Scope and Content Note
The papers of John Halsey McGovern (1886-1983) span the years 1945-1983 and include newsletters, a booklet, and scrapbooks. The scrapbooks contain church bulletins, correspondence, greeting cards, magazine articles, mailing lists, newsletters, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, photographs, poetry, prayer cards, press releases, social invitations, and telegrams.
McGovern was born in Nashville, Tenn., and he grew up in Atlanta, Ga. He was a freight rate specialist, initially for the Southern Pacific Railroad Company in Atlanta and later as a private consultant in Washington, D.C. Beginning in 1952, he published the monthly newsletters Letter and Epistle expressing his viewpoints on a variety of political issues, particularly his opposition to communism. The scrapbooks include newspaper and magazine articles and letters to editors and politicians voicing McGovern's support for Senator Joseph McCarthy and others who charged that the government was infiltrated and manipulated by communists and their allies. His writings in opposition to the United Nations, the Korean War, racial integration, and civil rights cultivated supporters whose letters and printed material are also contained in the scrapbooks. Among these were leaders of the Catholic church and other religious and political organizations, including the Congress of Freedom, Friends of Senator McCarthy, John Birch Society, Fighting Homefolks of Fighting Men, and Defenders of the American Constitution. Correspondents include Ida M. Darden, Reed J. Irvine, Robert LeFevre, William Loeb, Russell Maguire, Clarence Manion, R. Roy Pursell, Archibald B. Roosevelt Sr., Phyllis Schlafly, Dan Smoot, George E. and Annalee Stratemeyer, and Homer A. Tomlinson.