Mundt, Karl Earl

(1900-1974)

   Karl Mundt was born in South Dakota. He obtained a B.A. from Carleton College in 1923 and an M.A. from Columbia University in 1927. After several years as a teacher, he joined his father in the family loan and investment company from 1927 to 1936. A Republican, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for South Dakota in 1938. A firm isolationist, Mundt opposed Selective Service and Lend-Lease. In 1948, he was appointed to fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat left by the resignation of Vera Bushfield. He was elected in his own right and held the seat until shortly before his death. As a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Mundt played a leading role in the case of Alger Hiss. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to get HUAC to investigate the Ku Klux Klan. With Richard M. Nixon, Mundt drafted a version of what was to become the McCarran Act, or the Internal Security Act of 1950. In 1954, he chaired the Army-McCarthy hearings that eventually led to Joseph McCarthy’s downfall.

   See also McCarthy, Joseph Raymond.