Missionary for Freedom

As an outstanding legislator, brilliant orator, and anticommunist crusader, former Minnesota Congressman Walter Judd helped shape United States history in the twentieth century. Playing a key role in such historic endeavors as the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the Voice of America, P. L. 480 (Food for Peace), and the removal of all racial discrimination clauses from U.S. immigration laws, Judd also led the way in Congressional approval of the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO. His encyclopedic knowledge and eloquent voice made him a central figure in U.S. foreign affairs in the post-World War II period. In addition Judd was voted one of the most admired members of Congress by his colleagues and was seriously considered as a vice presidential candidate by two American presidents.

Born in a tiny Nebraska town in 1898, Walter Judd worked his way through medical school and spent ten years in war-torn China as a medical missionary. In fact no other American has been more identified with China than Judd, who advised presidents from Truman to Reagan and secretaries of state from Marshall to Kissinger on U.S.-Sino relations. In 1981 President Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, for his skills as a healer, his eloquence as a communicator, and his lifelong opposition to tyranny and support of freedom at home and abroad.

This richly detailed biography is a celebration of an American original, a tireless champion of faith and freedom. Lee Edwards brilliantly captures the man and the critical difference he made in the course of this turbulent century. The life of Walter Judd is the story of a modern St. Paul whose moving rhetoric and uncompromising integrity inspired countless Americans from the nation's capital to the nation's campuses for more than six decades.