Lyndon B. Johnson Trivia
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98 free Lyndon B. Johnson trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Lyndon B. Johnson trivia quiz follows LBJ from a farmhouse on the Pedernales River and a year teaching Mexican-American children in Cotulla to Congress in 1937, the Silver Star, the 87-vote Senate primary that made him Landslide Lyndon, and the Senate majority leadership that Robert Caro calls the most effective in history. It covers the 1960 convention, the vice presidency Kennedy's staff sneered at, the oath aboard Air Force One and the only woman ever to swear in a president. The presidential half covers the Civil Rights Act, the Daisy ad and the 61 percent landslide over Barry Goldwater, Medicare and Medicaid, Head Start, the Voting Rights Act, the Immigration Act, public broadcasting, Thurgood Marshall, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Tet, the March 1968 speech that ended his re-election bid, and the retirement, heart attacks and burial beside the house where he was born. There are lighter questions too, on the Johnson Treatment, Lady Bird and the helicopter he called the Johnson City Windmill. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our John F. Kennedy and US presidents quizzes next.
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Q 01Who succeeded Johnson as president in January 1969?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon, the Republican who had lost to Kennedy in 1960, took the oath in January 1969; Johnson, the 36th president, flew home to Texas the same day.
Q 02Near which town, later home to the LBJ Ranch, was Johnson born?
Stonewall
Stonewall was the nearest town to a farmhouse that had no electricity; as a young congressman, Johnson went on to bring electric power to the Hill Country he grew up in.
Q 03In which South Texas town did the young Johnson teach Mexican-American children at a segregated school?
Cotulla
Cotulla made him principal as well as teacher of three grades; the poverty of his pupils stayed with him, and as president he recalled them when pressing Congress for voting rights.
Q 04What subject did Johnson teach at Sam Houston High School in Houston?
Public speaking
Public speaking and debate were his brief, and he won praise for both, but he stayed barely a year before a new Texas congressman took him to Washington as an aide.
Q 05What was the maiden name of Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson?
Taylor
Taylor was the family name of the University of Texas graduate he met in 1934; her inheritance paid for his first campaign, and the radio station she bought made the couple rich.
Q 06What did Johnson do on his first date with Lady Bird?
Asked her to marry him
Asked her to marry him, and would not let the matter drop: she refused to be rushed, but he kept pressing, and within about ten weeks they were married in San Antonio.
Q 07What were the names of the Johnsons' two daughters?
Lynda and Luci
Lynda and Luci, in full Lynda Bird and Luci Baines, were named so that, with Lyndon Baines and Lady Bird, the whole family shared the initials LBJ; even the dog was Little Beagle Johnson.
Q 08Which Texas city anchored the House district that Johnson won in a 1937 special election?
Austin
Austin and the surrounding Hill Country sent the 28-year-old to Congress after he beat nine rivals by running as an all-out supporter of Franklin Roosevelt.
Q 09Which general awarded Johnson the Silver Star for a 1942 observation flight over New Guinea?
Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur gave it to him for a single flight as an observer; Johnson wore the ribbon in his lapel for the rest of his life.
Q 10By how many votes did Johnson win the 1948 Texas Senate primary runoff?
87
87 votes separated him from former governor Coke Stevenson once late returns from South Texas came in; both camps were accused of fraud, and the tally was fought over in court.
Q 11What nickname did the 1948 primary result permanently attach to Johnson?
Landslide Lyndon
Landslide Lyndon was his critics' sarcasm for a wafer-thin, fraud-tainted runoff win over former governor Coke Stevenson; the new senator found the jibe hard to shake for years.
Q 12What name was given to the rented Sikorsky helicopter LBJ campaigned in during 1948?
The Johnson City Windmill
The Johnson City Windmill set him down as often as 20 times a day on rooftops, cattle pastures and ball fields, and crowds turned out just to see the newfangled machine.
Q 13When Democrats regained the Senate in 1955, the 46-year-old Johnson became the youngest ever holder of which post?
Q 21Which body did Johnson set up to investigate Kennedy's assassination?
The Warren Commission
The Warren Commission, chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren, was Johnson's answer to a spreading tangle of conspiracy theories; it concluded unanimously that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone.
Q 22Which landmark law did Johnson sign on July 2, 1964, after urging Congress to pass it in Kennedy's memory?
The Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act reached his desk only after the Senate broke a long Southern filibuster; he had told Congress that no eulogy could honour Kennedy better than its passage.
Q 23What did Johnson call his domestic programme of civil rights, health care and anti-poverty measures?
Majority leader
Majority leader at 46, he drove himself so hard that a severe heart attack felled him within months; he recovered at his Texas ranch and came back to run the Senate for five more years.
Q 14What was the "Johnson Treatment"?
His method of physically intimidating senators to win votes
His method of physically intimidating senators to win votes meant leaning in close and towering over his prey while he cajoled, flattered and bargained until the vote was his.
Q 15Which 1958 law, founding America's civilian space agency, did Johnson push through the Senate after Sputnik?
The National Aeronautics and Space Act
The National Aeronautics and Space Act grew out of hearings he opened within weeks of Sputnik; he then chaired the Senate's new space committee himself.
Q 16Which Alabama city's 1965 voting-rights marches prompted Johnson's 'We Shall Overcome' address to Congress?
Selma
Selma's marchers were beaten in scenes shown on national television, and days later Johnson went before Congress, took the movement's anthem as his own and demanded a voting-rights law.
Q 17Why did Kennedy choose Johnson as his running mate in 1960?
To attract Southern votes
To attract Southern votes was the logic, and it held: with a Texan on the ticket Kennedy carried Texas and much of the South, even as labour leaders fumed at the choice.
Q 18What unusual double candidacy did Johnson pursue in 1960 after having Texas law changed?
Vice president and a third Senate term
Vice president and a third Senate term were both his on election night; he never served the Senate term, and William Blakley was appointed to fill the seat.
Q 19Which judge swore Johnson in aboard Air Force One after Kennedy's assassination?
Sarah T. Hughes
Sarah T. Hughes was a Dallas federal judge and an old Johnson friend whom Kennedy had put on the bench in 1961; Johnson chose her himself, and as of 2025 she is the only woman to have sworn in a president.
Q 20What did Johnson do as his plane left Washington on the day his presidency ended in 1969?
Lit his first cigarette since 1955
Lit his first cigarette since 1955, the year of his heart attack; when a daughter snatched it away he took it back, saying he had raised his girls and been president and 'now it's my time'.
The Great Society
The Great Society was laid out in a May 1964 commencement speech at the University of Michigan; looking back, he called it 'the woman I really loved', whom he had left for the war in Vietnam.
Q 24In which speech did Johnson declare an "unconditional war on poverty in America"?
The 1964 State of the Union
The 1964 State of the Union came just seven weeks after he took office; that August the Economic Opportunity Act followed, creating an agency to channel aid through local community groups.
Q 25Which 1965 legislation created Medicare and Medicaid?
The Social Security Amendments
The Social Security Amendments added health cover in three layers designed by Wilbur Mills to disarm Republican opposition: hospital insurance, voluntary doctors' insurance and Medicaid for the poor.
Q 26What was the 1964 campaign ad showing a girl picking petals before a nuclear explosion called?
The Daisy ad
The Daisy ad was broadcast as a paid spot only once, on September 7, 1964, yet the girl's countdown to a nuclear blast made it one of the most memorable political ads ever.
Q 27Whom did Johnson defeat in the 1964 presidential election?
Barry Goldwater
Barry Goldwater's supporters wore the slogan 'In your heart, you know he's right'; Johnson's side answered with bumper stickers reading 'In your guts, you know he's nuts'.
Q 28In Johnson's 1964 landslide, his opponent won only his home state and five states in which region?
The Deep South
The Deep South broke with the Democrats over civil rights, a shift that outlasted the election; everywhere else Johnson swept the board, taking 61 percent of the national vote.
Q 29Johnson signed Medicare in 1965 beside which former president, who had first proposed national health insurance?
Harry Truman
Harry Truman had asked Congress for national health insurance twenty years earlier and been beaten; Johnson flew to Independence, Missouri, to sign the bill in front of him.
Q 30With which Republican senator did Johnson ally to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965?
Everett Dirksen
Everett Dirksen, the Senate's Republican leader, delivered enough of his party's votes to shut off a Southern filibuster, the same service he had done Johnson on an earlier rights bill.