This month marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lyndon Johnson, whose presidency spanned one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. history since the Civil War.
It began with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, saw the passage of two historic civil rights laws, included the massive buildup of the war in Vietnam that eventually soured his presidency, struggled through the social unrest of the civil rights and antiwar movements, and faded with the assassinations of Sen. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
During those times, Johnson recorded hundreds of hours of phone calls with national leaders, political honchos, friends, confidants and ordinary citizens, which the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum is preserving, restoring and making available to the public. These recordings contain the raw and largely unedited conversations of a larger-than-life politician known for his colorful language and the force of personality he used to influence political allies and adversaries.
The library, located on the University of Texas campus in Austin, has released recordings made through April 1968.
“We’ve been working on this since 1993,” when the first recordings were released, said senior archivist Regina Greenwell. “We hope to release the rest of them, through early 1969, by the end of this year,” said supervisory archivist Claudia Anderson.
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