Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson was born on August 27, 1908 in Texas. He was the oldest of five siblings and raised in a middle-class family. He was an excellent student and elected senior class president of his high school. In November of 1931, Johnson served as a congressional secretary. Then in late 1941, Johnson requested to be a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, In the year of 1960, John F. Kennedy asked Johnson to be his vice president. Then in 1963, Kennedy was shot and killed. A day later, Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the president of the United States. Johnson believed in "war on poverty" and his goals were to work on unemployment, and discrimination. He signed both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Johnson had a huge involvement in the Vietnam War. He was determined not to let North Vietnam take over South Vietnam's government with their communism. In his effort to contain communism, he was involved in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in order to give him power to use U.S. military in Vietnam. After Johnson was elected the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam went from16,000 when he first took office in 1963 to more than 500,000 in 1968. He became unpopular because of the amount of casualties of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. There were an immense amount of anti-war protests especially on college campuses. After the inauguration of President Nixon, Johnson retired to his Texas ranch. He died at age of sixty-four of a heart attack.