Topic: Lady Bird Johnson

The First Lady photographed in the White House Center Hall before an official dinner May 6, 1968.

Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Taylor Johnson (December 22, 1912 – July 11, 2007) was First Lady of the United States from 1963 to 1969, having been the wife of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Throughout her life, she was an advocate for beautification of the nation's cities and highways and conservation of natural resources, and made that her major initiative as First Lady. After leaving the White House in 1969 and her husband's death in 1973, Lady Bird became an entrepreneur, creating the $150 million LBJ Holdings Company, and was a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honors.

Claudia Alta Taylor was born in Karnack, Texas, a town in Harrison County, near the state's border with Louisiana. Her birthplace was "The Brick House," a former slave plantation mansion on the outskirts of town, which her father had purchased shortly before her birth. Nearly all of both her maternal and paternal forebears had arrived in the Virginia Colony during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Her father was a native of Alabama and primarily of English ancestry with small amounts of Welsh and Danish; her mother was also a native of Alabama and of English and Scottish descent .