No visit to the Texas Hill Country is complete without visiting the LBJ State Park and Historical Site. Lyndon Baines Johnson was the 36th President of the United States, serving from 1963 through 1969. He was the Vice President of John F Kennedy, and took over the presidency upon Kennedy’s death. Many, even most, baby boomers remember his presidency well since it happened during the tumultuous 1960s, and his part in escalating the VietNam War was extremely controversial. Johnson was a Democrat, a United States Congressman who became a Senator and the Senate Majority Leader. He was chosen as JFK’s running mate, and became President in 1963. Johnson’s “Great Society” and War on Poverty was his passion, sadly the war derailed his domestic policy. Johnson’s accomplishments tend to be forgotten now, but this is the President who passed Medicare and Medicaid, and created public television. He signed civil rights bills into law that banned racial discrimination in public facilities, at work and in housing. The Voting Rights Act prohibited certain practices in southern states used since Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise African American voters (now many of those same states have voter ID laws, which also tends to disenfranchise the African American Vote). The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 he signed changed the country’s immigration system by encouraging greater immigration from regions other than Europe, which is so much in the news in the 21st Century. Johnson’s presidency marked the peak of modern liberalism, and had he not been ruined by the war, it is hard to know what other programs and legislation would have been passed for the betterment of the citizenry. His wife, Lady Bird Johnson (also LBJ) is responsible for the Texas wildflower bloom every spring. [Read more…] about What to Do and See in the Texas Hill Country…Don’t forget LBJ!
