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US Presidents and Slavery

Before the Civil War, many US presidents owned enslaved people, and all of them had to deal with slavery as a political issue

Gautham Rao

Lyndon Johnson standing in front of a bank of microphones giving a press conference

President Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy

Belgian troops stepping off a plane in 1964

Cartha D. "Deke" DeLoach, Mr. Eldon James, and President Lyndon B. Johnson sit in Oval Office

Vice President Hubert Humphrey talking to President Lyndon Johnson

McGeorge Bundy sitting on couch next to framed photo of Lady Bird Johnson

President Lyndon Johnson talks with former President Dwight Eisenhower

President Lyndon Johnson talks to former President Dwight Eisenhower on a plane

Robert McNamara and President Lyndon Johnson talking and sitting outside

Clergy members and supporters knee on the road, while police and reporters watch in Selma

Douglass Cater and President Lyndon B. Johnson talking to each other, snow on the ground in bkg

Alabama Governor George Wallace stands next to President Lyndon Johnson

Candid portrait of General William Westmoreland, speaking and gesturing

Congressman Mendel Rivers and President Lyndon B. Johnson sit talking to each other

Posing for camera after conference L-R: Congr. Charles Halleck, Secy. John Foster Dulles (?), Sen. Everett Dirksen, Dean Acheson (?), Speaker Sam Rayburn, Secy. Neil McElroy, Pres. Dwight Eisenhower, V.P. Richard Nixon, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson

Presidents Harry S. Truman and Lyndon Johnson stand together

President Lyndon B. Johnson standing with Hon. Edwin Weisl Sr.

Robert Kennedy raises his arm with President Lyndon Johnson at a campaign event

Congressman Howard W. Smith stands outside the White House on the lawn with President Lyndon B. Johnson

Sec. Clark Clifford (left) seated at table, speaking and gesturing as President Lyndon B. Johnson listens

President Lyndon Johnson walking outside with Robert Kennedy

Walter W. Heller wearing glasses, Kermit Gordon has hand to chin, Luther Hodges looking at them both, all seated in blk chairs with papers in hand.

McGeorge Bundy with 3 clocks in background 9:00 Washington, 1:00 GMT, 9:00 Presidential.

President Lyndon Johnson holding his face

Alaska after being struck by an earthquake in 1964

Tom Mann and President Johnson talk to each other at desk

Secret service members gathered around a car

Martin Luther King Jr., Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, and Geraldine Whittington talk together at White House

President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Senator Lister Hill and Mary Lasker

President Lyndon Johnson talks with Senator Richard Russell outside the White House

Roy Wilkins and President Lyndon Johnson lean toward each other talking

President Lyndon Johnson talks with Katharine M. “Kay” Graham of the Washington Post

President Lyndon Johnson sits facing three civil rights workers on a couch, from left to right, Walter Fauntroy, Ralph Abernathy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nixon on China

President Nixon would play China against the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union against China, and both against North Vietnam.

Ken Hughes

The global fight against HIV

U.S. policy to attack HIV/AIDS worldwide evolved after a dismissive and ineffectual start.

Race and Racism

Elizabeth Jennings’s first-person account appeared in the anti-slavery newspaper The New York Daily Tribune on June 19, 1854. Three days before, this 24-year-old schoolteacher on her way to church had boarded the Third Avenue Railroad at the corner of Pearl and Chatham streets in New York City. The conductor told her to wait for the next car, because it would be accepting Black riders.

Education

‘Don't get sucked into it’

Frustrated by Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr.’s attempt to gain funding for other priorities as a price for reporting the education bill, President Lyndon Johnson dismisses Powell’s concern about an education clause in the administration’s Appalachia bill.