Lyndon B. Johnson"LBJ"

Lyndon Baines Johnson was born August 27, 1908, near Stonewall, Texas. He served in the U.S. House and then the Senate, where he became one of the most powerful Senate Majority Leaders in history, known for his forceful, arm-twisting negotiating style. He was elected Vice President under John F. Kennedy in 1960, and became President in November 1963 after Kennedy's assassination. He won a full term in 1964 in a landslide, and his presidency (1963–1969) was defined by major civil rights legislation (the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act), his "Great Society" social programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and the deeply divisive escalation of the Vietnam War, which ultimately led him to decline to run for re-election in 1968.