Johnson, Lyndon B. 

Born: August 27, 1908, Stonewall Texas; Died: January 22, 1973, Stonewall Texas.  Democrat.  36th President of the United States, 1963-1969.  Vice President of the United States, 1961-1963.  U.S. Senator from Texas, 1949-1961.  Member, U.S. House of Representatives from Texas, 1937-1949.  As Senator, his “Johnson Amendment” in 1954 was added as a provision to the U.S. Tax Code, which served to limit the political speech of non-profit organizations, and churches.  As Vice President he sought to increase the powers of the office by seeking to transfer authority of Senate Majority Leader to the vice presidency.  He also sought to increase his influence in the executive branch.  Both attempts were met with vehement opposition.  Johnson was sworn in as President on Air Force One in Dallas two hours and eight minutes after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.   President, Johnson’s domestic policy launched his “Great Society” legislation, expanding his “War on Poverty,” which also increased dramatically federal funding into public schools.  After a 75-day filibuster by Democrats in the U.S. Senate against Kennedy’s civil rights bill, which had been drafted by Republican congressional leaders, the Senate voted 73-27 in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Johnson signed it into law on July 2, 1964.  Martin Luther King Jr. called the legislation a “second emancipation.”  Johnson escalated America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, a decision that was later met with anti-war protests.  The number of troops in Vietnam increase dramatically, from 16,000 in 1963 to 525,000 in 1967.  The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed national origins quotas in the country’s immigration laws, resulting in dramatic increases of immigrants from Mexico and Asia.  Johnson signed the Gun Control Act of 1968 on October 22, 1968, which was, and still remains, one of the largest and farthest reaching federal gun control laws in American History.  Urban riot marred much of Johnson’s presidency, with disturbances breaking out in Harlem (1964), Watts in Los Angeles (1965), Newark (1967), and a wave of riots in over a hundred cities in April of 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King.  Johnson was unsurprised by the riots, saying, “What did you expect?  I don’t know why we’re so surprised.  When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do?  He’s going to knock your block off.”  In 1967, Johnson appointed the first Africa-American Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall.