Born to a wealthy Texas family in 1912, Claudia Alta Taylor was said to have gotten her nickname from a servant taken by her natural beauty, and she kept the moniker for the rest of her life. She earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in journalism from the University of Texas, Austin.
President Johnson, while still a congressional aide, proposed to her in 1934 after just seven weeks of courtship, according to the official White House biography. They married in November of that year. Their first child, Lynda Bird, was born in 1944, after a series of miscarriages; a second daughter, Luci Baines, followed in 1947.
Her role as First Lady came abruptly, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Johnson became best known for the urban and highway-beautification projects that began when she created the First Lady’s Committee for a More Beautiful Capital, which brought pansies to the National Mall, azaleas and dogwoods to traffic islands and other floral touches to a concrete capital. The project grew to influence the entire nation. The Highway Beautification Act of 1965, also known as “Lady Bird’s Bill,” was the first major legislative campaign launched by a First Lady.
In 1964, Lady Bird toured eight Southern states by train at a time when the region was seething over President Johnson’s signature of the Civil Rights Act. On her trip, the First Lady sought to defuse tensions and espouse the possibilities of a “New South.” She was praised for her courage and grace in facing hecklers and regaining some rural support for her husband.
When President Johnson decided not to seek re-election in 1968, the two retired to the “LBJ Ranch” in Stonewall, Texas. In 1977, four years after her husband’s death, Lady Bird Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1982 she founded the National Wildflower Research Center at the University of Texas.
