Sean patrick moynihan biography

Daniel Patrick Moynihan—Cabinet officer, diplomat and four-term United States Senator—was one of the foremost public servants and public intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century.

Moynihan was born in 1927 to an Irish-Catholic family in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The family plunged into poverty and moved to New York City when Moynihan’s father abandoned them. Moynihan grew up largely in New York City during the Great Depression, shining shoes in Times Square and then finding employment as a longshoreman.

He attended the City College of New York for a year before joining the United States Navy in 1944. During his officer training, Moynihan enrolled at Tufts University, receiving an undergraduate degree in sociology and eventually a doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he wrote his dissertation on the International Labor Organization.

Moynihan served on the staff of Governor W.

Averell Harriman, Democrat of New York, in whose office he met his future