• CONSERVATIONIST
• First Lady from 1963-1969​
• Believed that natural beauty could both enhance national identity and improve societal health
• SPEARHEADED campaign to beautify America's highways, which were riddled with junkyards and billboards, and plant native wildflowers instead
• Also LED the initiative to clean up Washington D.C., hoping to instill pride in the nation's capital and improve the quality of life for its residents
• Many of the hundreds of parks and thousands of flowers and trees planted in the city during her campaign still flourish today
• By attending legislative strategy sessions and working to gain Congressional votes, she became the MOST politically active First Lady up to that point -- even more so than Eleanor Roosevelt, whom she greatly admired
• Traveled throughout the south during the 1964 presidential campaign -- including in states that were considered unsafe for President Johnson to visit -- giving almost 50 speeches in support of the Civil Rights Act, and working to convince southern white voters that desegregation was good for the local economy
• The 1,628-mile trip, riddled with racist hecklers and protests, made her the FIRST First Lady to campaign without her husband

Photo by Robert Knudsen, White House Press Office (WHPO) [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

Bibliography: Drimmer, Stephanie W. National Geographic Kids: The Book of Heroines: Tales of History's Gutsiest Gals. Washington DC: National Geographic Partners, LLC, 2016. Print.
Lady Bird: The Biography of First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. http://www.pbs.org/ladybird/index.html
Black, Allida. (2009). Claudia Alta Taylor "Lady Bird" Johnson. https://www.whitehouse.gov/

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Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum

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