Shannon McKenna Schmidt, "You Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode With Her" (Sourcebooks, 2026)

About this episode

The episode discusses Lady Bird Johnson's groundbreaking 1964 campaign train journey and the women who supported her.

From the author of The First Lady of WWII comes You Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode With Her (Sourcebooks, 2026), the story of Lady Bird Johnson's groundbreaking trip during the 1964 election, and the women who rode with her. "It takes women to have guts." Deemed “the most important campaign effort ever undertaken by the wife of an American president,” the Lady Bird Special was a whistle-stop tour of the South undertaken by Lady Bird Johnson, in a bid for her husband’s reelection in 1964. Never before had a president’s spouse taken to the campaign trail so ambitiously. The 1,682-mile trek through the southern United States, from Washington DC to New Orleans, was a deliberate choice by Lady Bird—many in the southern states resented her husband’s championing of civil rights. But the first lady, proud of her southern heritage, wanted to appeal to her fellow southerners and bridge the divide. Despite the potential danger, she pressed forward, making speeches, shaking hands, and showing herself to be confident, capable, and impressive. You Can't Catch Us is a story of an election campaign, but it is also a story of a…

People in this episode

Host: Jane Scimeca

Guest: Shannon McKenna Schmidt

Topics covered

• Lady Bird Johnson
• 1964 campaign
• women in politics
• civil rights
• southern heritage
• women's rights

Keywords

• Lady Bird Johnson
• 1964 campaign
• women's rights
• southern heritage
• political history

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Sourcebooks

Books & works: You Can't Catch Us, The First Lady of WWII

More episodes of New Books in the American South

• Sarah McNamara, "Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South" (UNC Press, 2023) · June 11, 2026 · 1h 20m
• Mollie Barnes, "Paper Heroines: Women Writers in Conversation and Community Across the Sea Islands, 1838-1902" (U South Carolina Press, 2026) · June 4, 2026 · 50 min
• David Cunningham on Contesting Confederate Monuments (JP) · June 4, 2026 · 51 min
• Annette Gordon-Reed ed., "Jefferson on Race: A Reader" (Princeton UP, 2026) · May 30, 2026
• Ashley Rose Young, "Nourishing Networks: The Public Culture of Food in New Orleans" (Oxford UP, 2025) · May 29, 2026 · 52 min
• Claudia Smith Brinson, "Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina" (U South Carolina Press, 2020) · May 25, 2026 · 1h 7m