1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [85]
Mays, Willie (1931– ) Mays started playing baseball in the Negro National League in 1948. At about this time, Jackie Robinson crossed the “color line,” and major league baseball was integrated. Mays was recruited by the New York (later San Francisco) Giants for the minors in 1950 and entered the major league team in 1951. By 1966, he was earning the highest salary of any baseball player of the time. In 1972, he was traded to the New York Mets and retired the following year. His home run career total was 660 and his batting average .302. He had 3,283 hits to his credit. Many fans consider him baseball’s best all-around player.
McAuliffe, Christa (1948–1986) Born Sharon Christa Corrigan, McAuliffe was a Maryland schoolteacher chosen in 1984 out of some 10,000 applicants as the first ordinary citizen (non-pilot, non-scientist) in space. Her enthusiastic participation in the mission of the space shuttle Challenger drew much public interest and focused more public attention on the January 28, 1986, launch than usual. Seventy-four seconds after liftoff, Challenger exploded, killing all seven on board. Subsequent investigation revealed that the accident resulted from the failure of a seal on a solid-fuel booster rocket, a failure NASA knew was possible, but, to avoid further delays of an already repeatedly delayed launch, downplayed. McAuliffe was hailed as a hero, but public support for the space program diminished.
McCarthy, Eugene (1916–2006) Democrat McCarthy was elected to the Senate from Minnesota in 1958 and served in relative obscurity until, on November 30, 1967, he announced that he would challenge incumbent president Lyndon B. Johnson in the Democratic primaries. McCarthy became the principal anti-Vietnam War candidate, a figure around whom the antiwar movement rallied. His candidacy encouraged Robert F. Kennedy to declare his candidacy as well, also on an antiwar platform. McCarthy’s performance in the primaries was among the factors that prompted President Johnson to withdraw as a candidate for reelection in 1968.
McCarthy, Joseph R. (1908–1957) Elected to the Senate from Wisconsin in 1946, McCarthy had an undistinguished career until he announced in a February 1950 speech to a Republican women’s organization in Wheeling, West Virginia, that he possessed the names of 205 Communists who had infiltrated the State Department. Although McCarthy was never able to substantiate the charges, he fueled a “red scare” that propelled his reelection in 1952 and his chairmanship of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate and of its permanent subcommittee on investigations. This gave him a forum to air his sensational allegations of Communist subversion in government, industry, Hollywood, and the U.S. Army. Although McCarthy never succeeded in actually identifying a single subversive, the anti-Communist hysteria he generated dominated much of the national life for the next two years. His innuendo was sufficient to ruin many careers, and McCarthy became an intensely polarizing figure: reviled by many, and regarded as a patriot-hero by many others. Most politicians were afraid to challenge him, but as his allegations became increasingly reckless the challenges began to come. When he turned against fellow Republicans, including President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and also alleged that the army had been infiltrated by Communists, the Senate held 36 days of nationally