Eugene McCarthy

Eugene McCarthy, the U.S. Senator from Minnesota whose maverick anti-war Presidential campaign in 1968 toppled Lyndon B. Johnson from power, was born on March 29, 1916, in the small town of Watkins, Minnesota. He took degrees from St. John's University (Collegeville, Minnesota) and the University of Minnesota before becoming a teacher. After a stint as a civilian War Department employee during World War II, he became a college economics and sociology professor. A omen Catholic deeply committed to social justice, he spent a year in a monastery. Eventually, he turned to politics. McCarthy served 10 years in the U.S. House of Representatives after wining election in 1948, then two terms in the Senate, elected in both 1958 and 1964. As a Congressman, McCarthy supported the U.S. intervention in favor of South Korea during the 1950-53 Korean Conflict, but he came out as an opponent of the Vietnam War. In 1968, he thew his hat into the ring in the New Hampshire presidential primary as an ant