Cragg Hines, The Houston Chronicle, July 16, 2007
The beautiful, bountiful and richly deserved praise that marked the death of Lady Bird Johnson mentioned briefly, if at all, the hatefulness she had encountered from racists and some Republicans.
Johnson certainly never dwelled on such treatment, although the record reflects that on occasion it unnerved her, especially in an ugly incident at Dallas during the 1960 campaign.
But she could also face it down squarely and head-on. During the 1964 campaign she told hecklers in Columbia, S.C., during a Southern whistle-stop tour that prompted threats on her life from the Ku Klux Klan:
“This is a country of many viewpoints. I respect your right to express your own. Now it is my turn to express mine. Thank you.”
Needless to say, she was wearing white gloves.
There were other indignities, including one recalled by Bess Abell, White House social secretary in the Johnson years, in an oral history interview for the LBJ Library in Austin.
When the train stopped in one small town, Abell said, a big sign (appropriately, given the Klan’s favored costume, painted on a sheet) read: “Black Bird, go home!”
It was that sort of a time in America.