4
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON
LBJ’S INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IDENTIFICATION
Write the name of the influential person next to the matching description:
Richard Kleberg
Harry S. Truman
Lady Bird Johnson
Hubert Humphrey
Elected President of the United States after Johnson in 1968
Johnson’s wife
Proposed a national health care program in 1945 similar to what Johnson proposed and signed into law in 1965
Vice President of the United States from 1961-1963
Appointed by Johnson as the first African-American United States Solicitor General
Lost the 1964 presidential election to Johnson
Johnson served as his Congressional Secretary from 1931-1935
Johnsons’ Vice-President
African American civil rights activist, assassinated in 1965
Pediatrician from Johns Hopkins whose expertise helped to create Head Start
North Vietnamese communist leader
Johnson accepted the position of Texas Director of the National Youth Administration under his presidency
Johnson’s Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War
Governor of Alabama who was in favor of segregation
Professor of Psychology from Yale whose expertise helped to create Head Start
Senator who supported Johnson in his early years in the Senate but later fought him on the issue of civil rights.
PROJECTS FOR RESEARCH
1. Research the history of the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States. Particularly note moments in both parties’
timelines that revolve around the issues of slavery and civil rights.
2. Who was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Research his life and involvement in the United States civil rights movement.
3. Define ‘civil rights’. Explore the background of the United States civil rights movement leading up to 1964. What year did African
Americans get the right to vote? What was LBJ’s stand on civil rights? Pay special attention to the impact and the failings of the
Civil Rights Act of 1957.
4. What is the Southern Christian Leadership Conference? Who were its leaders? What happened during the Birmingham campaign
of 1963? What happened at Birmingham’s 16 Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963?
5. Research the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Who were its leaders in 1964?
6. What is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)? Who were its leaders in 1964?
7. What kind of pressure or obstacles did President Johnson encounter from Bob Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer, the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and its Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party?
8. What kind of pressure or obstacles did President Johnson encounter from the Southern Caucus of the U.S. Congress?
Pay special attention to four congressmen who appear in the play: Senator Dick Russell, Senator Strom Thurmond,
Senator Jim Eastland and Representative Judge Smith.
9. Research the following people and their relationships to President Johnson: Walter Jenkins, Richard Russell, Hubert Humphrey,
Robert (Bobby) Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, Katherine Graham, and Everett Dirksen.
10. Research Lady Bird Johnson. What did she accomplish prior to her husband becoming president? What did she accomplish
as First Lady?
11. Who was J. Edgar Hoover? What was his relationship to President Johnson? To Dr. Martin Luther King?
12. What is a Senate filibuster? What is cloture? What is a discharge petition?
The above research project ideas were created by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Education Department as part of “Suggestions
for Teaching
All the Way
.” Copy write Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
George Wallace
Robert McNamara
Richard Russell
Barry Goldwater
Thurgood Marshall
Harry S. Truman
John F. Kennedy
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Ho Chi Minh
Richard Nixon
Dr. Robert Cooke
Dr. Edward Zigler
Malcolm X
