Zephyr Wright

Zephyr Wright was a cook for Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson from 1942 until 1969. When she moved with them to Washington, D.C., several hotels in the Southern United States refused to let her stay because she was black. When Lyndon Johnson was Senator, Wright refused to drive to Austin, Texas, with him, telling him, "When Sammy and I drive to Texas and I have to go to the bathroom, like Lady Bird or the girls, I am not allowed to go to the bathroom. I have to find a bush and squat. When it comes time to eat, we can't go into restaurants. We have to eat out of a brown bag. And at night, Sammy sleeps in the front of the car with the steering wheel around his neck, while I sleep in the back. We are not going to do it again." When Johnson became Vice President, he sought Wright's opinion on matters such as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. She later witnessed him signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and at the signing ceremony, he gave her the pen he had used to sign the Act, saying, "You deserve this more than anyone else."

She is discussed in the book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House, by Kate Andersen Brower, published by Harper in 2015. She is also discussed in "The Wind at His Back: LBJ, Zephyr Wright, and Civil Rights," in Cowger, Thomas W. and Markman, Sherwin (eds.), Lyndon Johnson Remembered: An Intimate Portrait of a Presidency. Rowman & Littlefield, 139–48.