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Senate Years of Service: 1963-1981 Party: Democrat
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McGOVERN, George Stanley, a Representative and a Senator from South Dakota; born in Avon, Bon
Homme County, S.Dak., July 19, 1922; attended the public schools of Mitchell,
S.Dak., and Dakota Wesleyan University, 1940-1942; enlisted in the United
States Army Air Corps in June 1942, flew combat missions in the European
Theater, and was discharged from the service in July 1945; returned to Dakota
Wesleyan University and graduated in 1946; held teaching assistantship and
fellowship at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., 1948-1950, receiving his
Ph.D. from that university in 1953; professor of history and government at
Dakota Wesleyan University 1950-1953; executive secretary of South Dakota
Democratic Party 1953-1956; member of Advisory Committee on Political
Organization of Democratic National Committee 1954-1956; elected as a Democrat
to the Eighty-fifth and Eighty-sixth Congresses (January 3, 1957-January 3,
1961); was not a candidate for renomination in 1960, but was unsuccessful for
election to the United States Senate; appointed special assistant to the
President January 20, 1961, as director of the Food for Peace Program, and
served until his resignation July 18, 1962, to become a candidate for the
United States Senate; elected to the United States Senate in 1962; reelected in
1968 and 1974 and served from January 3, 1963, to January 3, 1981; chairman,
Select Committee on Unmet Basic Needs (Ninetieth Congress), Select Committee on
Nutrition and Human Needs (Ninety-first through Ninety-fifth Congresses);
unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the U.S. Senate in 1980; unsuccessful
candidate for Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 and 1984; unsuccessful
Democratic nominee for President of the United States in 1972; lecturer and
teacher; U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Agencies
in Rome, Italy, 1998-2001; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on August
9, 2000; appointed United Nations Global Ambassador on World Hunger in 2001;
died October 21, 2012.
BibliographyHart, Gary.
Right From the Start. New York: Quadrangle Books, 1973;
McGovern, George. Grassroots: The Autobiography of George
McGovern. New York: Random House, 1977; McGovern, George.
The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition.
New York: Simon & Schuseter, 2004; McGovern, George.
Social Security and the Golden Age: An Essay on the New American
Demographic. Golden, Colo.: Fulbrum Publishing, 2005; McGovern,
George.
Abraham Lincoln. New York: Times Books, 2009.
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