Lady Bird Johnson’s Personal Audio Diaries Are Featured in a New Documentary

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Latest News: Late First Lady Featured in New Documentary The Lady Bird Diaries

Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, is the subject of a new ABC News documentary now streaming on Hulu. The Lady Bird Diaries features excerpts from more than 123 hours of audio recordings, as well as home videos, news footage, and handwritten letters by Lady Bird, who served as first lady from 1963 to 1969. Many were never made public until now.

In the documentary, the late first lady recounts what she saw and heard during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, which propelled her husband into the presidency. “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,’” Lady Bird recalled, according to ABC News. “The cars accelerated faster and faster. I cast one last look back over my shoulder, saw a bundle of pink, just like a drift blossom, lying in the backseat. It was Mrs. Kennedy lying over the president’s body.”

Lady Bird, who was very candid about her time in the White House up until her 2007 death, also discusses the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and her husband signing the first Civil Rights Act bill into law.

Watch The Lady Bird Diaries Now

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Who Was Lady Bird Johnson?

Lady Bird Johnson was the wife of Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36^th president of the United States. As first lady from 1963 to 1969, Lady Bird Johnson supported the “war on poverty,” the Headstart Program, and also worked for the beautification of Washington, D.C. Following her husband’s presidency, Lady Bird wrote the 800-page A White House Diary. She also remained active in beautification projects and women’s rights issues before her death in 2007 at age 94.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Claudia Alta Taylor Johnson
BORN: December 22, 1912
DIED: July 11, 2007
BIRTHPLACE: Karnack, Texas
SPOUSE: Lyndon Baines Johnson (1934-1973)
CHILDREN: Lynda and Luci
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn

Early Life

Lady Bird Johnson was born Claudia Alta Taylor in Karnack, Texas, on December 22, 1912. As a child, a family nurse declared that Claudia was as “pretty as a ladybird.” The nickname stuck.

She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor’s degree in art followed and continued on there studying journalism, with the plan to become a newspaper reporter.

In the summer of 1934, Claudia met Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was working as a congressional aide at the time. Claudia and Johnson married in November 1934, just seven weeks after their first date. They had two daughters, Lynda and Luci, in the mid- to late-1940s. Claudia borrowed from her inheritance to help finance her husband’s first election campaign.

U.S. First Lady

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas while traveling in a motorcade. Vice President Johnson was only two cars behind Kennedy when the shots rang out. Just a few hours later, Johnson was sworn in as the 36^th president aboard Air Force One on its return to Washington, D.C. Subsequently, Claudia became first lady of the United States.

Lady Bird served in the role from 1963 to 1969; in 1964, her husband was elected to the presidency over Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. With public sentiment largely for Democrats and Goldwater’s staunch conservatism, Johnson won by a landslide; he received 61 percent of the popular vote—the biggest margin of victory in U.S. election history.

As first lady, Claudia, better known by this time as Lady Bird Johnson, supported the “war on poverty” and the Headstart Program. She also worked to beautify of Washington, D.C. by planting bulbs and trees along roadsides to call attention to the growing crisis of habitat and species loss. She created the First Lady’s Committee for a More Beautiful Capital, and her work became the first major legislative campaign launched by a first lady: the Highway Beautification Act of 1965.

In June 1968, Lady Bird traveled to Portland, Oregon, along with then-Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, to deliver a lecture regarding a new type of conservation before a convention of the American Institute of Architects. There, she discussed a whole-community approach to conservation and curbing urbanization. “The answers cannot be found in piece-milled reform,” Lady Bird stated. “The job really requires thoughtful interrelation of the whole environment. Not only in buildings but parks, not only parks but highways, not only highways but open spaces and green belts. A beautification in my mind is far more than a matter of cosmetics. To me, it describes the whole effort to bring the natural world and the manmade world to harmony. To bring order, usefulness, delight to our whole environment. And that of course only begins with trees and flowers and landscaping.”

Final Years and Death

Following the presidency, Johnson wrote the 800-page A White House Diary, which detailed her husband’s life including the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination.

Johnson remained active in beautification projects. Her love for native wildflowers inspired her to create the National Wildflower Research Center in 1982, near Austin, Texas. It was renamed in her honor in 1998.

Johnson also remained outspoken on women’s rights issues, calling the Equal Rights Amendment “the right thing to do.” She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Gerald Ford in 1977, as well as the Congressional Gold Medal from President Ronald Reagan in 1988.

In 2002, Johnson suffered a stroke that made speaking difficult for the former first lady. She died on July 11, 2007, at the age of 94, in West Lake Hills, Texas.

Lady Bird Johnson Park

Because of Johnson’s dedication to preserving the environment, Columbia Island in the District of Columbia was renamed Lady Bird Johnson Park in her honor in 1968. It features two memorials—the Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove on the Potomac and the Navy and Marine Memorial—and is known for its scenery, including daffodils and tulips that bloom each spring as well as striking fall foliage.

Quotes

• A beautification in my mind is far more than a matter of cosmetics. To me, it describes the whole effort to bring the natural world and the manmade world to harmony. To bring order, usefulness, delight to our whole environment. And that of course only begins with trees and flowers and landscaping.

• My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery, order, and disorder of the flowering earth.

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