people are baffled and dismayed
by the wholesale looting and violence
that has occurred both in small towns and
in great metropolitan centers.
CROWD: Hey, hey, LBJ,
how many kids did you kill today?
MAN (chanting): Hell no, we won't go.
NEWSCASTER: The pro's heavyweight champion Cassius Clay
is found guilty of violating
the US Selective Service laws by refusing to be inducted.
MUHAMMAD ALI: I've said it once, and I will say it again.
The real enemies of my people are right here, not in Vietnam.
LADY BIRD: Sunday, August 13th.
A cool front had blown in,
and there was a promise of fall in the air.
It's strange, you feel soothed and happy
about the companionship of your daughter and your grandchild
and exactly simultaneously you're weighed down
by the troubles that you must try to solve.
The growing virus of the riots, the rising list of casualties,
and the voices of your own friends
or former friends in Congress,
and most of the bitching is coming from the Democrats.
We watched Martin Luther King on TV.
We are losing both.
We are losing the war against poverty here at home.
We are losing the war in Vietnam,
morally and politically. And I think we're losing--
LADY BIRD: To me, it seemed the old charisma is fading.
He was not as exciting as I had remembered him.
Today's poll has Lyndon down to 39,
the lowest he's ever been.
And my instinct tells me the only reaction to it
should be to work harder, be staunch and keep smiling.
But it is hard.
(cheering and applause)
STOKELY CARMICHAEL: We have grown enough strength to say,
you know, that Vietnam War is for the Birds.
Lynda Bird, Lady Bird--
(laughter and cheering)
Let the Birds go take care of it,
we gonna sit here and watch.
The new left has at best perhaps 300,000 members.
The young radicals scorn communism
and they see liberals as their enemy.
The discontent of the new left has been noted
by the politician most identified with young people.
They see us willing to fight a war for freedom in Vietnam,
but unwilling to fight with one-hundredth the money or force
or effort to secure freedom in Mississippi,
or Alabama, or the ghettos of the north.
(cheering)
(clamoring)
♪
LADY BIRD: I read a very thoughtful editorial.
It's a frantic effort of some of today's young
to find a tangible method of revolt.
Their revolt happens to be almost totally negative.
It is a sterile thing,
against the velvet prison of affluence,
conformity, and isolation.
♪
Merely to be bizarre in strategic spots
gives people a lot of exposure in this day of saturation coverage
of the major events by television.
They think they are doing something
when they are noticed by the TV cameras.
Many of the young confuse it with action.
♪
Monday, October 9. My journey into academia.
At about three o'clock we arrived at New Haven.
It was a sizable crowd of picketers carrying signs
that said, "Stop beautifying North Vietnam"
and displayed pictures of
people supposedly burned by napalm.
♪
I got out of the car.
The measured slowness,
and walked to meet Dr. Brewster.
Quite soon, the feeling got across to me
that my presence here
was really an imposition on him.
His manner was absolutely correct.
But if I have any antenna at all,
I sense that he wished he had no part of it.
Can a great democratic society
generate the energy to build projects of order and beauty?
That answer will unfold, I think,
in the next two decades.
Thank you very much.
(applause)
LADY BIRD: I was never so glad
to be finished with a speech in my life.
On our way out, I shook hands with everybody I could reach,
and not even a Secret Service was gladder,
I'm sure, that an evening was nearly over.
That was also a lesson to me,
I must not live in the White House
insulated myself.
I want to know what's going on, even if to know is to suffer.
(clamoring)
NEWSCASTER: A rather striking foursome emerged
from the White House today
and strolled across the South Lawn.
Marine Captain Charles Robb, his bride to be,
and his prospective in-laws.
There will be a White House wedding,
and then the President's son-in-law
will go off to fight in Vietnam.
LADY BIRD: Lynda's wedding day,
Saturday, December the 9th.
♪
The ceremony began on time.
How would one describe the bride?
Queenly, radiant, stunningly beautiful,
every heart in the place lifted.
Beautiful as she was, it was he I watched all the way,
such a mixture of quietness and farewell in his look,
his hair looked whiter than I'd ever seen,
and I was full of tenderness for him.
♪
I have never seen a lovelier ceremony.
Lynda's wedding dress fulfilled every expectation,
and I hope I live to see a granddaughter wear it,
and I'm sure it will be just as good then.
♪
(inaudible)
♪
LADY BIRD: Saturday, January the 13th.
And so we returned to what really seemed like New Year's,
the beginning of the hardest year
with our big problem still unresolved.
We drove to Luci's house
and there was Lyn, all smiles,
apparently over his ear infection,
absolutely enthralled at seeing his grandfather.
Lyndon spends more time with him
than he ever did with either of our children.
He said, "There's one job I want,
and that's to be a full-time grandfather."
It was both humorous and pathetic.
Wednesday, January the 17th.
The day of the State of the Union.
Lyndon had asked George to draft him a statement,
announcing that he would not run.
My own, which Lyndon had asked me to produce, was feeble,
and if there was anything that we ever ought to say
with words that have wings and fire, this is it.
♪
I keep the statement I had written in '64,
when Lyndon was facing going to Atlantic City
and did not want to go,
in the right-hand drawer of my desk in my bedroom.
I brought it out and we reread what I had said then.
It sounds better now.
Lyndon put George's statement in his inside pocket.
It was not to be included in the text
of the State of the Union.
♪
If he made it, it would come at the end,
beginning with a line something like this,
"And now I want to speak to you about a personal matter."
He looks from one to another of those close to him
for an answer,
for some wisdom,
some foresight, beyond any he can have.
And he said, "Well, what shall I do?"
I looked at him with that hopeless feeling,
and said, "Luci hopes you won't run.
"She wants you for herself,
and Lyn and all of us being together.
"Lynda hopes you will run.
"Because her husband is going to war,
"and she thinks there will be more chance
"of getting him back alive
"and everything settled if you're President.
"And me, I don't know, I've said it all before.
I can't tell you what to do."
(indistinct chatter)
Mr. Speaker,
the President of the United States.
♪
I wish with all of my heart
that the expenditures that are necessary to build
and to protect our power
could all be devoted to the programs of peace.
But until world conditions permit
and until peace is assured,
America's bravest sons who wear our nation's uniform
must continue.
LADY BIRD: Somewhere in it the teleprompter went out.
I could see him leafing through three or four pages
of the text in front of him while he interpolated.
As we approached the end I tightened up in my seat.
Would he reach in his pocket? Did I want him to?
Would I be relieved if he did or if he didn't?
♪
Can we achieve these goals?
Of course we can.
♪
Thank you and good night.
LADY BIRD: He did not reach in his pocket
for the draft that I knew was there.
♪
Thursday, January 18th.
I went over my guest list
for the Women Doers' Luncheon,
our subject, "Crime on the Streets."
A few of the guests had been late
and some of the staff ushered them up to speak to me,
Eartha Kitt among them.
EARTHA KITT: I work with inner city kids,
so that's why I was invited to this luncheon.
I didn't want to go,
but the White House kept calling me
and saying, "Yes, Mrs. Johnson definitely wants you to come."
♪
Crime is a grim subject
for a pleasant meeting like this,
but I believe that
everybody is increasingly determined to face up to it.
♪
EARTHA: Then in walks President Johnson.
♪
He puts his elbow on the pulpit that was suddenly out there.
LADY BIRD: Miss Eartha Kitt,
who had been seated at the table close to the podium,
rose in his path and said--
LADY BIRD: Lyndon paused a moment,
but fortunately, he had the answer.
- (laughter) - (applause)
LADY BIRD: She sat down stubbed out of cigarettes
tossing her long hair,
and from then on I watched her expecting something,
I didn't know what.
She smoldered and smoked.
I asked the guests for their observations and discussions.
I noticed Miss Kitt's hand going up
and I knew that I must, in turn, get to her.
I did not know what to expect, only that it would not be good.
She rose and began to talk swiftly, passionately,
beginning with anger that the fact
of welfare checks were so small.
And then, mounting to a crescendo,
she came to her real destination,
to denounce the war in Vietnam.
Advancing a step toward me
and looking with intense directness at me,
she's a good actress, she said,
"Mrs. Johnson, you are a mother too,
"although you have had daughters and not sons.
"I am a mother and I know the feeling of having a baby
"come out of my gut.
"I have a baby and then you send him off to war.
No wonder the kids rebel and take pot."
Miss Kitt stopped for breath
to a stunned silence in the room.
♪
EARTHA: One woman who was sitting to my right,
she said, "Thank you, Eartha, for saying what you've said,
"we all feel the same way
"but unfortunately 75 percent of the women in this room
husbands work for President Johnson."
LADY BIRD: I stood very composed, I think,
and said goodbye to everyone who came along.
♪
Protest was back outside the White House today
after scoring a resounding blow inside.
These women are marching in support of Eartha Kitt,
whose outburst at a White House luncheon yesterday
against the war, taxes, and the alienation of youth
drew attention rivaling the standard responses
to the State of the Union.
Miss Kitt succeeded where picketers
and political opponents have failed,
and bringing dissent directly to the first family.
♪
NEWSCASTER: The communists had launched
a massive New Year's offensive late in January.
Martial law was declared by
South Vietnamese President Thieu.
WALTER CRONKITE: Who won and who lost
in the great Tet Offensive against the cities?
I'm not sure.
The Viet Cong did not win by a knockout,
but neither did we.
The referees of history may make it a draw.
It seems now more certain than ever
that the bloody experience of Vietnam
is to end in a stalemate.
And with each escalation,
the world comes closer
to the brink of cosmic disaster.
♪
It is increasingly clear to this reporter
that the only rational way out then
will be to negotiate, not as victims,
but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge
to defend democracy and did the best they could.
This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.
♪
(indistinct chatter)
I am announcing today my candidacy
for the presidency of the United States.
I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man,
but to propose new policies.
I run because I am convinced
that this country is on a perilous course
and because I have such strong feelings
about what must be done
and I feel that I am obliged
to do all that I can.
Finally my decision reflects no personal animosity
or disrespect towards President Johnson.
I am required now to permit the entry of my name
into the California primary.
Mr. President, how does it affect the commander in chief,
so to speak, to know that his new son-in-law
is going off to war?
Well, I guess that, uh,
you're glad that you have a son-in-law
that has had the training several years
in an elite group like the Marines,
who is prepared and equipped
to look after his country's interests.
(inaudible)
I, uh, feel that way about all the Marine Corps
and the boys in the other services, too.
♪
LADY BIRD: Sunday, March the 31st
Lynda was coming in on the red-eye special from California,
after having kissed Chuck goodbye the night before.
She looked like a ghost.
She said "Mother, they were awful.
They kept on pushing and shoving to get to us."
She meant the press.
REPORTER: Captain, how soon do you expect to be in combat?
LADY BIRD: And there were lots of other wives there
saying goodbye to their husbands.
♪
I took her into her room and she went to bed.
♪
And I went into Lyndon's room he was crying.
It's the first time since Mrs. Johnson died
that I have seen him cry.
But he didn't have time to cry.
At nine o'clock in the evening
he was to make his talk on the war.
And I can't see where a period is or not.
Uh, the step for him is I just have to go on.
We have to do it. We can't change it, but it's--
LADY BIRD: I had spent a good part of Saturday
working on it myself.
I felt quite positive about my few changes.
♪
(indistinct chatter)
LADY BIRD: Lyndon came in.
I went to him and said quietly,
"Pacing and drama."
And I did not know what the end would be.
Good evening, my fellow Americans,
tonight I want to speak to you
of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
♪
LADY BIRD: It was magnificently delivered,
his best I think.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: With American sons in the fields far away,
with our hopes and the world's hopes
for peace in the balance every day,
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,
the presidency of your country.
Accordingly,
I shall not seek,
and I will not accept,
the nomination of my party for another term as your President.
Thank you for listening.
Good night and God bless all of you.
LADY BIRD: At last the decision had been reached and stated.
And as well as any human can, I knew our future.
I rose to my feet and went to him
and threw my arms around him and kissed him.
It had been nobly done.
And almost in its way,
as dramatic as our entrance into this job.
Although the actual exit is still nine months away.
(indistinct chatter)
♪
LADY BIRD: Thursday, April 4th.
I asked Lyndon about his meeting with Kennedy,
he said Sorensen had accompanied him
and that they wanted Lyndon to support them.
(inaudible)
LADY BIRD: Bobby said he wanted to maintain the position
of unifying the country,
but he felt perfectly free
to express his feelings in any way he saw fit.
Lyndon said he had never seen such arrogance.
Then I went downstairs with Liz,
we worked on the Texas trip.
Seldom has there been a trip I looked forward more to.
I have a passion for showing foreigners our country,
and showing them our home.
It was some time while Mr. Pierre was fixing my hair,
and Lynda Bird had been listening to the TV,
that she came flying into my room.
"Mama, mama. Dr. King's been shot."
And from that moment on,
the evening assumed a nightmare quality.
I have some very sad news for all of you.
Martin Luther King was shot
and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
(screaming)
♪
LADY BIRD: If we were silent, the TV was not,
it blared constantly.
The nation has not known such shock
nor has it been so stunned
since the assassination of President Kennedy.
LADY BIRD: Everybody's mind began racing off
in its own direction as to what this would mean,
to racial violence in our country,
to the work of so many to try to bring us together.
♪
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I ask every citizen
to reject the blind violence
that has struck Dr. King,
who lived by non-violence.
♪
I pray that his family
can find comfort in the memory
of all he tried to do for the land he loved so well.
(siren wailing)
♪
LADY BIRD: Friday, April 5th, I was up early.
Probably not to anybody in the city
was it a restful night.
♪
I went into Lyndon's room for coffee.
He was still firm in his feeling that I should go.
Liz called and I told her it was on.
We both recognized we'd have to make some changes
in the speeches,
the world had changed overnight.
♪
I put out my hand and met all the foreign correspondents,
thirty-eight from thirteen European countries.
I sensed the feeling of uncertainty,
tension in the air.
♪
As soon as we were aloft I went to the PA system,
and in a quiet, serious voice said,
"We travel with a heavier heart today
because of the tragedy of Dr. King's death."
And then I put it behind me with a change of tone,
and welcomed them on a journey to the part of our country
that I know best.
CARMICHAEL: When white America killed Dr. King last night,
she opened the eyes of every Black man in this country.
When White America killed Dr. King last night,
she declared war on us.
♪
LADY BIRD: Talked to Washington, to Lynda.
She said the White House was like a fortress,
nobody gets out, nobody gets in.
(sirens wailing)
NEWSCASTER: Washington, Chicago, Detroit,
Boston, New York, these are just a few `of the cities
in which the Negro anguish over Dr. King's murder,
presumably by a White man,
expressed itself in violent destruction.
WALTER E. WASHINGTON: This is a part of the confrontation
that's unfortunate.
The most tragic death of this great humanitarian has
brought, uh, brought disorder to a head.
♪
President Johnson has made some unprecedented strides
in the direction of human equality
and he is deeply hurt by what he considers
unjustified criticism.
In less than four years he has signed
three landmark civil rights bills into law.
He named Negroes to the Supreme Court, then to the Cabinet
for the first time in our history.
And he chose a Negro to be the first mayor of Washington.
But for all of his efforts,
there was something missing in this total performance
that failed to prevent the drifting apart of the races.
CROWD: (chanting) We want Kennedy! We want Kennedy!
Thank you very much.
CROWD: We want Kennedy!
ROBERT F. KENNEDY: Thank you very much.
What I think is quite clear is,
is that we can work together in the last analysis.
And what has been going on within the United States
over the period of the last three years,
the divisions whether it's between Blacks and Whites,
between the poor and the more affluent,
or on the war in Vietnam,
that we can start to work together,
we are a great country and a selfish country
and a compassionate country,
and I intend to make that my basis for running
over the period of the next few months.
(cheering)
My thanks to all of you,
and now it is on to Chicago,
and let's win this. Thank you very much.
(cheering)
LADY BIRD: Wednesday, June 5th.
It had been a short night.
The phone jarred me awake from a deep sleep.
It was Lyndon saying tersely, "Will you come in here?"
He was propped up against the pillows in his room,
looking as though he had never been to sleep,
and all the TV sets were on.
And I realized at once something was happening.
I am not sure whether I heard it first from the TV set
or from Lyndon.
Senator Kennedy had been shot.
There was an air of unreality about the whole thing.
"It couldn't be.
You dreamed it. It had happened before."
♪
He had been celebrating the victory
in the California primaries.
The whole thing had taken place
under the eye of a television camera.
(overlapping chatter)
We need a doctor here!
MAN: What happened? Do you know? Somebody said he's been shot.
♪
LADY BIRD: Faces of the television
kept repeating their hideous story.
The senator was going in for brain surgery.
It had been determined that the bullet had lodged
somewhere behind the ear.
All day long, I had heard this cacophony over and over
of the reactions of people questioned.
What is our country coming to?
What is happening to us?
Are we a sick society?
♪
FRANK MANKIEWICZ: I have a short announcement to read.
Senator Robert Francis Kennedy
died at 1:44 a.m. today,
June 6, 1968.
♪
LADY BIRD: Saturday, June 8th,
was a day for me,
completely detached from the normal,
a capsule of time suspended in unreality...
(bells tolling)
...the burial of Senator Bobby Kennedy.
♪
EDWARD M. KENNEDY: To be remembered simply as a good and decent man,
who saw wrong and tried to right it,
saw suffering and tried to heal it,
saw war and tried to stop it.
♪
LADY BIRD: One of the Catholic dignitaries came
and leaned over to tell Lyndon that he should leave first.
And then we walked to the right past the front row,
where all the Kennedy family was seated
and stopped to speak first to Ethel,
whose face was beautiful, sad, composed.
And she said, to Lyndon, very simply,
"You've been so kind."
And then I found myself in front of Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy.
I called her name and put out my hand.
She looked at me as though from a great distance,
as though I were an apparition.
I felt extreme hostility.
Was it because I was alive?
At last, without a flicker of expression,
she extended her hand very slightly.
I took it with some murmured word of sorrow
and walked on quickly.
♪
It was somehow shocking.
Never in any contact with her before had I experienced this.
♪
We were back at the White House by 11:00.
Tomorrow would be a day of mourning,
as Lyndon had proclaimed.
And Monday we would all make a new start.
♪
Tuesday, August the 27th,
Lyndon's 60th birthday.
♪
There had been talk about going to the convention
to make a sort of a Valedictory speech.
(indistinct chanting)
LADY BIRD: When the convention virtually
erupted on Monday,
the chances of our making the trip
dwindled to almost nothing.
♪
NEWSCASTER: The Youth International Party,
Yippies they call themselves,
converged on Chicago
to protest the war,
poverty, racism, and other social ills.
(clamoring)
COMMENTATOR: This may be the last
of the old style ritualistic political convention.
It may also be the end of the Democratic Party
as we have known it since Roosevelt.
LADY BIRD: The world is undergoing convulsions
all around us.
Our party,
our country, the whole world.
♪
And so, we go on to this strange year,
and personally, it is a happy year,
within the close circle of our family
because I think we are proud
of what each one of us is doing,
all of us together.
How strange that might sound
from somebody on the outside
who is looking at us.
Lynda lets us read her letters from Chuck.
She holds her personal life close.
She flinches when her daddy quotes him.
Lyndon is plowing right along,
working as hard as he can every day
on those things he can control.
Sometimes I think the greatest courage in the world
is to get up in the morning and go about the day's work.
That is one of the things I like about him,
he keeps on and on and on.
(inaudible)
(indistinct conversations)
LADY BIRD: This last of the three annual beautification luncheons
means more to me than nearly any social event.
It was one of the biggest days I have ever spent.
We went out the southwest gate,
and then one of my prides and joys,
the great masses of azaleas
that were planted fall of '65 along Pennsylvania Avenue.
A major entrance to the city,
a big shot in the arm to a decaying business area.
♪
Since our committee for a more beautiful capitol
was formed a little over three years ago,
we have devoted particular attention
to improving the physical surroundings
of public schools in the city.
Children will respond affirmatively
to improvements that they can see
and touch and take part in.
♪
WALTER E. WASHINGTON: Her heritage as First Lady
ends not in Beautification, per se,
it's in communication,
it's in the desire to identify
a human being with his environment.
LADY BIRD: As you may know, my concern
has been expressed in an effort called Beautification.
I think you also know what lies beneath
that rather inadequate word.
For beautification, to my mind,
is far more than a matter of cosmetics.
To me, it describes the whole effort
to bring the natural world
and the man-made world into harmony,
and that of course only begins with trees
and flowers and landscaping.
This has been one of the most lovely springs
I can remember in Washington's history.
It has also been one of the most poignant and grave.
That fact underscores the urgency
of improving our environment for all people.
♪
Monday, January 20th.
♪
I was up early, like when I was a child,
and it was a day to go to the country fair
and I didn't wanna miss a thing.
♪
The big black car rolled up,
and out stepped the president-elect,
and Mrs. Pat in a smashing, rosy red outfit.
And then, the funny little business
about who goes in the door first,
until I took Pat's arm firmly and said, "Shall we go in?"
♪
Try as I did to soak everything up,
I cannot remember for sure.
I think that when Lyndon walked in
they played Hail to the Chief.
("Hail to the Chief" playing)
LADY BIRD: He looked very tall and handsome `and impressive,
and very relaxed, too, I thought.
And finally, the country's new President.
♪
The hands of the clock prodded us on.
We flew over Washington and landed at Andrews,
and there was a big crowd,
lining the fence and drawn up around Air Force One.
We mounted the steps,
Lyndon carrying his faithful companion Lyn.
♪
We stopped at the top and turned and waved
a conscious goodbye tableau.
♪
It was a quiet flight down,
and about 5:30 we arrived at Bergstrom.
♪
(cheering)
♪
LADY BIRD: There was a big sign
above the base operations that said,
"Welcome home, Mr. President and family."
♪
A little past 9:00, I went to bed,
with a line of poetry ringing in my mind,
I think it's from India's Love Lyrics.
"I celebrate my glad release,
the tents of silence and the camp of peace."
And yet, for me, it's not quite the exit line,
because I have loved
almost every day of these five years.
♪
A better go-to-sleep line
was one of the signs I had seen today, my favorite,
"LBJ, You Were Good For The USA."
♪
(gentle music playing)
I can't keep up with you, that's a fact.
Maybe here comes one I can keep up with.
See these little trees around here,
that one and that one and that one?
- Uh-huh. - Those are cypress.
♪
(applause)
(inaudible)
Welcome back, Lady Bird, it's good to have you home.
Well, thank you, sir.
(applause)
♪
Michelle was in particular interested to a-- of a recording
in which, uh,
Lady Bird is critiquing President Johnson's performance.
(laughter)
Some things do not change.
Even 50 years later.
♪
Captioned by Point.360