Primary Sources: U.S. Presidents

"Presents the Vietnamese president's letter of response to United States President Lyndon B. Johnson's letter intended to end the United States' conflict with Vietnam. "

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1965

"Presents the text of the speech which the author gave at John Hopkins University on April 7, 1965, during his term as president of the United States."

January 8, 1964, January 4, 1965, January 12, 1966, January 10, 1967, January 17, 1968, and January 14, 1969

"Sarah Tilghman Hughes (1896-1985) practiced law in Dallas, served in the Texas House of Representatives (1931-1935), was appointed as the first female state district judge in Texas (1935-1961), was the first woman to serve as a federal district judge in Texas (1961-1975; senior status until 1982), and championed various human and women's rights causes. Notably, as a federal district judge, Hughes administered the presidential oath of office to Lyndon B. Johnson aboard Air Force One following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963."

"At this site, you can listen to secretly recorded conversations made by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the White House Oval Office. These tapes were released in February 1997 by the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas." - History & Politics Out Loud

"Presents the United States president's letter to Ho Chi Minh, president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on February 8, 1967, about his proposal for negotiation of the United States' conflict with Vietnam."

"The Library of Congress celebrates Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Herb Block (1909–2001) with a look at his remarkable seventy-two-year career (1929–2001). Herblock! includes eighty-two original cartoon drawings, primarily selected from the Library’s extensive Herbert L. Block Collection. These cartoons represent Block’s ability to wield his pen effectively and artfully, using it to condemn corruption and expose injustice, inequality, and immorality on topics including the Great Depression, the rise of fascism and World War II, communism and the Cold War, Senator Joseph McCarthy, race relations, Richard Nixon, the Reagan era, the 2000 election, and more."

Materials related to Johnson's Inauguration provided by the Library of Congress.

A selection of materials from the Library is provided online, including photos, speeches, oral histories, etc.

"Presents an address made by the United States president announcing his steps to limit the war in Vietnam, and also announcing his plans not to run for re-election. "

"... the online portal for annotated transcripts of the White House tapes published by the Presidential Recordings Program (PRP). Created by a team of scholars and researchers at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, these transcripts are presented in PRDE alongside the corresponding audio, enabling users to read and listen to these conversations simultaneously. This effort at deciphering the presidential recordings and decoding their meaning allows these extraordinary documents, many of which would remain otherwise inaccessible, to come alive, providing an intimate view of life inside the Oval Office. (Read more about PRP in “The Presidential Recordings Program,” by Philip Zelikow, Ernest May, and Timothy Naftali)."

"The article presents the text of a speech given by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 regarding the Gulf of Tonkin affair."

President Johnson's Message to Congress August 5, 1964
Joint Resolution of Congress H.J. RES 1145 August 7, 1964

"Although the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, guaranteed citizens the right to vote regardless of race, by 1957 only 20 percent of eligible African Americans voted, due in part to intimidation and discriminatory state requirements such as poll taxes and literacy tests. Despite the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in employment and public accommodations based on race, religion, national origin, or sex, efforts to register African Americans as voters in the South were stymied. In 1965, following the murder of a voting rights activist by an Alabama sheriff’s deputy and the subsequent attack by state troopers on a massive protest march in Selma, Alabama, President Lyndon B. Johnson pressed Congress in the following speech to pass a voting rights bill with teeth. As Majority Leader of the Senate, Johnson had helped weaken the 1957 Civil Rights Act. When he assumed the presidency following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, however, Johnson called on Americans “to eliminate from this nation every trace of discrimination and oppression that is based upon race or color,” and in the following speech adopted the “We Shall Overcome” slogan of civil rights activists. His rhetoric and subsequent efforts broke with past presidential precedents of opposition to or lukewarm support for strong civil rights legislation. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law on August 6."