The LBJ Museum and Library in Austin

I took my second trip to the LBJ Library on the University of Texas campus yesterday. There were a lot of great exhibits as usual, and especially the one on the Electrification of Rural Texas. If you get a chance to go to Austin, don't miss this place. Hero or monster, or both, LBJ was a key president, and probably did more for African-Americans than any President since Lincoln.

The library is not afraid of showing all the contradictions in this often tortured, frequently cranky, and always ambitious man. LBJ often frequented the library in the last years of his life...

On campus, you can also see the Tower. The tower is where the first mass shooting of innocents occurred in America—a harbinger of what was to come, really. It is where the first American parallel killer went bananas. Charles Whitman went up in the tower in 1966, and killed fourteen people and injured dozens more in a little over ninety minutes. They closed the tower for over 20 years, but it reopened a few years ago. To get up there you have to pass through metal detectors, and there are armed guards on the observation deck.






Other recent postings on LBJ:

LBJ responds to White House correspondent Dan Rather (and links to other LBJ photos) (has links to dozens of great photos).
Three more photographs of LBJ
Jerry Seinfeld Called Them The Close Talkers, Or, The Study Of Proxemics
LBJ responds to White House correspondent Dan Rather (and links to other LBJ photos)
LBJ meets FDR
Photograph: LBJ howls like a dog
Another good LBJ photograph - circa 1960
Photograph: LBJ in Vietnam
Photograph: LBJ agonizing over the Vietnam War
Photograph: LBJ and MLK meet up
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