On a frigid Winter’s day, January 20, 1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy took the oath of office as the 35th President of the United States. At age 43, he was the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic ever elected.
Marian Anderson sings U.S. anthem.
Duration : 0:9:22
January 20, 1965 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312060270?ie=UTF8&tag=doc06-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0312060270 Watch the full film: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/09/president-lyndon-b-johnson-inauguration.html
The second inauguration of Lyndon B. Johnson as the 36th President of the United States was held on January 20, 1965. The inauguration marked the commencement of the second term (and first full four-year term) of Lyndon B. Johnson as President and the only four-year term Hubert Humphrey as Vice President. Chief Justice Earl Warren administered the Oath of office, and Lady Bird Johnson founded the tradition of First Ladies participating in the ceremony by holding the President’s Bible. An estimated 1.2 million attended the inauguration, at the time the record holder for any event held at the National Mall until the Obama inauguration in 2009. This was the last time an inauguration was covered by newsreels.
Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, served as the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969 after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States from 1961 to 1963. He served in all four federal elected offices of the United States: Representative, Senator, Vice President, and President.
Johnson served as a United States Representative from Texas, from 19371949 and as United States Senator from 19491961, including six years as United States Senate Majority Leader, two as Senate Minority Leader and two as Senate Majority Whip. After campaigning unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 1960, Johnson was asked by John F. Kennedy to be his running mate for the 1960 presidential election.
Johnson, a Democrat, succeeded to the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, completed Kennedy’s term and was elected President in his own right, winning by a large margin in the 1964 Presidential election. Johnson was greatly supported by the Democratic Party and, as President, was responsible for designing the “Great Society” legislation that included laws that upheld civil rights, Public Broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, environmental protection, aid to education, and his “War on Poverty.” He was renowned for his domineering personality and the “Johnson treatment,” his arm twisting of powerful politicians in order to advance legislation.
Simultaneously, he greatly escalated direct American involvement in the Vietnam War. As the war dragged on, Johnson’s popularity as President steadily declined. After the 1966 Congressional elections, his re-election bid in the 1968 United States presidential election collapsed as a result of turmoil within the Democratic Party related to opposition to the Vietnam War. He withdrew from the race amid growing opposition to his policy on the Vietnam War and a worse-than-expected showing in the New Hampshire primary.
Despite the failures of his foreign policy, Johnson is ranked favorably among some historians due to his domestic policies.
Duration : 0:9:12
Clip from the 1st 1960 presidential debate between Senator John F. Kennedy (D-MA) and Vice President Richard Nixon (R-CA). Held on September 26, 1960, it was the first presidential debate between candidates from opposing political parties as well as the first one to be televised. It is best known not by its subject matter, but by the preparedness and physical appearance of both candidates. Television audiences thought Kennedy won the debate by a landslide, while radio audiences thought Nixon won it by a landslide. Nixon appeared emaciated, unhealthy, and awkward, while Kennedy appeared handsome, tanned and confident. Nixon was recovering from an injured knee that resulted in a recent hospital stay. He had just arrived at the studio after a strenuous campaign in which he made appearances in all 50 states, including newly admitted Alaska and Hawaii. He refused to have makeup applied to his face, and had not shaved, making his stubble clearly visible to television viewers. Kennedy on the other hand, took time to rest before the debates and his suit contrasted well against the background. In effect, Nixon’s gray suit seemed to blend in with the background, especially on the era’s black and white television screens.
Closed captioned for the hearing impaired.
Duration : 0:8:7
It snowed the day before. There was sleet in the night, and then the parade. The parade began in 3rd St. SE near the capitol. The route of march passed the equestrian statue of Grant, the one in which he is hunched over against the rain in the Wilderness. Then down Pennsylvania Avenue. There were three inches of icy, salty, slush in the street.
Duration : 0:8:8
John F. Kennedy’s famous First Inaugural Address taken from Great Speeches Volume 1. Visit www.evgondemand.com for this and many more speeches in their entirety!
Duration : 0:4:32
January 20, 1965 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312060270?ie=UTF8&tag=doc06-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0312060270 Watch the full film: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/09/president-lyndon-b-johnson-inauguration.html
On September 7, 1964, Johnson’s campaign managers for the 1964 presidential election broadcast the “Daisy ad.” It portrayed a little girl picking petals from a daisy, counting up to ten. Then a baritone voice took over, counted down from ten to zero and a nuclear bomb exploded. The message was that Barry Goldwater meant nuclear war. Although it only aired the one time, it escalated into a very heated election. Johnson won the presidency by a landslide with 61% of the vote and the then-widest popular margin in the 20th century — more than 15 million votes (this was later surpassed by incumbent President Nixon’s defeat of Senator McGovern in 1972). Percentage-wise, Johnson’s popular vote margin of over 22 percentage points is a record that stands to this day.
In the summer of 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was organized with the purpose of challenging Mississippi’s all-white and anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention of that year as not representative of all Mississippians. At the national convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey the MFDP claimed the seats for delegates for Mississippi, not on the grounds of the Party rules, but because the official Mississippi delegation had been elected by a primary conducted under Jim Crow laws in which blacks were excluded because of poll taxes, literacy tests, and even violence against black voters. The national Partys liberal leaders supported a compromise in which the white delegation and the MFDP would have an even division of the seats; Johnson was concerned that, while the regular Democrats of Mississippi would probably vote for Goldwater anyway, if the Democratic Party rejected the regular Democrats, he would lose the Democratic Party political structure that he needed to win in the South. Eventually, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Reuther and black civil rights leaders (including Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King, and Bayard Rustin) worked out a compromise with MFDP leaders: the MFDP would receive two non-voting seats on the floor of the Convention; the regular Mississippi delegation would be required to pledge to support the party ticket; and no future Democratic convention would accept a delegation chosen by a discriminatory poll. When the leaders took the proposal back to the 64 members who had made the bus trip to Atlantic City, they voted it down. As MFDP Vice Chair Fannie Lou Hamer said, “We didn’t come all the way up here to compromise for no more than wed gotten here. We didn’t come all this way for no two seats, ’cause all of us is tired.” The failure of the compromise effort allowed the rest of the Democratic Party to conclude that the MFDP was simply being unreasonable, and they lost a great deal of their liberal support. After that, the convention went smoothly for Johnson without a searing battle over civil rights. Despite the landslide victory, Johnson, who carried the South as a whole in the election, lost the Deep South states of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina, the first time a Democratic candidate had done so since Reconstruction.
Johnson won the presidency by a majority of 61 percent and said he would carry forward the plans and programs of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Not because of our sorrow or sympathy, but because they are right.
Duration : 0:10:59
Read the Transcript: http://to.pbs.org/hzoQ00
On the 50th anniversary of his inauguration, watch an excerpt of John F. Kennedy’s famous speech on the steps of the Capitol that began his presidency on Jan. 20, 1961.
LIFE.com, released a series of never-before-seen photos for the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy inauguration. See them here: http://to.pbs.org/fG4zee
Duration : 0:5:29
On January 20th, 1961, John F. Kennedy was sworn-in as the 35th President of the United States. His famous “ask not” line in his inaugural address stirred Americans to action and inspired a generation. 50 years later, the speech remains one of the most important in political history. Jeff Greenfield takes a look at Kennedy’s famous words and how they impacted America.
Duration : 0:9:0
January 20, 1965 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312060270?ie=UTF8&tag=doc06-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0312060270 Watch the full film: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/09/president-lyndon-b-johnson-inauguration.html
While losing quite badly in the 1964 election, some political pundits and historians believe Goldwater laid the foundation for the conservative revolution to follow. Ronald Reagan’s speech on Goldwater’s behalf, grassroots organization, and the conservative takeover (although temporary in the 60′s) of the Republican party would all help to bring about the “Reagan Revolution” of the 1980s. Indeed, many of today’s leading politicians first entered politics to work for Goldwater, including Hillary Clinton.
Johnson went from his victory in the 1964 election to launch the Great Society program at home, signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and starting the War on Poverty. He also escalated the Vietnam War, which eroded his popularity. By 1968, Johnson’s popularity had declined and the Democrats became so split over his candidacy that he withdrew as a candidate. Moreover, his support of civil rights for African-Americans helped split union members and Southerners away from Franklin Roosevelt’s Democratic New Deal Coalition, which would later lead to the phenomenon of the “Reagan Democrat”. Of the eleven presidential elections that followed, Democrats would win only four times. Columnist George Will had this to say about the lasting effects of the 1964 election: “It took 16 years to count the votes, and Goldwater won.”
The election also shifted the African-American voting electorate away from the Republican Party due to Goldwater’s opposition to federal civil rights laws. Since the 1964 election, Democratic presidential candidates have almost consistently won more than 90% of the African-American vote in each presidential election.
* The 1964 election was the only time in American history where all of the outer southern states (Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia) went for one political party and all of the deep southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina) went for the other political party.
* Significantly, the 1964 election was the first time since Reconstruction in the 1870s that a Republican presidential candidate carried the states of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina. It was the first time Georgia ever voted Republican. In future elections these states, along with the rest of the South, would vote increasingly Republican.
* The 1964 election marked the first time in history that the Democratic ticket won the electoral votes of the state of Vermont, and the first time that the Democratic ticket won Maine with an absolute majority of votes cast, instead of a plurality.
* This was the first election in which the District of Columbia participated in the electoral college. There were 538 electors, compared to 537 in 1960; included were 3 electors for the District of Columbia, but this was offset by the U.S. House of Representatives membership going from 437 back to 435 when it was reapportioned in accordance with the 1960 census.
* 1964 would be the last time in which any candidate from the two major parties would receive at least 80% of the popular vote in a statewide contest (excluding the District of Columbia). Johnson took 81% of the Rhode Island popular vote, and Goldwater took 87% of the Mississippi popular vote.
* Despite the assassination of John F. Kennedy being a catalyst for the Democratic landslide in 1964, Robert Kennedy received only 54% of the popular vote in his US Senate campaign in New York. Meanwhile, Lyndon Johnson received 69% of the popular vote in his Presidential campaign in New York.
* Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey both comfortably won their home states (Texas and Minnesota, respectively). However, Goldwater barely won his home state of Arizona; he won it by less than 1 percentage point, or around 5000 votes. William E. Miller lost his home state of New York by 37 percentage points.
* The 1964 election was the last time to date that any of the following states: Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska (although Barack Obama won one of their electoral votes in 2008), North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming voted for a Democratic candidate. It is also the only time in Alaskan history that the state voted Democratic. The Democratic ticket would not win Virginia or Indiana again until Barack Obama won both in 2008. Also, this is the last time that Oregon or Iowa would vote Democratic until 1988. Finally, this was the last time until 1992 that any of the following states voted for a Democrat: California, Colorado, Illinois, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Vermont.
Duration : 0:9:52
The President speaks about the legacy of President John F. Kennedy on the 50th anniversary of his inauguration. January 20, 2011.
Duration : 0:14:16
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10 29th, 2011| 