[SPEAKER_01]: This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host, Kelly Theresa Pollock. [SPEAKER_01]: I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app so you never [SPEAKER_01]: Tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen to. [SPEAKER_01]: Claudia Alta Taylor was born in Karnak, Texas, on December 22, 1912. [SPEAKER_01]: According to legend, it was her nurse maid who gave her her famous nickname. [SPEAKER_01]: Lady Bird graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1934, with a BA in History and Journalism.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shortly before graduating, she was introduced to Lyndon Baines, Johnson, and they married in November 1934. [SPEAKER_01]: It was Lady Bird, who provided the initial campaign funds from an inheritance. [SPEAKER_01]: During World War II, while Lyndon was active duty military in the Navy, Lady Bird ran his congressional office. [SPEAKER_01]: In 1943, she purchased a struggling Austin radio station and turned it around.
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1960, Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy asked Lyndon then the Senate Majority Leader to be the VP candidate on his ticket in a bid to win votes from the South. [SPEAKER_01]: Because Jackie Kennedy was pregnant at the time, Lady Bird played an outsized role in the campaign, [SPEAKER_01]: Kennedy won narrowly, carrying seven southern states.
[SPEAKER_01]: When Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22nd, 1963, LBJ assumed the presidency, and Lady Bird was unexpectedly thrust into the role of First Lady. [SPEAKER_01]: An July 2nd, 1964, [SPEAKER_01]: President Johnson signed into law, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, legislation that had originally been championed by Kennedy.
[SPEAKER_01]: The act passed overwhelmingly in both houses of Congress, but only after overcoming a 72-day filibuster in the Senate, led by Southern Democrats. [SPEAKER_01]: Later that day, L.B.J. [SPEAKER_01]: remarked to journalist Bill Moers, quote, well, I think we may have lost the South for your lifetime in mind, on quote. [SPEAKER_01]: The following month, the DNC nominated Lyndon as their presidential candidate.
[SPEAKER_01]: L.B.J. [SPEAKER_01]: was heavily favored to win, over Republican nominee, Senator Barry Goldwater. [SPEAKER_01]: but the civil rights act had alienated swaths of the south, which were threatening to leave the democratic column. [SPEAKER_01]: Albie J. could have ignored the southern states in his campaign plans and won without them, but Albie J. and Lady Bird themselves, southerners, refused to write off the south.
[SPEAKER_01]: They developed a plan for Lady Bird [SPEAKER_01]: As Lady Bird later reflected, vote, I have a strong sentimental family deep tight the south. [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought the south was getting a bat wrap from the nation and indeed the world. [SPEAKER_01]: It was painted as a bastion of ignorance and prejudice and all sorts of ugly things. [SPEAKER_01]: It was my country.
[SPEAKER_01]: And although I knew I couldn't be all that persuasive to them, at least I could talk to them in language they would understand on vote. [SPEAKER_01]: Despite three locked-ins of LBJ's principal campaign advisor, the president approved of the trip. [SPEAKER_01]: And the first lady joined by her social secretary, best able and her press secretary, Liz Carpenter, [SPEAKER_01]: forged ahead with planning the 1,682 mile October train trip from Washington DC to New Orleans.
[SPEAKER_01]: Several congressional wives helped and Lady Bird's friend Virginia Russell moved to the White House for three weeks to join the planning. [SPEAKER_01]: They rescued an observation car from a Pennsylvania junkyard and redupped it the Queen Mary [SPEAKER_01]: painting the exterior, red, white, and blue, and installing a brass platform with a podium on the back from which Lady Bird and other guests could give speeches.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because there was no air conditioning in the Queen Mary, blocks of ice needed to be loaded on at each stop to cool it. [SPEAKER_01]: The Queen Mary was the last car in the 19 car train. [SPEAKER_01]: which boasted room for security personnel, lodging for journalists and campaign staff, a dining car and a reception room. [SPEAKER_01]: The Ladybird Special began its journey on Tuesday, October 6th, departing DC just before dawn.
[SPEAKER_01]: This whistle-stop tour was the first time that a first lady had campaigned alone without her husband. [SPEAKER_01]: But LBJ did join for the first short leg to Alexandria, Virginia, or 5,000 people came out, and high school bands greeted them with the strains of the yellow rows of Texas. [SPEAKER_01]: LBJ returned to the White House by helicopter, and the Ladybird Special continued on its [SPEAKER_01]: but the speakers never even leaving the train.
[SPEAKER_01]: Journalists who hopped off the train to watch the speeches or to interview people in the crowds, had to listen for the whistle to jump back on or risk being left behind. [SPEAKER_01]: For the final stop on Tuesday, 14,000 people joined Leady Bird and Elby Jay who flew in. [SPEAKER_01]: for a rally at the Reynolds Coliseum at North Carolina State College.
[SPEAKER_01]: On Wednesday, October 7th, the Ladybird Special headed from North Carolina into South Carolina where Goldwater supporters began to show up in larger numbers. [SPEAKER_01]: On Thursday, October 8th, the train crossed into Georgia and 15,000 people showed up for a lunchtime rally in Savannah, including folks carrying this is goldwater country banners and shouting we want Barry. [SPEAKER_01]: Despite a bomb threat in Florida, the Ladybird Special avoided violence.
[SPEAKER_01]: through Alabama and Mississippi, on the way to their final stop in New Orleans. [SPEAKER_01]: Lady Bird had invited democratic senators and governors in the states they visited to join the train and to speak. [SPEAKER_01]: Although some of them enthusiastically joined, others were reluctant, either because they had split with LBJ, or because they worried about their own political perspectives if they aligned too closely with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace, unsurprisingly, did not join the train, [SPEAKER_01]: Where Lady Bird reminisced about the summers she spent there with relatives while growing up. [SPEAKER_01]: The journey ended in New Orleans, where LBJ was again waiting. [SPEAKER_01]: 40,000 supporters joined the final rally.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ladybirds hold the crowd that she and Linden had, quote, too much respect for the South, to take it for granted, and too much closeness to ignore it, unquote. [SPEAKER_01]: It was one more stop that evening, a campaign fundraising dinner in New Orleans.
[SPEAKER_01]: where, I'll be J, against the wishes of his advisors declared, quote, if we are to heal our history and make this nation whole, prosperity must know no Mason Dixon line, an opportunity must know no color line on vote, as he promised to enforce the Civil Rights Act. [SPEAKER_01]: After 47 speeches in front of 200,000 people, Ladybirds whistle-stop campaign was over.
[SPEAKER_01]: LBJ was so delighted by the reception of the Ladybird Special that he asked the first lady to go out on more campaign stops in the final weeks of the campaign. [SPEAKER_01]: An November 3, 1964, LBJ won reelection. [SPEAKER_01]: with 61% of the popular vote, carrying all but six states, five of them in the south. [SPEAKER_01]: Joining me in this episode is returning guest, Shannon McKenna Schmidt. [SPEAKER_01]: Author of, you can't catch us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lady Bird Johnson's trailblazing 1964 campaign train and the women who rode with her. [SPEAKER_01]: But first, please enjoy a little audio from the Lady Bird Special stop in a Husky North Carolina, on October 6th, 1964. [SPEAKER_03]: And now it is my pleasure to welcome the North Carolina and to present to you. [SPEAKER_03]: The first lady of the land, Lady Bird Johnson. [SPEAKER_02]: Ah! [SPEAKER_02]: Good, and Mrs. Sanford. [SPEAKER_02]: Mrs. Dan Moore.
[SPEAKER_02]: Congressman Ms. Bonner and all you friends out there, I just can't tell you how happy this makes me and how wonderful it is to be greeted by such a big crowd. [SPEAKER_02]: I know we have kept you waiting and I'm sorry, but we kept you waiting for a mighty good reason we found so many people back up the railroad tracks that we wanted to greet and the crowds everywhere all through Virginia. [SPEAKER_02]: This delightful day have been wonderful.
[SPEAKER_02]: I understand a husky, began as a railroad town, and I was advised that this thing I could do was to bring along a train load of passengers who I've done my best. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry we can't stay long enough to visit nearby to one college. [SPEAKER_02]: Ah! [SPEAKER_02]: Ah! [SPEAKER_02]: I see they've come to visit us, good. [SPEAKER_02]: I have enjoyed so much meeting and riding through the state with your many able public officials.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have come here today not just because we enjoy an autumn train ride across this south land, but because we believe that North Carolinians are interested in good government, far-sighted government, [SPEAKER_02]: And we believe that the party with the most heart, the most vision, the most stability is the democratic party. [UNKNOWN]: Yeah! [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah! [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah!
[SPEAKER_02]: All of us are here to say what I suspect you have already guessed, that we hope you will place your confidence in the president again, [SPEAKER_02]: in Herbert Bonner and right on down the line. [SPEAKER_01]: I shouldn't think so much for joining me today. [SPEAKER_04]: Hi Kelly. [SPEAKER_04]: Well, thanks so much for having me back on the program. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I am excited to talk to you again. [SPEAKER_01]: Want to hear a little bit about what that you started on this book.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is, I think, your fourth book and of course, I spoke to you about your most recent book before this one, and when it arose about a specific tour, so what that you launched on this one.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, after I wrote that book about Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady of World War II about her trip to the Pacific Theater, I was curious to find out what other moment his journeys first ladies might have taken, and there was Lady Bird Johnson whistle stopping down the tracks during the 1964 election season on a campaign train, and she actually made history to do it. [SPEAKER_04]: She was the first first lady to take a leading role on the campaign trail.
[SPEAKER_04]: And what I didn't know at the time, but was a neat connection, is that and when our Roosevelt was Lady Bird's role model as First Lady. [SPEAKER_04]: So I loved that connection between the two of them. [SPEAKER_01]: You, for this book, had an abundance of sources because there are many, many, many newspaper articles about this tour. [SPEAKER_01]: Talk to me a little bit about sorting through all the sources, figuring out how to piece this story together.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, one of the early indicators for me because this was a four day journey and the train campaign went from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans and at first I thought, well, how could four days cover an entire book? [SPEAKER_04]: And one of the early indicators of what a momentous journey this was was the amount of media coverage.
[SPEAKER_04]: Some 225 reporters wrote along on this 19 car train so they [SPEAKER_04]: track the train basically all along the line from newspaper articles in small town papers to ones that articles that went out over the wire nationwide written by reporters like Helen Thomas. [SPEAKER_04]: So that was enormously helpful and I'd love doing the research and I went to the LBJ [SPEAKER_04]: there is wealth of information, Lady Bird was well-known for being very well-prepared.
[SPEAKER_04]: Her advance notebooks are there with all of her notes in it. [SPEAKER_04]: Many, many folders, letters sent to Lady Bird from people who saw her along the route, files that were open to a researcher for the first time, which was very exciting for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: And [SPEAKER_04]: A woman named Liz Carpenter, who was Lady Bird's press secretary, first East Wing staff director, and a key orchestrator of this trip, she wrote a memoir, very funny, called Ruffles and Flourishes, if people want to check that out. [SPEAKER_04]: So it really was an astonishing amount of resource materials available to me for this. [SPEAKER_01]: Did you have a big poster board where you were trying to track what the schedule actually looked like?
[SPEAKER_01]: What did that look like for you? [SPEAKER_04]: I didn't have a big poster board. [SPEAKER_04]: Although I do love that idea. [SPEAKER_04]: I have a friend who writes narrative nonfiction and she does that and it sounds very intriguing to me. [SPEAKER_04]: I knew that I was going to set this up chronologically. [SPEAKER_04]: So that was very helpful, but I do, I do outline. [SPEAKER_04]: So I did outline each chapter before I started writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: let's set the stage a little bit. [SPEAKER_01]: It is 1964. [SPEAKER_01]: This is fall shortly before the election. [SPEAKER_01]: Things are at a fever pitch in the country in terms of things like race relations. [SPEAKER_01]: Johnson is not like by parts of his own party, especially in the south.
[SPEAKER_01]: What were the considerations that the First Lady and her staff needed to make thinking about whether to do this trip, whether to put look like what security concerns there might be? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so this is October 1964. [SPEAKER_04]: LBJ is in a race for the presidency against Republican candidate Barry Goldwater.
[SPEAKER_04]: LBJ would like to win in a landslide victory to prove to the American public that he earned the presidency and that he didn't just inherit it after John F. Kennedy's assassination. [SPEAKER_04]: And three months earlier, LBJ signed into law the Civil Rights Act. [SPEAKER_04]: So much of the South is seething. [SPEAKER_04]: They hate him. [SPEAKER_04]: He's been called a traitor to the South because he himself is from Texas.
[SPEAKER_04]: He threw his political weight behind the Civil Rights Act to help get it passed. [SPEAKER_04]: And the fact is he doesn't need the South to win the election. [SPEAKER_04]: And a lot of his advisors are saying, we don't need it, why waste the resources, why waste the money, you're likely to win anyway. [SPEAKER_04]: But Lady Bird and the president, they're having none of this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Lady Bird is also from the South, from Texas, with deep Alabama roots, and she and her staff they look for a way to campaign into the South and they come up with this campaign train that I said we'll go from Washington, DC to New Orleans and cover nearly 2,000 miles. [SPEAKER_04]: So it's this women led endeavor, which was another history-making thing at the time, and they put this campaign train together in a matter of weeks.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there was some danger involved, but the danger also was not going to dissuade Lady Bird. [SPEAKER_04]: She was going to do this. [SPEAKER_01]: This just, I hate event planning anyway, but this whole thing feels like a logistical nightmare.
[SPEAKER_01]: to figure out where all the train is going to stop along the way for how long and each place what that looks like when you get off the train when you don't who's joining Kee-Tooksme about the preparation that figuring all that out who to keep players were. [SPEAKER_04]: That is absolutely true. [SPEAKER_04]: And one of the things that I kept thinking about is the fact that they didn't have email then. [SPEAKER_04]: We had telephones. [SPEAKER_04]: We had telegrams.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was how they were getting this done. [SPEAKER_04]: And as I said, they did it in a matter of weeks. [SPEAKER_04]: And more than 1,000 people. [SPEAKER_04]: Pretty much came together to make this happen. [SPEAKER_04]: There were a team of key orchestrators who worked out of the East Wing. [SPEAKER_04]: They worked with the Democratic National Committee. [SPEAKER_04]: There were advancement, advance women who worked in every community down the line.
[SPEAKER_04]: They in turn would gather together people in every town who would help with the preparations, get people to the station decorate. [SPEAKER_04]: Whatever it is that they needed to do to drum up excitement. [SPEAKER_04]: So it really was this extraordinary team and I was very much struck by the camaraderie of all of these women and how they came together to support each other and to support this endeavor.
[SPEAKER_01]: How did they make decisions about their obvious places you're gonna wanna stop? [SPEAKER_01]: Like, they're really big cities that you need to hit with a lot of supporters and donors and things. [SPEAKER_01]: But all along the way, they're, I think, 45 stops. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's some of these are tiny little towns. [SPEAKER_01]: There's like a thousand people in the town but they're making a stop.
[SPEAKER_01]: But some places of course they need to go straight they can't stop at every possible place. [SPEAKER_01]: So what did that decision making process look like?
[SPEAKER_04]: primarily a couple of things, where the train could reach by nightfall, which towns were the gathering places of the counties, and they were likely to get more people out, where they thought that the president and his running mate, Hubert Humphrey, would most need the votes, and Liz Carpenter, she was very funny, and she said that they would send Lady Bird into places where Elby J wouldn't be able to get in and out with his hide-on. [SPEAKER_04]: So she wanted the tough towns.
[SPEAKER_04]: Ladybird asked for the tough towns, small towns, also places like Charleston, which was very, very much steeped. [SPEAKER_04]: It was goldwater territory. [SPEAKER_04]: So Ladybird asked for the tough towns and six different railroad lines came together to make the route from Washington, DC, to New Orleans.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there was a town called Ahoski, [SPEAKER_04]: And they sent a telegram to the White House asking to have the train stop and they said no important person to stop here since Buffalo Bill brought his wild west show and they said that no passenger train had come through in 12 years. [SPEAKER_04]: So they stopped in a husky and they get 10,000 people there. [SPEAKER_04]: So it was a kind of a piecing together of like a quilt to put together this route.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Ladybird doesn't give the same speech every time. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not like she just gets out then it's like, here's my five-minute speech that I'm giving 45 times. [SPEAKER_01]: She's actually personalizing it. [SPEAKER_01]: That seems like a huge amount of effort. [SPEAKER_04]: It is. [SPEAKER_04]: And that was very much Lady Bird John said for state dinners, she would read the briefing books that the president was given by the State Department.
[SPEAKER_04]: She would learn facts about people so that she could make a personal connection with everybody in a receiving line. [SPEAKER_04]: And she brought that same kind of sincerity and personal connection to everything that she did. [SPEAKER_04]: And the same with this tour.
[SPEAKER_04]: She talked about a lot of the same [SPEAKER_04]: points, LBJ's experience, his administration's initiatives, but every single speech was customized along the route for all of the stops and [SPEAKER_04]: People noticed, I think it was after Fredericksburg, Virginia, where a newspaper had the headline that said, Lady Bird Johnson did her homework for tour. [SPEAKER_04]: So people recognized that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that that's what made her very effective is that people knew they were getting sincerity and they weren't getting canned political talking points from her. [SPEAKER_01]: That sincerity also shows through in the speeches that her daughters gave. [SPEAKER_01]: So what did that look like to involve the two daughters on the route, what did they bring to the tour?
[SPEAKER_04]: So 20-year-old Linda and 17-year-old Lucy, the Johnson daughters, Linda wrote along for the first two days, Lucy for the second, and they were amazingly poised and funny, and they were enormously popular with everybody along the route, and especially with the great number of young people who turned out.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they, like Lady Bird ended up doing, they faced down hecklers with poise, they gave speeches, something that Linda said at one of the stops actually became the title for the book, you can't catch us. [SPEAKER_04]: And the train was leaving a station in North Carolina and some boys ran after the train weaving Barry Goldwater signs. [SPEAKER_04]: And Linda flips on the loudspeaker, and very cheerfully, she says to them, you're running after the 20th century, you can't catch us.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it was that kind of energy that the train campaign embodied, and I feel that they contributed to, and I love that as the title, because I felt that it reflected the forward momentum of the train, but also the surrounding social progress and civil rights and women's rights that were taking place. [SPEAKER_01]: And you had a chance to speak with Linda and Lucy, right? [SPEAKER_04]: I did, so I spoke to each of them on the phone, and I've since met Linda in person as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was so appreciative of the fact that they took the time to talk to me about their experiences writing on the campaign train. [SPEAKER_04]: So they would have been among the youngest people to have written on the train. [SPEAKER_04]: And when I spoke to Linda, when I, we first, I answered the call and the first thing she says to me is, I've been doing my homework.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it just, it made me smile because as, as we just heard, Lady Bird was, was very known for doing her homework and Linda had been calling up other people who had been on the train to prep for talking with me. [SPEAKER_01]: that's fantastic. [SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned hot clears. [SPEAKER_01]: What did that look like?
[SPEAKER_01]: It obviously wasn't the same in every single town, but in a lot of places, especially as they got to Alabama and Mississippi, there was a fair amount of very goldwater fan presence there. [SPEAKER_04]: So through Virginia and North Carolina, there were always at every stop, goldwater supporters. [SPEAKER_04]: Through Virginia, North Carolina, they would have their signs. [SPEAKER_04]: The train gets into Columbia, South Carolina, and the mood changes.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a big crowd, I think it was 8,000 people cheering, supporting. [SPEAKER_04]: And then, as Liz Carpenter explained it, she said, it was so surprisingly ugly. [SPEAKER_04]: It left us all a gas, what happened next. [SPEAKER_04]: And it was a relatively small group of hecklers, but what these groups would do to maximize their disruptiveness as they would surge the back platform on the train where Lady Bird and the other people were speaking.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they would tackle, they would cat call, they would give crude gestures, and they would wave really terrible signs. [SPEAKER_04]: And so this happened for the first time in Columbia, South Carolina, that same day day two, the train goes on to Charleston. [SPEAKER_04]: Some of these same people followed the train from Columbia to Charleston. [SPEAKER_04]: And there was an even more disruptive group there in Charleston.
[SPEAKER_04]: And back in Columbia, Lady Bird, [SPEAKER_04]: She addressed the hecklers, she held up her hand, and she very politely admonished them, and they were quiet for the rest of her speech. [SPEAKER_04]: Not so in Charleston, they continued to be disrupted there, but a reporter asked Lady Bird, [SPEAKER_04]: at the end of that day about these hecklers, and she just had a great perspective.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she said, you know, we need to just remember that thousands and thousands of people have come out to greet us, shown us such support and love, and that it's just dozens of people who have done the heckling. [SPEAKER_04]: And just one more quick thing on the hecklers, so mobile Alabama. [SPEAKER_04]: They had the second largest crowd of the whole trip, 20,000 people. [SPEAKER_04]: And Alabama is one of the states that most hates LBJ.
[SPEAKER_04]: As Lady Bird said, it was a state that she had the deepest ties to family ties, and it was also the state most adamantly against them. [SPEAKER_04]: There were hecklers in Mobile, but they also got this amazing crowd of 20,000 people [SPEAKER_04]: and a reporter said that if white backlash was going to ruin this trip, mobile gate, the answer. [SPEAKER_04]: And Lady Bird ended up saying, despite a bit of contentiousness at that stop that it was her favorite stop of the trip.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I think I found so fascinating, was this idea that, you know, so many people in the south are, as you said, think Elby J is a traitor to the south, [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the democratic politicians who may have otherwise been part of the trip or reluctant to do so because of that. [SPEAKER_01]: And yet there is this sense that, well, it's the south. [SPEAKER_01]: We need to be hospitable. [SPEAKER_01]: We need to welcome the First Lady whether or not we agree with her.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are some of the ways that that sort of tension plays out? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so that's an excellent point because the organizers did, and a lot of Lady Bird's team, they were 15 ladies for Lyndon, and they were the official hostesses on the train. [SPEAKER_04]: They were all from the south. [SPEAKER_04]: and they wanted to go into the south.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there was this, they were leaning into the fact that you wouldn't, you couldn't be considered a southern gentleman if you weren't going to give gallant escort to a lady. [SPEAKER_04]: So they very much did lean into that. [SPEAKER_04]: And it was actually very effective because [SPEAKER_04]: And as the train traveled further south, it gained momentum.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so what happened was even people like Paul Johnson, the governor of Mississippi, who called LBJ and Hubert Humphrey, the most dangerous duo in the country, because of their advocacy for civil rights, even he got on the train. [SPEAKER_04]: When it was in Biloxy, the only stop in Mississippi, he got on that train and he praised Lady Bird and gave a speech. [SPEAKER_04]: So they did lean into that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that in instance like that, that wasn't the only time it happened, shows the power of the Lady Bird's special and Lady Bird herself. [SPEAKER_01]: But one thing that really shines through in this story is how much respect and love LBJ has for Lady Bird, how much it means to him that she is willing to do this trip. [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, he also famously cheated on her. [SPEAKER_01]: But what does their relationship look like?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, and, you know, LBJ wasn't always the greatest husband, as you said, he cheated on her. [SPEAKER_04]: He would often treat her terribly in public. [SPEAKER_04]: And I thought about all of that. [SPEAKER_04]: And what I came down to for this story is, I focus on the aspects of their relationship that gave rise to the Lady Bird Special. [SPEAKER_04]: And again, I think that might surprise people.
[SPEAKER_04]: So at this point in 1964, Lady Bird has been with LBJ [SPEAKER_04]: I think 27 years in politics. [SPEAKER_04]: And something I found very interesting is that he gave her public credit at the time. [SPEAKER_04]: So this was very well known that they had this political and personal partnership. [SPEAKER_04]: And in 1960, LBJ first ran for the presidential nomination and then he ended up as the VP on the ticket.
[SPEAKER_04]: But he told a reporter in 1960 about Ladybird, she has made my career possible. [SPEAKER_04]: and she of course was became a really wonderful campaigner and politician in her own right as well. [SPEAKER_04]: Always in support of his endeavors, but I do think that that might be a lesser known aspect of their relationship. [SPEAKER_04]: And he also advocated for women in government.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was a ladybird pushed that agenda and so did Liz Karkender who worked with him on projects when he was president and that was one of them. [SPEAKER_04]: So I loved that women powered aspect of the story all around. [SPEAKER_01]: We've been talking about the ways that Lady Bird changed the role of First Ladies in campaigns, but she also had an effect on the way we think about the role of the First Lady generally. [SPEAKER_01]: What did that look like?
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course we can't talk about the East twice without being a little recliped, but there is no East Wing now, but how did she professionalize the role?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so in this, this was something that I liked about because we know that Eleanor Roosevelt moved the needle the bar forward for first ladies in in very instrumental ways and Lady bird johnson did as well as you said she was the first first lady to professionalize the role she hired Liz carpenter who is the first east wing staff director and Liz carpenter was also the first
[SPEAKER_04]: was she instead of pushing the media away or thinking that they're crying and she embraced them and she really worked with them to get her messaging out the administration's messaging out. [SPEAKER_04]: And she said that she considered being first lady a daily working job.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I also love that she referred to herself as a wife, mother, business woman, and politician, because in addition to being involved in LBJ's political career, she also bought a rundown Austin radio station in all of her spare time, and she turned it into a media conglomerate. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's really a fantastic story. [SPEAKER_01]: I want to ask if we can figure out anything about whether this train trip had an effect on the 1964 election.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, you mentioned LBJ wanted to win in landslide. [SPEAKER_01]: He did, he did not win all of the states that the Ladybird special went through. [SPEAKER_01]: But what can we sort of figure out about whether it was effective? [SPEAKER_04]: So in terms of the actual campaign, the governor of Virginia, before the Lady Bird Special came through the state, he thought the state was gonna go for gold water.
[SPEAKER_04]: One day after he rode the Lady Bird Special, he had changed his tune and said that he thought that LBJ would now win Virginia and in fact, they did win Virginia, the Democrats. [SPEAKER_04]: Same in North Carolina, when Luz Carpenter advanced the route, [SPEAKER_04]: She found that North Carolina was a mess. [SPEAKER_04]: The Democratic Party was in shambles. [SPEAKER_04]: The person running for governor didn't want LBJ in the state because he thought it would hurt.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was Democrat. [SPEAKER_04]: He thought it would hurt his chances to be aligned with this pro civil rights campaign train or this president. [SPEAKER_04]: Well, the Ladybird Special appears to have helped with North Carolina because they also took that state. [SPEAKER_04]: And my favorite, though, is Florida. [SPEAKER_04]: So one day, before the Ladybird Special set out, there was a memo circulated in the West Wing saying that only a miracle could deliver Florida for LBJ.
[SPEAKER_04]: And in fact, Florida went for LBJ, so that miracle appears to have been the Ladybird Special. [SPEAKER_04]: So they ended up taking three of the eight states at a not sure that they ever thought that they were going to win all of them certainly. [SPEAKER_04]: Lady Bird's goal was to guard our votes for LBJ's reelection, but also to help bridge the Santa Mosity, bridge this divide, and tell people in the South, hey, we didn't forget you were not leaving you behind.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're trying to sweep everybody up and make life and the region and economic prosperity better for everyone. [SPEAKER_04]: And also the other interesting thing about the campaign train is how Lady Bird was a role model at the time. [SPEAKER_04]: And this is one year after the feminine mistake was published. [SPEAKER_04]: And there is a serious lack of role models for women looking for something other than fulfillment solely in domesticity.
[SPEAKER_04]: and there's Margaret Meade was a columnist for Red Book at the time, and she said Mrs. Johnson is giving us a model of what other American women can do and be in the mid-20th century. [SPEAKER_04]: So the Ladybird Special did have this ripple effect, and it was the [SPEAKER_04]: Democratic major Democratic campaign effort in the South during the 1964 election. [SPEAKER_04]: And it was a serious campaign strategy.
[SPEAKER_04]: And one of the things that I found is that it was recognized as such by the media. [SPEAKER_04]: And yes, there was misogyny along the route, but there were also a lot of even veteran male political reporters who recognized this serious campaign strategy for what it was. [SPEAKER_01]: I just have visions of something like this happening today. [SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, we now campaigns, it's so easy to fly.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, especially presidential campaigns are usually flying from stop to stop, which means, of course, you're only hitting bigger cities, places that are easily accessible by airport. [SPEAKER_01]: And I just, you know, I wonder if something like this trip would be possible or effective today.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you know, I actually think it would be really brilliant for a politician who's somebody who's campaigning to do a train trip like this, because [SPEAKER_04]: And I do think it was very effective for them to go and stop in communities like a husky that felt underserved or underrepresented. [SPEAKER_04]: And I think I think even a politician today could look back and take some lessons from this. [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_01]: It is a really fun read.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell listeners how they can get a copy of the book? [SPEAKER_04]: Well, the book should be [SPEAKER_04]: your favorite online retailer, your local bookstore. [SPEAKER_04]: If they don't have it on hand, you can order it. [SPEAKER_04]: And if you'd like more information, my website is Shenanmechanashmit.com. [SPEAKER_01]: Is there anything else you want to make sure we talk about?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I... [SPEAKER_04]: Keep thinking, you know, because when I started writing this book several years ago, we were not in the climate that we are now, and now we're seeing some kind of similarities between the issues that they were addressing then, and now, in terms of women's rights, civil rights, and I keep thinking about [SPEAKER_04]: maybe what people could take away from this story and certainly myself.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think about how Eleanor and Lady Bird both took their trips, World War II, and this great turmoil in civil rights in the United States, and how they took their trips during these times of upheaval, and how they really rose to meet the moment despite the danger and the discomfort that it had for them. [SPEAKER_04]: and how they really illustrated their courage and their compassion.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if there was something that I thought people might take away from this book is to address injustice, to take action. [SPEAKER_04]: And [SPEAKER_04]: This is something I've been thinking a lot about myself, the power and the collective to make change and achieve historic undertakings. [SPEAKER_04]: And Lady Bird said at one of her stops to, it was primarily a group of college students. [SPEAKER_04]: She said, never stand on the sidelines.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it was true then, and it's true now. [SPEAKER_01]: Shannon, thank you so much for joining me again on [SPEAKER_04]: Well, thank you so much for having me back on the program. [SPEAKER_00]: I could have gone on all day about the Explorinary Ladybird Johnson. [SPEAKER_00]: at unsunghistorypodcast.com. [SPEAKER_00]: To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by unsung history are in the public domain, or are used with permission.
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