Before Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency, 98% of African American children in the South were still attending segregated schools despite the supreme courts landmark “Brown V. Board” ruling in 1954. The courts had failed to enforce their ruling for an entire decade.

After LBJ and the congress at that time pushed for and passed the Civil Rights act of 1964, the federal government began to threaten pulling federal funding from any schools that did not integrate their all white students bodies with children of all races. After having passed the bill and presiding over his full first term as president (1964-1968), 91% of African American students in the South were integrated into desegregated schools.

This is the reason why I have LBJ as a top 10 president of all time personally. I understand the complicated moral compass of the man, and the main argument of how he along with his administration effectively ended the new deal era of democratic policies with their immoral and misinformed war on Vietnam which traumatized an entire generation of Americans. But I still admire his unwillingness to negotiate with the racists who kept attempting to segregate schools, and I also really really admire his war on poverty.

Source: https://youtu.be/VIKJ3NT_oVM?is=AgClaQH64EvG1gFL

Edit: I corrected my post to more accurately reflect the statistics. I initially rushed it and forgot to mention that it was 98% of students in the SOUTH of the United States where the most push back to desegregation occurred. And that after LBJ’s first full term (1964-1968), that number flipped to 91% of African American students in South. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

He was alive when they were both president so I wonder if he ever said what he thought about their presidencies. Also this picture is from former Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn’s funeral. One of only two images I could find of Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson all in one picture.

For those unaware: Family Feud surveys 100 people and asks them a question that has an open-ended answer. The goal for the competing contestants is to identify the most popular answers given by the survey respondents.

Some notes about the game itself:

• One contestant guessed Eisenhower and got a strike.
• One contestant guessed "Roosevelt" and was pressed to be more specific. She blanked for a second, then blurted out "Teddy." The audience lightly chuckled; not sure if it was at the answer itself, or how badly she blanked when trying to remember the Roosevelts' first names. Teddy was a strike.
• One contestant blanked and just said "Carter," which got a good laugh from the crowd. That was the family's third strike.

At the time of the show's airing (April 1981):

• FDR's presidency would be as recent as George H.W. Bush's is presently (36 years prior, 1945/1991)
• Truman's presidency would be as recent as the end of Clinton's presidency is presently (28 years prior, 1953/1998)
• JFK's presidency would be as recent as the early Obama administration (17 years, 5 months; Nov 1963/April 2009)

Perhaps most interestingly, current polling shows that public opinion hasn't shifted too much in the past 45 years. In its February 2026 Presidents' Day poll, YouGov asked how respondents rate 20 different presidents.

Lincoln, JFK, and Washington were the top three (in the exact same order as Family Feud 45 years ago), with net "Outstanding" + "Above Average" share figures of 74%, 66%, and 64%, respectively.

TR, Jefferson, and FDR round out the rest of the presidents who scored >50%, with 55%, 51%, and 51%, respectively.

Hope you all find this as interesting as I did!

George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush might act like native Texans but both were born in New England and spent most of their formative years there.

Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan were from California (Hoover and Reagan were born in the Midwest and spent a good chunk of their formative years there, Hoover in Iowa and Reagan in Illinois).

Gerald Ford was from Michigan.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was from Kansas.

Calvin Coolidge was from New England (spent most of his formative years in Vermont before moving to Massachusetts).

Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, and Warren G. Harding were from Ohio.

Chester A. Arthur and Theodore Roosevelt were from New York.

Benjamin Harrison was from Indiana.

Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky but spent most of his formative years in Indiana and Illinois.

If you know me it's no secret that I do not like FDR, his New Deal policy, or his extremely aggressive pursual of it. But I do appreciate how much people Social Security has helped and I believe that is the core of what he wanted to do is help people with it.

William Jenner was a hardline conservative Senator from Indiana who became notorious for his vicious attacks on George Marshall.

When Truman nominated Marshall as Secretary of Defense, Jenner delivered a scathing hour long speech attacking Marshall and questioning his loyalty to America, calling him a “frontman for traitors.”

Dwight Eisenhower personally disliked Jenner. However, during his 1952 campaign, he felt he needed to appease the conservative wing of the GOP, which was distrustful of him and bitter at once again losing the nomination.

So in Indiana he endorsed Jenner for another Senate term and shared a stage with him.

This was a controversial move, with some accusing Eisenhower of turning his back on his friend, mentor and overall American hero. Truman was particularly incensed.

Well unless you count a certain other guy haha. Jokes aside Taft was the third secretary of war to become President after James Monroe and Ulysses S Grant. Although Grant was acting Secretary of War.

For me I always loved history, when I entered middle school it was towards the end of the Hamilton craze and a lot of people were singing the song. I just liked history so I also searched and even got a textbook they were replacing with laptops

But how did you become interested with presidents or in general us history? Do you just like history, took a apush class, etc?

Does this cross a line for you? Do you feel like we are owed this kind of interaction? Do you think it denigrates the office? I don’t really know how I feel about it. On one hand they know how hard the job is on the other is it not somewhat their duty?

My gut feeling is to stay silent to avoid interference unless it is something major.

Not trying to start a flame war and I think this can reasonably discussed entirely in a historical perspective.

Credit for art Doug Chayka

Note it only includes VP picks that have served in either the House or Senate (i.e have a voting record)

Note that the scoring sort of breaks down the earlier you go, being a liberal in the 1920s is not the same as being a liberal today. Take it more like how much they backed the party line during their time in Congress

Also, it only takes into account voting records and doesn't factor in other stuff like who supported the candidate (i.e Garner, the most liberal VP pick was backed by the conservative wing). Doesn't take into account what they said before entering Congress etc, only counts their votes. Take it more as who was backing the party line the most.

Methodology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOMINATE_(scaling_method))

Nowadays McCarthy’s name has fallen into disfavor, with his eccentric post-60s career and behavior, and being utterly eclipsed by his former rival RFK.

However, let’s say the roles were reversed… would McCarthy be seen as a great political martyr? And would Kennedy be more astute and graceful about his death when it came to uniting the American Left?

Pretty cool alternate history scenario where the WG break in goes in discovered, so Nixon is still in office in spring 1975.
Nixon was far less willing to be the guy who "lost Vietnam" than Ford ended up being. People like to highlight the
"decent interval" comment by Kissinger years before the fall of Saigon, but there's plenty more evidence for Nixon having been very unwilling to be the guy to lose it if he thought holding on was at all possible.
All the same aid cuts to South Vietnam still happen and the War Powers act still passes. So as South Vietnam looks ready to fall, Nixon triggers a constitutional crisis by defying congress and ordering a bombing campaign of North Vietnamese forces as the South Vietnamese forces try to pull themselves together.

I am generally less aware about Presidents before the 1900s, so feel free to speak on one of those, but in my opinion, the presidents featured above seemed to be the most concerned with their personal legacy, revealed through their policies, their demeanor while in office, and their private thoughts or correspondence with others.

I find it fascinating to think of what would go through a president’s mind, particularly after the First World War, when America truly became a world power.

I often shiver at the awesome burden of occupying the most powerful office in the most powerful country in human history, and I know for myself, I’d at least be somewhat curious about how I’d be remembered after I die.

Interested to hear your thoughts (feel free to talk about a president not featured above)!!

Edit: sorry about the image resolution. The images appeared better in my camera roll before uploading them.

I've been working on a free daily puzzle called Presidential Grid.

Each day you get a 3x3 grid of categories and have to identify a U.S. president who fits each square. The goal is to complete all 9 while testing how deep your presidential knowledge actually goes.

I originally made it because I love these kinds of grid/trivia games and thought U.S. presidents were almost perfect for the format.

Would genuinely love to know what people here think - especially whether the categories are too easy or too hard.

https://gridofminds.com

Source: https://www.philipsemanorhall.com/cochran-collection