Description
Description
The Audiovisual Materials Series documents George McGovern's political career,
including his years in the House of Representatives 1956-1960 (no materials dating
from 1956), his service as Special Assistant to the President, in which function he
directed the Food for Peace Program (1961-1962), and his senatorial career
(1962-1981). In addition, the series contains campaign materials from McGovern's
House and Senate campaigns as well as his 1972 presidential campaign and his
unsuccessful bids for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 and 1984. The
material dating from 1981-1984 is of particular interest as no other series of the
George S. McGovern Papers document this time period. The series contains film
footage, video recordings, audiotapes and audiocassettes, computer tapes and
diskettes, and other formats.
Collection Creator
Biography
George Stanley McGovern was a United States American senator and Democratic presidential
nominee known for his strong liberal stance. The second of four children, he was born in
Avon, South Dakota, in 1922 to Joseph C. McGovern, a Wesleyan Methodist pastor, and
Frances McGovern (née McLean). George McGovern enrolled at Dakota Wesleyan University in
Mitchell, S.D., in 1940. While at Dakota Wesleyan, he joined the Dakota Wesleyan Varsity
Debate Squad, winning the South Dakota Intercollegiate Oratory Contest in 1941 and the
Red River Valley Tournament in 1943.
McGovern earned a pilot's license through the Civilian Pilot Training Program and
enlisted in the Air Force following the attacks on Pearl Harbor. He began training in
February, 1943, and was deployed in the fall of 1944 to an airbase near Cerignola in
Northern Italy. In the following ten months preceeding his discharge in July 1945, he
flew 35 bomber missions with B-24 Liberators over targets in Europe, including Linz,
Vienna, and Munich, as well as a number of food relief flights following the surrender
of Germany. In honor of his wife Eleanor, he named any plane he piloted the "Dakota
Queen," a practice he later extended to his campaign planes. McGovern was awarded the
Air Medal for heroism in battle.
Returning to Dakota Wesleyan in 1945 to finish his studies under the G.I. Bill, McGovern
earned his B.A. in 1946 and went on to study divinity at the Garrett Theological
Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. Dissatisfied with the ministry, he enrolled at
Northwestern University, earning his M.A. in History in 1949. He returned to Dakota
Wesleyan as a professor of history and political science while also continuing his
studies with Arthur S. Link at Northwestern. In 1953, he received his Ph.D. in history
with his dissertation, "The Colorado Coal Strike,
1913-1914".
Though raised a Republican, McGovern became a supporter of Henry Wallace, serving as a
delegate from Illinois for the Progressive Party Convention in Philadelphia in 1948. In
1952, Adlai Stevenson's acceptance speech following his nomination as the Democratic
presidential candidate moved McGovern to register as a Democrat. He left Dakota Wesleyan
the following year to become the executive secretary of the Democratic Party in South
Dakota and spent the following years revitalizing the party's presence in the
traditionally conservative state.
In 1956, McGovern successfully ran for Congress and became the United States
Representative for the First District of South Dakota, winning reelection against Joe
Foss in 1958. During his four years in the House of Representatives, McGovern served on
the Committee on Education and Labor and on the Committee on Agriculture, where he
advocated strongly for rural development, food stamp legislation, and foreign food aid.
These themes would characterize his subsequent political career.
McGovern challenged Karl Mundt for his Senate seat in 1960. Though the campaign focused
on rural issues, McGovern's political ties to Robert and John F. Kennedy, whose Catholic
background was unpopular in South Dakota, ultimately contributed to his defeat. In a
phone call to his brother at the time, John F. Kennedy said "I think we just cost that
nice guy a Senate seat," and subsequently offered McGovern a position in his
administration as Special Assistant to the President.
In that function, McGovern served as the director of the Food for Peace Program from
January 1961-July 1962. During that time, McGovern leveraged the agricultural surplus of
the U.S., which had frequently been viewed as a problem since it lowered farm profits,
to alleviate world hunger and improve foreign relations. When McGovern left office to
run again for the Senate, Food for Peace was operating in twelve countries.
In 1962, McGovern won a Senate seat against Joseph Bottum, who had been appointed
following Francis Case's unexpected death earlier that year. He was subsequently
reelected in 1968 and 1974 and served in the Senate until 1981. When McGovern joined the
88th Congress in 1963, he joined the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry and the
Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs and from the start developed a strong stance
on farm prices, rural development, and food programs. After 1967, when he assumed the
chairmanship of the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, McGovern also became an outspoken
advocate for the rights of Native Americans and for improving education and employment
opportunities on the reservations. In addition, McGovern consistently challenged
military and defense spending, a position that correlated with his opposition to the war
in Vietnam and which became one of his central tenets. In 1969, McGovern became the
chairman of the newly created Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs and, in
1978, of its successor, the Subcommittee on Nutrition. The committee played a major role
in developing legislation for food stamp and school lunch programs, and explored the
relationship between nutrition and health. In 1977, the Select Committee issued a
seminal report, Dietary Goals for the United States (known
as the "McGovern Report"), which advocated a decrease in the consumption of fats and
refined sugars, and an increase in the consumption of complex carbohydrates and fiber.
The report is the precursor of today's Dietary Guidelines for
Americans.
McGovern campaigned briefly for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 following
the assassination of Robert Kennedy, announcing his candidacy on August 10 and losing
the nomination to Hubert Humphrey during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago
three weeks later. At the convention, a motion was passed to establish the Commission on
Party Structure and Delegate Selection, of which McGovern became the chairman when it
began work in 1969. The commission significantly strengthened the role of caucuses and
primaries and set quotas for women, youth, and minority delegates.
In 1972, McGovern won his party's nomination and ran for president against Richard Nixon
on a platform that emphasized withdrawal from Vietnam and more equitable social welfare
programs. While McGovern had been able to attract an enthusiastic following during the
primaries partly based on his perception as an idealistic, anti-establishment candidate,
his campaign was damaged by the discovery that his vice-presidential candidate, Senator
Thomas Eagleton, had a history of psychiatric illness. Eagleton's removal from the
ticket was viewed by many voters as political opportunism, causing the campaign to lose
substantial support. In addition, the campaign lost momentum when the Nixon
administration reduced troop levels in Vietnam, thereby deflating one of McGovern's main
campaign issues. In addition, McGovern represented the left wing of the Democratic Party
and was unable to attract the support of moderates. Given these factors combined with
the power of incumbency wielded by his opponent, McGovern lost in a landslide to Richard
Nixon, carrying only the state of Massachusetts.
In 1980, McGovern lost his Senate reelection bid in the course of the "Reagan
Revolution" that swept many Democrats from office. He subsequently ran unsuccessfully
for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 against (among others) Jesse Jackson,
Walter Mondale, and Gary Hart, who had been his campaign manager in 1972. He considered
a renewed attempt for the nomination in 1992 but ultimately decided against it,
deferring to the wishes of his family.
After electoral politics, McGovern continued to work to alleviate world hunger, serving
as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and on the
board of the Friends of the World Food Program. In 2001, he was appointed the United
Nations Global Ambassador on World Hunger. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom
in 2000.
George McGovern was married to Eleanor Stegeberg McGovern (1921-2007). The couple had
five children: Ann, Steven, Susan, Mary, and Terry (Teresa), who died 1994 from exposure
related to alcohol addiction. Her death prompted George McGovern to author the book
Terry: My Daughter's Life-and-Death Struggle with
Alcoholism and to help create the Teresa McGovern Center, a non-profit
treatment facility for substance abuse patients.
George McGovern is the author or co-author of numerous books, including the following
selection:
War Against Want: America's Food for Peace Program
(1964)
Agricultural Thought in the Twentieth Century (1966)
A Time of War--A Time of Peace (1968)
The Great Coalfield War (1972)
The Third Freedom: Ending Hunger in Our Time (2002)
The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal
Tradition (2004)
Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (2006)
Abraham Lincoln (2008)
Collection History
Acquisition
The bulk of the papers were donated to the Princeton University Library in 1977,1981, and 1987.
Several smaller accruals were received in the 2000s as follows:
By the University of Mississippi in 2006
([ML.2006.015]); by the Archives at the Alaska and Polar Regions Department, Elmer E.
Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in 2007 ([ML.2007.008]); by the United States Senate Historical
Office in 2008 ([ML.2008.018]); and by
David Gerber in 2009
([ML.2009.010]).
Archival Appraisal Information
A total of 809 linear feet of materials were separated from the collection in 2009 as
follows: 20 linear feet of books (sent to Firestone Library and the Department of
Rare Books and Special Collections for further processing); 123 linear feet of
redundant constituent correspondence (a 6% sample of which was retained); 59 linear
feet of secondary material available from other sources (destroyed); 144 linear feet
of routine constituent correspondence (destroyed); 35 linear feet of routine office
files (destroyed); 101 linear feet of duplicate correspondence carbons (destroyed);
106 linear feet of clippings available from other sources (destroyed); 50 linear feet
of duplicates (destroyed); 53 linear feet of material, including card files and
contribution envelopes, that duplicates information available elsewhere in the
collection (destroyed); 103 linear feet of case files peripheral to policy research
(destroyed); 4 linear feet of book drafts peripheral to policy research (destroyed);
9 linear feet of personal records peripheral to policy research (destroyed); and 2
linear feet of blank forms and folders of no research value (destroyed).
Processing Information
Processed by Regine Heberlein in 2009.
Biography written by Jessica Marati, '08. Updated by Regine Heberlein.
Sponsorship
The George S. McGovern Papers were processed with the generous support of The
John Foster and Janet Avery Dulles Fund.
Bibliography
Ambrose, Stephen. The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the
B-24s Over Germany. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.
Campaign '72: The Managers Speak. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1973.
Marano, Richard Michael. Vote Your Conscience: The Last
Campaign of George McGovern. Westport, Conn. and London: Praeger, 2003.
McGovern, George. Grassroots: The Autobiography of George
McGovern. New York: Random House, 1977.
McGovern, George. An American Journey: The Presidential
Campaign Speeches of George McGovern. New York: Random House, 1974.
Miroff, Bruce. The Liberals’ Moment: The McGovern Insurgency
and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party. Lawrence, Kan.: University
Press of Kansas, 2007.
Stephen, Vittoria (writer/director). One Bright Shining Moment:
The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern (videorecording). 2005.
Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail
'72. New York and Boston: Grand Central Publishing, [1983] 2006.
Watson, Robert P., ed. George McGovern: A Political Life, a
Political Legacy. Pierre, South Dakota: South Dakota State Historical
Society Press, 2004.
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