US History Episode 19: LBJ or, "The US Gets the Johnson Treatment"

This episode of Anti-Social Studies was sponsored by the LBJ Presidential Library and Foundation. If you're in the Austin area, visit the LBJ Library & Museum. If not, check out www.LBJLibrary.org to explore their eMuseum, digital archives, and educational resources.

If JFK was the optimism of what the 1960s could be, then LBJ was the realism of what it actually was. Does that sentence make sense? I’m sure it will by the end of this episode. 

Remember last episode when I said that the 1960s were insane. Well, I was right. Turns out we’re actually going to need THREE episodes just to start making sense of this decade. Last episode we talked about JFK. Next episode, we’re going to dive into the main Civil Rights Era and the other protests and rights movements that came along with it in the 1960s and into the 1970s.

For today, I want to focus on our FIRST true Texan president. (Eisenhower was born here but that doesn’t count.) Who was LBJ? What did he hope would be his legacy? And why did it end up just being Vietnam? 

Today’s episode is all about LBJ or, “The US Gets the Johnson Treatment” This is Anti-Social Studies; settle in and let’s go back in time…