Humphrey, Hubert

Humphrey, Hubert (1911–1978), senator, vice president, and Democratic presidential candidate.Perhaps the most eloquent and forceful proponent of New Deal liberalism after World War II, Hubert Humphrey rose from mayor of Minneapolis (1945–1949), to the U.S. Senate (1949–1965), to vice president (1965–1969). Four times he sought the presidency and four times he was rejected. In 1968, amid bitter domestic divisions over the Vietnam War, he won the Democratic nomination but lost in a close election to Republican Richard M. Nixon. In 1971 he returned to the Senate, where he served until his death in 1978.

Humphrey's rise to national prominence coincided with a critical period in the evolution of American liberalism and the Democratic party. During World War II, liberals and communists had worked together for progressive causes, but growing U.S.–Soviet hostility after 1945 convinced Humphrey and many others that liberalism and communism were incompatible. In 1947 he joined with theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and others to organize the anticommunist Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and conducted a successful purge of communists from Minnesota's new Democratic‐Farmer‐Labor party. The following year he gained national attention at the Democratic national convention with a stirring speech in support of civil rights that established his reputation as one of the leading orators in American politics. Minnesota voters rewarded Humphrey by electing him to the Senate in 1948. Over the next fifteen years, he emerged as the Senate's most outspoken liberal and most effective lawmaker. He shaped some of the most important social legislation of his time, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which helped to erode racial segregation in the South.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson picked Humphrey as his vice presidential running mate and the ticket won a landslide victory. But the administration's 1965 decision to escalate the war in Vietnam splintered the Democratic party and destroyed Humphrey's 1968 presidential bid.
See also Anticommunism; Civil Rights Legislation; Cold War; Communism; Communist Party—USA; Federal Government, Legislative Branch: Senate; New Deal Era, The; Sixties, The.

Bibliography

Carl Solberg , Hubert Humphrey: A Biography, 1984.
Timothy Thurber , The Politics of Equality: Hubert H. Humphrey and the African American Freedom Struggle, 1945–1978, 1999.

Steven M. Gillon