March 31 · This Day in America
It is meant to be a televised speech about Vietnam. The president talks of a bombing halt, of peace, of a war that has cost him the country's trust after the Tet Offensive and a near-loss in New Hampshire. Then, near the end, Lyndon Johnson does the thing almost no one expected. He looks into the camera and says he will not seek, and will not accept, the nomination of his party for another term. A man who had spent his life climbing toward this office sets it down on live television. The room behind the cameras gasps. The 1968 race, already on fire, breaks wide open. It is one of the rare moments in American history when a president, holding the most power he will ever hold, chooses to let it go.
Source: www.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1927
He is born on a small family farm the Depression will soon take away, sending the Chavez family into the migrant fields of California. From that childhood of stoop labor and short pay he built, with Dolores Huerta, the United Farm Workers, and led grape boycotts and a 25-day fast that made a nation look at who picked its food. His birthday is now a holiday in several states. Si se puede, he said. It can be done.
Source: www.nps.gov
“I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968