Information AboutHubert Humphrey |
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Hubert Horatio Humphrey II ( May 27 , 1911 – January 13 , 1978 ) was the 38th Vice President Of The United States , serving under President Lyndon Johnson . Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota , and served as Democratic Majority Whip . He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party . He was also elected Mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota . In 1968 Humphrey was the nominee of the United States Democratic Party in the United States Presidential Election , but lost to Republican Richard M. Nixon . In one of the most renowned speeches in American political history, Humphrey told the 1948 Democratic National Convention : "the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights," winning support for a pro-civil-rights plank in the Party's platform. EARLY YEARS This son of Hubert Humphrey Sr. was born in Wallace, South Dakota ( Codington County ). He attended the public schools of Doland, South Dakota , where his family had moved. After public school, he graduated from Capitol College of Pharmacy, Denver in 1933 . He then became a Pharmacist with the Humphrey Drug Co. in Huron, South Dakota , from 1933 to 1937 . He was a brother of Phi Delta Chi , a professional pharmaceutical fraternity. Humphrey then returned to school, receiving a degree from the University Of Minnesota in 1939 . He also earned a graduate degree from Louisiana State University in 1940 (his classmate was Russell B. Long , future senator from Louisiana .), serving as an assistant instructor of political science there. He then became an instructor and graduate student at the University Of Minnesota from 1940 – 1941 , and worked for the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.). Humphrey never finished his Ph.D., and for this reason he was not allowed to teach in the political science department when he returned to the university after losing the 1968 presidential election to Richard Nixon . He lived in Waverly, Minnesota. CITY AND STATE POLITICS (1942-1948) During World War II , he became state director of war production training and reemployment and State chief of Minnesota war service program 1942 ; assistant director, War Manpower Commission 1943 ; professor in political science at Macalester College in St. Paul 1943– 1944 ; radio news commentator 1944– 1945 . In 1943 , he made his first run at elective office, for Mayor of Minneapolis , but he lost. In 1944 , Humphrey was the one of the key players in the merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties of Minnesota to form the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). When in 1945 Minnesota Communists attempted to strengthen their position in the DFL Party, Humphrey backed away from his big tent policies and became an energetic anti-Communist. After the war, he ran for and became Mayor of Minneapolis 1945– 1948 . He was re-elected in 1947 by the largest margin in the city's history, to that time. Humphrey gained national fame during these years by being among the founders of the liberal anti-communist Americans For Democratic Action (ADA) and for reforming the Minneapolis Police force. Previously, the city had been declared the Anti-Semitism capital of the country and the small African-American population of the city encountered numerous instances of Racism . His tenure as Mayor would be famous for his efforts to fight Bigotry in all its forms. THE 1948 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION The national Democratic Party of 1948 was split between liberals who thought the federal government should assertively guarantee civil rights for non-whites and Southern conservatives who thought the states should be able to choose what civil rights their citizens would enjoy (the " States' Rights " position). At the 1948 Democratic National Convention , the draft Party Platform reflected this division and contained only platitudes in favor of civil rights. Though the incumbent President Harry S. Truman had already issued a detailed 10-point Civil Rights Program calling for aggressive federal action on the issue of civil rights, he gave his backing to the Democratic establishment draft that was a replication of the 1944 Democratic National Convention plank on civil rights. A diverse coalition opposed this tepid draft. Within it were anti-communist liberals like Humphrey, Paul Douglas and John Shelley , all of whom would later become known as leading progressives. Also strongly backing the liberal civil rights plank were Democratic urban bosses like Ed Flynn of the Bronx, Jacob Arvey of Chicago, and David Lawrence of Pittsburgh, who were generally regarded at the time as being more conservative. Though many scholars have suggested that labor unions were leading figures in this coalition, virtually all significant labor leaders with the exception of the head of the Congress of Industrial Organizations' Political Action Committee (CIOPAC) Jack Kroll and A.F. Whitney, did not attend the convention. Despite aggressive pressure by Truman aides to avoid forcing the issue on the Convention floor, Humphrey chose to speak. In a renowned speech, Humphrey passionately told the Convention: "To those who say, my friends, to those who say, that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years too late! To those who say, this civil rights program is an infringement on states' rights, I say this: the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights!" Humphrey and his allies succeeded; the pro-civil-rights plank was narrowly adopted. As a result of the Convention's vote, the Mississippi and one half of the Alabama delegation walked out of the hall. Many Southern Democrats were so enraged that they formed the " Dixiecrat " party and nominated their own presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond . Although the strong civil rights plank adopted at the Convention cost Truman the support of the Dixiecrats, it gained him important votes from blacks, especially in Northern cities. Pulitzer Prize -winning historian David McCullough has written that Humphrey probably did more to get Truman elected in 1948 than anyone other than Truman himself. THE HAPPY WARRIOR (1948-1964) Minnesota elected Humphrey to the United States Senate in 1948 on the DFL ticket, and he took office on January 3 , 1949 . Humphrey's father died that year, and Humphrey stopped using "Jr." He was reelected in 1954 and 1960 . His colleagues selected him as Majority Whip in 1961 , a position he held until he left the Senate on December 29 , 1964 . In the Senate, Humphrey became known for his advocacy of Liberal causes (such as Civil Rights , Arms Control , a Nuclear Test Ban , Food Stamps , and humanitarian Foreign Aid ), and for his long and witty speeches. During the period of McCarthyism (1950-1954), Humphrey was accused of being "soft on Communism," but in 1954 Humphrey proposed to make mere membership in the Communist Party a felony. He was chairman on the Select Committee On Disarmament ( Eighty-fourth and Eighty-fifth Congresses). As Democratic whip in the Senate in 1964 , Humphrey was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of that year. PRESIDENTIAL AND VICE-PRESIDENTIAL AMBITIONS (1960-1969) One of the most respected members of the U.S. Senate, Humphrey ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1960 , but lost to Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy . He was elected Vice President Of The United States on the Democratic ticket with Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and served from January 20 , 1965 , until January 20 , 1969 . As Vice President, Humphrey was controversial for his complete and vocal loyalty to Johnson and the policies of the Johnson Administration, even as many of Humphrey's liberal admirers opposed Johnson with increasing fervor about the Vietnam War . Critics later learned that Johnson had informed Humphrey that he would oppose him for the presidential nomintion if Humphrey (whom Johnson knew increasingly opposed the war) broke with the Johnson administration's Vietnam policies. Even Humphrey's nickname, the Happy Warrior, was used against him. The nickname referred not to hawkishness but rather Humphrey's crusading for social programs. In Germany , Humphrey indirectly earned fame during an April 1967 visit when some Hippies , armed with what looked like a bomb, planned to cause trouble at the place Humphrey was to speak. However, the "bomb" contained nothing but pudding, and the plan was foiled by the police. The would-be vandals were dubbed " Assassin s" and "ten little Oswalds " in some widely-read right-leaning German newspapers; this characterization sparked riots by left-wing student activists. This "pudding assassination" thus became an early defining moment of the German part of the May 1968 movement, many of whose leaders moved into national politics later. In 1968 , the 22nd Amendment did not disqualify LBJ from running for a second term, even though he succeeded into the presidency, because he had only served 14 months of Kennedy's term. However, after the tumultuous 1968 Democratic Presidential Primaries, in which Senator Eugene McCarthy pressured President Johnson out of the race by placing a surprising second place in New Hampshire, and Senator Robert F. Kennedy was Assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan after having outpaced Senator McCarthy in the next primaries and become the front-running candidate for the nomination, Humphrey ran for President Of The United States winning the United States Democratic Party nomination at the 1968 Democratic National Convention , amid riots and protests by antiwar demonstrators, some of whom favored Eugene McCarthy , George McGovern , or other protest candidates. Humphrey lost The 1968 Election to Richard M. Nixon . His campaign was hurt because Humphrey had secured the Presidential nomination without winning a single Primary . (In later years, changes in party rules made such an outcome virtually impossible.) During his underfunded campaign he grew on voters, who saw a kind of transparent decency as well as a mind that quickly grasped complicated issues. Starting out substantially behind Richard Nixon in polls, he had almost closed the gap by election day. While he was Vice President, Hubert Humphrey was the subject of a satirical song by songwriter/musician Tom Lehrer entitled "Whatever Became of Hubert?" ("I wonder how many people here tonight remember Hubert Humphrey. He used to be a senator..."). The song addressed how some liberals and progressives felt let down by Humphrey, who had become a much more mute figure as Vice President than he had been as a senator. The song goes "Whatever became of Hubert? Has anyone heard a thing? Once he shone on his own, now he sits home alone and waits for the phone to ring. Once a fiery liberal spirit, ah, but now when he speaks he must clear it. ..." Immensely admired by associates and members of his staff, Humphrey could not break loose from the domination of Lyndon Johnson. The combination of the unpopularity of Johnson, the Chicago riots, and the discouragement of liberals and African-Americans when both Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., were assassinated during the election year caused him to lose to a candidate many thought less qualified to be president. Humphrey was also hurt by the presence of former Alabama Governor George Wallace as an independent candidate, who won many traditionally Democratic Southern states as well as many Northern whites who had been loyal Democratic voters. The war Humphrey had come to oppose continued until the mid-1970s. LATER YEARS (1969-1978) After leaving the Vice-Presidency, Humphrey kept busy by teaching at Macalester College and the University Of Minnesota , and by serving as chairman of board of consultants of the Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation. Initially he had not planned to return to political life, but an unexpected opportunity changed his mind. Eugene McCarthy , a DFL U.S. Senator from Minnesota who was up for re-election in 1970 , realized that he had only a slim chance of winning even re-nomination (he had angered his party by opposing Johnson and Humphrey for the 1968 presidential nomination), and declined to run. Humphrey won the DFL nomination and the election, and returned to the U.S. Senate on January 3, 1971 . He was re-elected in 1976 , and remained in office until his death. In 1972 , Humphrey once again ran for the Democratic nomination for president. He was defeated by Senator George McGovern in several primaries, and was trailing in delegates at the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida . His hopes rested on challenges to the credentials of some of the McGovern delegates. For example, the Humphrey forces argued that the winner-take-all rule for the California primary violated procedural reforms intended to produce a better reflection of the popular vote. The effort failed, as several votes on delegate credentials went McGovern's way, guaranteeing his victory. Humphrey also briefly considered mounting a campaign for the Democratic Nomination from the Convention once again in 1976 , when the primaries seemed likely to result in a deadlock, but ultimately decided against it. Humphrey ran for Majority Leader after the 1976 election but lost to Robert Byrd of West Virginia . The Senate honored Humphrey by creating the post of Deputy President Pro Tempore of the Senate for him. On August 16 , 1977 , Humphrey revealed that he had terminal cancer. On October 25, 1977 , he addressed the Senate, and on November 3, 1977 , Humphrey became the first person other than a Member or the President to address the House of Representatives in session. President Carter honored him by giving him command of '' Air Force One '' for his final trip to Washington on October 23. One of Humphrey's speeches contained the lines "It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped," which is sometimes described as the "liberals' mantra." Humphrey spent his last weeks calling old political acquaintances on a special long-distance telephone his family had given him. After his death at home in Waverly, Minnesota , he lay in state in the rotunda of both the U.S. Capitol and of the Minnesota State Capitol . His body was interred in Lakewood Cemetery , Minneapolis, Minnesota . Ironically, he ended up with substantially more national respect than the president who had kept him on a tight leash and the Republican opponent who had defeated him for the presidency but later resigned from office in August 1974. HONORS In 1965 Hubert Horatio Humphrey -- Vice President of the United States -- was made an ''Honorary Life Member'' of Alpha Phi Alpha , the first intercollegiate Greek-letter Fraternity established for African Americans. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal Of Honor on June 13 , 1979 and the Presidential Medal Of Freedom in 1980 . BUILDINGS AND INSTITUTIONS NAMED FOR HUMPHREY
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