April 17, 2024
For renowned historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, her newest book, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, was inspired by an extensive archive that is now part of the Briscoe Center’s collections.
“This book began with the 300 boxes my husband, Dick Goodwin, had saved from his time in public service when he worked with John Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson in the White House, and with Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy,” Goodwin says. “We began spending our weekends exploring the boxes, reliving the sixties through a veritable time capsule of the major events and the major figures of the era.”
As a speechwriter and policymaker for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, Dick Goodwin had unusual personal access to pivotal moments of the 1960s. Doris, who served as one of President Johnson’s White House fellows and went on to help craft Johnson’s memoir, had her own unique perspective on the tumultuous and formative decade.
In the final years of Dick Goodwin’s life, he and Doris combed through his papers together, unearthing letters, photos, diaries, and drafts of speeches Dick wrote that helped shape national and international policy during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, including Latin American policies, the War on Poverty, and the civil rights movement. An Unfinished Love Story reveals the Goodwins’ process of discovery as they explored his papers—papers that are now accessible to researchers.
“At the Briscoe Center, we found the perfect home for both Dick’s archive and mine,” Goodwin notes in the book. “I owe deep thanks to the entire team at the Briscoe Center for their friendship as well as the continued access they provided to the files I needed to complete the book after Dick’s papers had been shipped to Texas.”
“These documents provide remarkable insights into some of the most important issues faced by the American presidency during the decade of the sixties, which make them an invaluable resource for teaching and research,” said Don Carleton, executive director of the Briscoe Center. “We’re proud to have helped these items find a home and hope they will continue to reveal even more information for researchers and scholars in the future.”
![Draft of President Johnson's “Great Society” speech [first page], delivered May 22, 1964, at Ann Arbor, Michigan. Richard N. Goodwin Papers, courtesy of the Briscoe Center for American History.](https://briscoecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Goodwin_Speech_1964.jpg)
![Draft of President Johnson's address to Congress on Civil Rights (“We Shall Overcome”), March 15, 1965 speech [first page]](https://briscoecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Goodwin_Speech_1965.jpg)
As illustrated in Doris’s book, among the iconic items in Dick Goodwin’s papers are drafts of JFK’s famed inaugural speech and LBJ’s “Great Society” and “We Shall Overcome” speeches, among others. An Unfinished Love Story also includes photographs from the Briscoe Center’s extensive photography collections, notably images from Jacques Lowe and Spider Martin.
In October, the center will open a major exhibition on the Goodwin Papers. The exhibition, “History and Fate: The Goodwins and the 1960s,” will explore key moments that defined the decade for Richard and Doris Goodwin, including presidential campaigns, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War.
For Goodwin, this intensely personal book was the fulfillment of a promise to her husband before his death. “It means more to me than anything I’ve ever written,” she notes.
