Eugene Joseph McCarthy

US Congressman, US Senator. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1949 to 1958 and the United States Senate from 1959 to 1971, representing the state of Minnesota. During his stay in the Senate he served as a member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He earned his undergraduate degree from St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota and his Master’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Minnesota. Prior to his career in public service he worked as a high school instructor in the states of Minnesota and North Dakota before becoming a professor of economics and education at St. John’s University in the early 1940’s. During World War II he worked in the Military Intelligence Division of the War Department serving the nation as a civilian technical assistant. Following the war, he returned to a brief teaching career serving as chair of the sociology department, and as an instructor of sociology and economics at St. Thomas College in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1967 he announced his candidacy for the office of President of the United States amid growing social opposition to the Vietnam War. His strong showing in the 1968 New Hampshire Democratic Primary influenced incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson not to seek reelection, with the party nomination eventually going to Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. Over the next three decades he mounted several unsuccessful presidential campaigns, losing the Democratic Party nomination in the years 1976, 1988 and 1992. He was the author of “The Limits of Power” (1967) and “The Year of the People” (1969). He retired from the Senate and public life in 1971 before resuming a teaching career in 1973. He died in a retirement center in Georgetown, Washington D.C. at the age of 89.