Lyndon B. Johnson
Early life

Lyndon Baines Johnson was born on August 27, 1908, near Stonewall, Texas, in a small farmhouse on the Pedernales River. He was the eldest of five children born to Samuel Ealy Johnson Jr. and Rebekah Baines. Johnson wasn't given a name until he was three months old, as his parents couldn't agree on a name that both liked. Finally, he was named after "criminal lawyer—a county lawyer" W. C. Linden, who his father liked; his mother agreed on the condition of spelling it as Lyndon. Johnson had one brother, Sam Houston Johnson, and three sisters, Rebekah, Josefa, and Lucia. Through his mother, he was a great-grandson of Baptist clergyman George Washington Baines.

Johnson's paternal grandfather, Samuel Ealy Johnson Sr., was raised Baptist and for a time was a member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In his later years, Samuel Sr. became a Christadelphian; Samuel Jr. also joined the Christadelphian Church toward the end of his life. Johnson was influenced in his positive attitude toward Jews by the religious beliefs that his family, especially his grandfather, had shared with him.

Johnson grew up poor, with his father losing a great deal of money. Biographer Robert Caro described him as being raised "in a land without electricity, where the soil was so rocky that it was hard to earn a living from it."

In school, Johnson was a talkative youth who was elected president of his 11th-grade class. He graduated in 1924 from Johnson City High School, where he participated in public speaking, debate, and baseball. At 15, Johnson was the youngest in his class. Pressured by his parents to attend college, he enrolled at a "sub college" of Southwest Texas State Teachers College (SWTSTC) in the summer of 1924, where students from unaccredited high schools could take the 12th-grade courses needed for admission to college. He left the school just weeks after his arrival and decided to move to California. He worked at his cousin's legal practice and in odd jobs before returning to Texas, where he worked as a day laborer.

In 1926, Johnson enrolled at SWTSTC. He worked his way through school, participated in debate and campus politics, and edited the school newspaper, The College Star. The college years refined his skills of persuasion and political organization. For nine months, from 1928 to 1929, Johnson paused his studies to teach Mexican–American children at the segregated Welhausen School in Cotulla, Texas, 90 miles (140 km) south of San Antonio. The job helped him to save money to complete his education, and he graduated in 1930 with a Bachelor of Science in history and his certificate of qualification as a high school teacher. He briefly taught at Pearsall High School in Pearsall, Texas before taking a position teaching public speaking at Sam Houston High School in Houston.

When he returned to San Marcos in 1965, after signing the Higher Education Act of 1965, Johnson reminisced:

I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School, and I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American.
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