|
|
CONTACT:
Anne Wheeler
512-721-0216 (office)
512-731-2351 (cell)
Email: anne.wheeler@nara.gov
2313 Red River Street
Austin, TX 78705
Release Date: June 12, 2007
Bills, Bills, Bills: Lyndon Johnson as Senate Majority Leader
In a new exhibit at the LBJ Library, visitors will get the opportunity to talk to Lyndon Johnson – actually, they will step into a replica of the U. S. Senate Chamber and talk to an actor who looks, dresses, and talks like U.S. Senator Lyndon Johnson as he was in the 1950s. In the exhibit, Bills, Bills, Bills: Lyndon Johnson as Senate Majority Leader, visitors will see and engage with Johnson (actor Michael Stuart) as he stands on the Senate floor discussing such important legislation as the creation of NASA, Interstate Highway Bill, Labor Reform, Social Security Reform, and Statehood for Alaska and Hawaii. Under Johnson’s leadership, the first Civil Rights Bill since Reconstruction was passed into law.
Johnson redefined the role of Majority Leader from merely a “go between” into the most powerful position in the Senate. Visitors may even get a taste of the “Johnson Treatment,” LBJ’s unique, and highly effective, style of “persuasion.”
The exhibit covers LBJ’s entire Senate career from his election in 1948 to his election to the vice-presidency in 1961 and will chronicle his rapid rise to power from an 87-vote margin of victory in 1948 – in which he was given the nickname “Landslide Lyndon” – to his selection as Majority Leader in 1955.
|
