Papers of V.O. Key

Valdimer Orlando "V.O." Key, Jr. (1908-1963), political scientist and educator, was Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and Government at Harvard University from 1951 until his death in 1963. He received his AB at the University of Texas in 1929, his MA in 1930, and his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1934. He married fellow political scientist Luella Gettys Key in 1934.

Key taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, then was head of the government department at Johns Hopkins University from 1938 to 1949, with a gap during World War II to work for the United States government in the Bureau of the Budget. He was Alfred Cowles Professor of Government at Yale University from 1949 to 1951. In 1951, he took over the Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and Government at Harvard following the retirement of Samuel Eliot Morison.

Key was also involved in many organizations and committees. From 1936 to 1938, he served with the Social Science Research Council and the National Resources Planning Board, and in 1958, he became president of the American Political Science Association. In 1961, President Kennedy appointed Key to the Commission on Campaign Costs. He wrote many influential books, including Southern Politics in State and Nation, which won the Woodrow Wilson Award of the American Political Science Association in 1949. Key died in 1963.