Daniel Patrick Moynihan - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Moynihan was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of Margaret Ann (née Phipps), a homemaker, and John Henry Moynihan, a reporter for a daily newspaper in Tulsa. He moved to New York City at the age of six. Brought up in a poor neighborhood, he shined shoes, attended various public, private, and parochial schools, and ultimately graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem. He was a parishioner of St. Raphael's Church (New York City), Hell's Kitchen / Clinton, and also cast his first vote in that church. He and his brother, Michael Willard Moynihan, spent most of their childhood summers at his grandfather's farm in Bluffton, Indiana. After high school, Moynihan worked as a longshoreman before entering City College of New York (CCNY), which at that time provided free higher education.

After a year at CCNY, he joined the United States Navy, receiving V-12 officer training at Tufts University, where he graduated with a B.A. He was on active duty from 1944 to 1947, last serving as gunnery officer of the USS Quirinus. He received an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, also at Tufts. Moynihan then studied as a Fulbright fellow at the London School of Economics. Many years later, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Tufts.