Woods Delivers Keynote Speech at Commemoration of Education Act

Debbie Martinez, National Park Service

University of Arkansas historian Randall Woods speaks to the crowd at Junction School at the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall, Texas.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Randall Woods, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, delivered keynote remarks recently at a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

On April 11, Woods spoke about the legacy of President Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society to a crowd of more than 100 people who gathered at a ceremony held at Junction School, which is near the entrance to the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall, Texas, and is part of Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park.

At that site on April 11, 1965, Johnson signed the landmark law that for the first time provided extensive federal funding of the nation's elementary, junior high, and high schools. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was part of a flurry of Great Society legislation Johnson signed in 1965, including the Medicare Act, Higher Education Act and Voting Rights Act.

Woods, the John A. Cooper Professor of History in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, is the author of the critically acclaimed 2006 biography of the 36th president, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition. He is a recognized scholar in the field of U.S. diplomatic history, and has published eight books on various topics including Vietnam, the Cold War and Sen. J. William Fulbright.

In 2016, Basic Books will release Woods’ ninth book, Prisoners of Hope: Lyndon B. Johnson and the Origins of the Great Society. Woods has been a Mellon Fellow at Cambridge University, Stanley Kaplan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Williams College, and John G. Winant Visiting Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford.

Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act at the Junction School because it was the building where he began his education when he was 4 years old. Other speakers at the event included Denise Trauth, president of Texas State University – Johnson’s alma mater – and Luci Baines Johnson, daughter of the president and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson.