HUMPHREY, HUBERT HORATIO
Hubert Horatio Humphrey served as a U.S. senator from Minnesota and as the thirty-eighth vice president of the United States. From his election to the U.S. Senate in 1948 to his death in 1978, Humphrey was the quintessential COLD
WAR liberal. His unsuccessful presidential cam-
paign in 1968 was weakened by his support of
President LYNDON B. JOHNSON’s Vietnam War
policies.
Humphrey was born in Wallace, South
Dakota, on May 27, 1911.He grew up in Doland,
South Dakota, where his father ran the local
drugstore.He received a degree from the Denver
College of Pharmacy in 1933 and helped run the
family drugstore before entering the University
of Minnesota.After graduating from the Univer-
sity of Minnesota in 1939, he earned a master’s
degree from Louisiana State University.He taught
at the University of Minnesota, Louisiana State
University, and Macalester College, in St. Paul,
Minnesota, before joining the federal Works
Progress Administration in Minnesota in 1941.
Humphrey became a leader in Minnesota
DEMOCRATIC PARTY politics during WORLD WAR
II. After narrowly losing the Minneapolis may-
oral election in 1943, he cemented his position
in 1944 when he united the Minnesota Democ-
ratic and Farmer-Labor parties into the Democ-
ratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) party. The Farmer-
Labor party had advocated more radical politi-
cal policies in the 1930s and 1940s, and had
gained national attention through Governor
Floyd B. Olson, of Minnesota. In the 1930s
Olson and the Farmer-Labor party had advo-
cated more aggressive governmental interven-
tion to deal with the Great Depression. Olson
criticized President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT for
not doing enough to help the nation’s unem-
ployed. By the mid-1940s, the party had
attracted many Communist-influenced mem-
bers. In 1947 Humphrey and his allies forced the
more radical Farmer-Labor members out of
leadership positions and ultimately out of the
DFL. On a national level, Humphrey helped
form Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal
organization that trumpeted its anti-Communist
credentials.
His political leadership paid quick dividends.
In 1945 he was elected mayor of Minneapolis by
more than thirty thousand votes.He increased his
margin of victory to fifty thousand in his 1947
reelection campaign. As mayor he rooted out
political graft and corruption and began to imple-
ment pieces of his liberal agenda. He secured the
passage of the first municipal fair employment act
in the United States and gained additional funds
for public housing and WELFARE.
Humphrey galvanized liberal Democrats in
1948 at the Democratic National Convention.
Southern Democrats on the platform commit-
tee had rejected President HARRY S. TRUMAN’s
civil rights proposals. Humphrey, a delegate to
the convention and a candidate for the U.S. Sen-
ate, led a fight from the convention floor to
restore the CIVIL RIGHTS plank. His passionate
