Humphrey, Hubert Horatio

Humphrey, Hubert Horatio (b. 27 May 1911, d. 13 Jan. 1978). US Vice-President 1965–9 From a modest family in Wallace, South Dakota, he started training as a pharmacist, but soon became interested in politics and graduated in political science from the University of Minnesota (BA, 1939) and Louisiana State University (MA, 1940). Back in Minneapolis, he became a director of a worker-education programme for the Works Progress Administration set up by F. D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and became active in local politics as a Democrat. After becoming Mayor of Minneapolis in 1945 he was elected to the Senate in 1948, where he developed a reputation for brilliant debating skills as well as for the highest integrity. He spearheaded the campaign for a strong commitment to civil rights in the 1948 Democratic Party platform. A presidential candidate in 1960, he became a strong supporter of John F. Kennedy and was elected Vice-President in 1964, in Johnson's landslide election victory. As such he supported US involvement in the Vietnam War. Defeated in the presidential election of 1968, he returned to the Senate, where he served until he died. He was regarded as one of the most significant political figures of the USA in the postwar period, both for his influence and effectiveness in the Senate itself and in the Democratic Party at large. In 1977 he sponsored the Humphrey–Hawkins Act, which he had first proposed in 1975, and which sought to establish national goals of low unemployment and low inflation, and defined a right to work for all Americans which no President after Carter attempted to implement.