[Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson standing among group of Vietnamese soldiers and Americans during a visit to Saigon, South Vietnam] / TOH.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973) served as the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969. A Democrat from Texas, he served as a United States Representative from 1937 to 1949 and as a United States Senator from 1949 to 1961 serving as Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader and as Senate Majority Whip. He was assuming the office after serving as the 37th Vice President of the United States after an assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Later, he won the 1964 election over Republican opponent Barry Goldwater. Johnson designed the "Great Society" legislation upholding civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to education, the arts, urban and rural development, public services, and his "War on Poverty", banned racial discrimination in public facilities, interstate commerce, the workplace, housing. The Voting Rights Act banned certain requirements in southern states used to disenfranchise African Americans. With the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the country's immigration system was reformed and all racial origin quotas were removed (replaced by national origin quotas). Johnson escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War. The number of American military personnel in Vietnam increased dramatically, from 16,000 advisors in 1963 to 550,000 in 1968. American casualties soared and the peace process bogged down causing large, angry antiwar protests based especially on university campuses in the U.S. and abroad. While he began his presidency with widespread approval, support for Johnson declined as the public became upset with both the war and the growing violence at home. Republican Richard Nixon was elected to succeed him. After he left office in January 1969, Johnson returned to his Texas ranch where he died of a heart attack at age 64 on January 22, 1973.

Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962. U.S. involvement escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a U.S. destroyer clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft, which was followed by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the U.S. president authorization to increase U.S. military presence. Regular U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations crossed international borders: bordering areas of Laos and Cambodia were heavily bombed by U.S. forces as American involvement in the war peaked in 1968, the same year that the communist side launched the Tet Offensive. The Tet Offensive failed in its goal of overthrowing the South Vietnamese government, but became the turning point in the war, as it persuaded a large segment of the U.S. population that its government's claims of progress toward winning the war were illusory despite many years of massive U.S. military aid to South Vietnam. Gradual withdrawal of U.S. ground forces began as part of "Vietnamization", which aimed to end American involvement in the war while transferring the task of fighting the Communists to the South Vietnamese themselves. Despite the Paris Peace Accord, which was signed by all parties in January 1973, the fighting continued. In the U.S. and the Western world, a large anti-Vietnam War movement developed as part of a larger counterculture. The war changed the dynamics between the Eastern and Western Blocs, and altered North–South relations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War Direct U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973. The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities (see Vietnam War casualties). Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 800,000 to 3.1 million. Some 200,000–300,000 Cambodians, 20,000–200,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict, with a further 1,626 missing in action.

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