Lance Avery Morgan
“Never Stand On The Sidelines”: Schmidt Reveals How A Dangerous Whistle-Stop Tour Through The Deep South Transformed Lady Bird Johnson & And The Role Of The Modern First Lady Forever
When Shannon McKenna Schmidt first began researching the Lady Bird Special, she quickly realized she was not uncovering a footnote to history, but a seismic moment hiding in plain sight. “One of the early indicators of the Lady Bird Special’s significance was the amount of media coverage it received,” Schmidt explains. Newspapers ran thousands of stories: national wire reports, front-page headlines, and political columns, ensuring that “it would have been difficult for people at the time not to have known about their First Lady’s undertaking.” What unfolded over four days in 1964, Schmidt argues in You Can’t Catch Us, was nothing less than a transformation of political power, female leadership, and the role of the First Lady itself, as our Lance Avery Morgan learned when he caught up with her recently.
The scope of the Lady Bird Special was truly extraordinary…and the press knew it. Schmidt notes that coverage of the campaign train “went beyond the women’s pages where First Lady-related news was typically relegated and into political columns and on the front page.” One prominent voice, political reporter William E. White, captured the gravity of the moment, writing that Lady Bird Johnson’s train tour would be “incomparably the most important campaign effort ever undertaken by the wife of an American president.”
That framing mattered. “This was a serious campaign strategy and a history-making endeavor,” Schmidt says, “and it was treated as such.”
A Journey Shadowed By Violence
The danger surrounding the trip was impossible to ignore. Less than a year after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the Secret Service insisted on extraordinary precautions, including an extra engine running ahead of the Lady Bird Special in case the tracks were bombed.
“It is a chilling image,” Schmidt acknowledges. “President Kennedy’s assassination less than a year earlier still cast a shadow over the nation.” Yet Lady Bird Johnson did not hesitate. “She was courageous,” Schmidt says plainly. “She accepted the hazards that would come with this journey.”
Lady Bird understood the risks, but she was resolute. “She expected difficulties,” Schmidt explains, “but ultimately, I think she truly believed that no harm would come to her in the region that was home to her.”
Choosing The Hard Road
In 1964, political wives were expected to remain agreeable and invisible. Lady Bird Johnson shattered that convention by choice. Schmidt notes that Lady Bird “certainly risked being rebuffed in the South, where many people viewed the Civil Rights Act as an attack on their way of life.” Yet those were precisely the people she wanted to reach.
“When the Lady Bird Special’s route was being mapped out,” Schmidt reveals, “she asked that she be given the difficult towns”… places where hostility toward President Johnson ran high, and votes were considered out of reach.
There was risk on another front as well. Lady Bird “also risked backlash in the media,” Schmidt says, though it surfaced only modestly and was “primarily motivated by misogyny from male newspaper editors who believed it was their place to define what was acceptable behavior for a First Lady.”
A Southern Identity, Fully Embraced
Lady Bird Johnson’s Southern roots (she was proudly from East Texas) were not something she softened or concealed. Nor did she retreat from her pride in LBJ’s civil rights legacy. “To her, they were entirely, even vitally, reconcilable,” Schmidt explains.
From her earliest speeches, Lady Bird articulated a vision of a South that could evolve without losing its soul. She spoke of gentility and courtesy, of “keeping up with your kinfolks and long Sunday dinners after church,” while also confronting racial injustice.
“If anyone could help bridge this divide,” Schmidt says, “it was Lady Bird,” who memorably declared that the South was “not a place of geography, but a place of the heart.”
Crucially, Lady Bird was not performing. “She was not, as she put it, a ‘hard-sell person,’” Schmidt notes. “She was utterly sincere in what she said during her speeches, and this resonated with audiences.”
The Women On The Train
The Lady Bird Special also served as a rolling snapshot of a turning point for women in American public life. Schmidt calls it “an astonishing moment in history” for the way it brought together trailblazing women like Liz Carpenter, Dr. Janet Travell, and journalist Helen Thomas.
“While simply pursuing their vocations, politics, journalism, and medicine, they ran up against the gender barriers of the time,” Schmidt explains. Each woman possessed “a passion for and adeptness at their jobs, combined with grit and tenacity,” which propelled them forward despite systemic resistance.
Their presence together in 1964, Schmidt argues, was “a harbinger of the advancements in women’s rights that were to come,” with the Lady Bird Special showcasing women’s abilities “at a time when such role models were lacking in American society.”
Liz Carpenter: Essential Partner
For Schmidt, one of the most striking elements of the story is the bond between Lady Bird Johnson and her press secretary, Liz Carpenter. “There was a sense of camaraderie among these brilliant women,” she says, particularly between Liz and Lady Bird.
“Liz was instrumental in helping her transition into such a glaring spotlight,” Schmidt explains, shaping Lady Bird’s public presence and press strategy. Carpenter’s belief that “a First Lady having a former newsperson as press secretary could greatly expand the visibility and the influence of the role” proved prophetic.
Together, Schmidt says, they formed “a highly successful partnership built on twenty years of professional acquaintanceship and friendship.”
Four Days That Felt Like A Lifetime
Lady Bird later described the whistle-stop as “like doing a month’s work in four days,” a phrase Schmidt says captures both the pace and the intensity of the journey.
What stayed with Lady Bird were moments intimate and monumental alike: a woman in Ahoskie, North Carolina, who woke before dawn to milk twenty cows just to reach the depot, and the overwhelming reception in Mobile, Alabama, where a 20,000-strong crowd greeted her in the state she considered her second home.
Equally powerful were moments that revealed the Johnsons as a political force. In Raleigh, they shared the stage at the largest rally in the city’s history. In New Orleans, amid Mardi Gras-level fanfare, LBJ walked down the tracks and embraced his wife as the train arrived. Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham observed, “It was very clear to me what a team they were.”
Texas Steel In The Face Of Hostility
Schmidt points to Columbia, South Carolina, as a defining test of Lady Bird’s Texan resolve. There, hecklers surged the platform, waving signs and shouting insults.
“Lady Bird remained calm,” Schmidt recounts, “politely reprimanding the hecklers and carrying on with her speech.” Later, Lady Bird reflected that she was “rather proud of the way I’d handled it. I was mad and cool.”
Redefining Political Courage
“It certainly would have been easier for Lady Bird not to make this trip,” Schmidt says. “She could have easily hidden behind the excuse of it being forbidden for safety reasons.” Instead, she chose action.
“There are audio recordings of many of Lady Bird’s speeches,” Schmidt notes, and they reveal “a master class in daring and diplomacy.” Despite criticism that “the President should not have allowed his wife to be exposed to such hostility,” Schmidt is clear: “Nobody allowed Lady Bird to make this trip. She had the desire to go and the experience to back it up.”
What Americans witnessed, Schmidt says, was unprecedented: “a First Lady whistle-stopping down the tracks—capable, confident, compassionate, and courageous.”
Her Legacy Endures
The impact of the Lady Bird Special did not end when the train pulled into New Orleans. “It smashed the barrier that prevented First Ladies from being anything other than decorative figures on the campaign trail,” Schmidt says, while also encouraging women’s participation in political and civic life.
Lady Bird identified as “a wife, mother, businesswoman, and politician,” and she viewed being First Lady as “a daily working job.” In recognition of her influence, she was named the 1964 “Woman Newsmaker of the Year,” largely for the whistle-stop tour.
“Never Stand on the Sidelines”
As Women’s History Month in March invites reflection, Schmidt sees the story through an even sharper lens. Progress, she reminds us, is not guaranteed. “We often think of progress as a steady march forward,” she says, “but Lady Bird and her generation were fighting, in part, to reclaim things that had been lost.”
Now, Schmidt views the book’s title as both a sign of hope and a sign of defiance. You Can’t Catch Us is “an expression of defiance against the reactionary forces that would drag us backwards.”
Above all, Schmidt hopes readers leave inspired by Lady Bird Johnson’s example. “To address injustice and to take action,” she says, and to remember Lady Bird’s enduring advice: Never stand on the sidelines. It was true then. It is true now.
For more information on Lady Bird Johnson, visit the LBJ Presidential Library.
