Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio's newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.
Just before dawn on Oct. 6, 1964, a campaign train chugged out of Union Station and pointed south.
It was called the Lady Bird Special, and its first whistle-stop came minutes later in Alexandria. This was the launch for what historians describe as a rare, high-risk political mission: sending First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, alone into a region roiling over civil rights.
At that opening stop, Lyndon B. Johnson introduced the person who would carry the message.
“Alexandria has been chosen as the first stop by one of the greatest campaigners in America,” he told the crowd. “And I’m very proud to announce that I am her husband.”
Johnson had been sworn in only 10 months earlier, after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Now, with Election Day less than a month away, he stepped back — and Lady Bird Johnson stepped forward.
“I’m going into the South on this whistle stop trip because I am proud of the South and I am proud that I am part of the South,” she said into her tape-recorded diary.
Over the next four days, the Lady Bird Special would make dozens of stops across the South. The schedule was demanding — 45 speeches in just four days. Each speech was different and tailored to the local community and history.
In July, the president had signed the Civil Rights Act. In parts of the South, the legislation was viewed not only as federal overreach but as a personal betrayal by a president who was himself a Southerner.
“The South is very much seething at President Johnson for signing the Civil Rights Act,” said Shannon McInnis-Schmidt, who has written about the trip in her book “You Can’t Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode with Her.” She said the First Lady was, in effect, being sent into hostile territory.
The trip wasn’t primarily about persuading undecided voters, McInnis-Schmidt said. Polls already showed the president with a commanding lead over his Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater.
Instead, the mission was about healing and listening. Lady Bird was making a political and cultural appeal aimed at a region the Democratic Party saw slipping away.
“It was a lot about not leaving anyone behind and not leaving the South behind,” McInnis-Schmidt said.
Lady Bird Johnson’s speeches defended the Civil Rights Act not as a punishment of the South, but as a step toward what she framed as a “new South” — a future that would leave Jim Crow behind. At one stop in Ashland, she urged her audiences to participate rather than withdraw.
“Never stand on the sidelines,” she said, invoking Thomas Jefferson: “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”
But the tour also carried a sense of danger and hostility. At stops along the route, the first lady faced jeers and insults — including the taunt “Blackbird,” a slur rooted in anger at her support for civil rights.
When hecklers chanting “We want Barry” tried to drown her out, Lady Bird Johnson responded without retreat.
“My friends, this is a country of many people, and I respect your right to express your own,” she said. “Now it’s my turn to express mine.”
On Nov. 3, 1964, Johnson won the presidency in a landslide. The Lady Bird Special did not reverse the Deep South’s shift toward Goldwater and the Republican Party. But of the eight states the First Lady visited, Johnson carried three — Virginia, North Carolina and Florida.
On Jan. 20, 1965, Lady Bird Johnson held the Bible as her husband took the presidential oath of office — a tradition that continues today.
