(David) Dean Rusk served as Secretary of State through the eight years of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the second longest tenure in U.S. History. Rusk was closely involved in relations with the Soviet Union, especially in negotiating the 1963 test ban treaty. He was a major participant in the secret Cuban missile crisis meetings, and later became a strong advocate of U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Mr. Rusk, a native of Georgia, has also been recognized for his support of the civil rights movement, becoming one of the first members of President Kennedy’s cabinet to speak out on the issue. In 1990, Mr. Rusk published a memoir, As I Saw It, which he co-authored with his son, Richard.
1909 Born, Cherokee County, Georgia
1931 A.B., Davidson College, North Carolina
1933 B.S., St. John’s College, Oxford (Rhodes Scholar)
1934 M.A., St. John’s College, Oxford
1934-1940 Associate Professor of government and Dean of Faculty,
Mills College, Oakland, CA.
1940-1946 United States Army
1946 Chief of the U.S. State Department’s International Security Affairs Division
1946-1947 Special Assistant to the Secretary of War
1949-1950 Director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of U.N. Affairs; Deputy Undersecretary of State
1950-1951 Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs
1952-1960 President, Rockefeller Foundation
1961-1968 Secretary of State
1970-1994 Professor of International Law, University of Georgia Law School
1994 Died
Author
As I Saw It (with son, Richard Rusk), 1990
Source
Who Was Who in America. New Providence, New Jersey: Who’s Who, 1998, 216.
Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2004. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: The Gale Group, 2004.