There are many political
figures in the 20th century who I respect. There are fewer that I admire.
But of all the men who ran have made failed runs for President in the twentieth
century – and with the exception of perhaps two or three others since the
founding of the Republic – there is only one who I outright worship.
From his debut on the
national scene in 1948 to his death nearly thirty years later, Hubert Humphrey
was one of the most respected, popular and beloved Senators on either side of
the aisle. Today he is remembered almost entirely for his career as LBJ’s Vice
President and being one of the biggest apologists for the Vietnam War, a fact
that almost certainly destroyed his chance for the Presidency in 1968. This is
horribly unfair to Humphrey who was from the start of his career a man of true
principles and perhaps the greatest representative of liberal causes practically
from the beginning of his career. He was far ahead of the curve of either
political party on civil rights when there was no political gain in doing so and
his refusal to compromise on so many issues ended up hindering his political
ambitions throughout his career.
He freely admitted that he
made many sacrifices in his career with the sole goal of being President of the
United States. But unlike most politicians, the power of the office was only
one consideration. He genuinely believed that he could do good for America in his
office and had an idealism that had rarely been equaled before and almost never
since. There is an argument that after his defeat in 1968, the Democratic Party
– perhaps either one – has ever put forth a candidate with either the credentials
or the potential to be a truly great President. The fact that he never achieved
his goals is truly a tragedy for the nation, particularly considering that most
of what stood in his way was not his fault.
This series of articles will
deal with the career of Hubert Humphrey, the battles he waged in the Senate on
behalf of Civil rights, his many campaigns for higher office both before and
after his failed run in 1968, and how his timing was both well ahead of the country
and then suddenly too late for it.
I should mention upfront
that of all the political figures in the twentieth century who have not become
President that I am incredibly well-versed on Humphrey’s career. I have read
multiple biographies of Humphrey’s life, studied his political ambitions in The
Making of the President Series by Theodore White and for the purposes of much
of these articles Robert Mann’s exceptional The Walls of Jericho, a
history that studies the struggle for Civil Rights through the lives and
political careers of Humphrey, LBJ and Richard Russell. Much of what I am about
to write in at least the first two articles will come from this source
material.
Hubert Humphrey was born
in the small prairie town of Wallace, South Dakota on May 27, 1911. The second
of the four children of Hubert Senior (known in South Dakota as H.H.) and Christine,
the family moved to the slightly larger town of Doland, so that his father
could open a drug store and ice cream parlor. H.H. was an intellectual and a
huge talker – trends that he would pass down to his son. H.H. had converted
from the GOP to the Democrats upon hearing the legendary ‘Cross of Gold speech’
from Willian Jennings Bryan – beliefs
that his wife never embraced but his son would. He also instilled in his son
the values of charity, hard work and social justice. His popularity would eventually
lead to H.H. becoming alderman and eventually the Mayor of Doland.
Hubert would enroll in the
University of Minnesota in 1929 but would be forced to drop out in 1930 when
the Depression caused the failure of the Humphrey family business. He abandoned
college to work as a pharmacist and quickly became impressed with FDR’s New
Deal.
In 1932, Hubert would meet
college student Muriel Buck. After an extended courtship they would wed in 1936
and she would be his greatest supporter for the rest of his life, as much of a
political figure as he was.
Visiting his sister in
D.C. in 1935, he began to believe in his father’s dream of public service. As a
result, he eventually had to tell his father that he would not return to South
Dakota to run his father’s new store to seek a higher education and eventually
public office of his own. At that time, H.H was serving in the South Dakota
legislature and had ambitions of higher office. However, he was willing to sacrifice
his political ambitions for his sons – a decision that America is almost
certainly richer for.
In June of 1939, Humphrey
finally managed to graduate with a degree in Political Science from the
University of Minnesota. With sights on a post graduate degree, he accepting a
teaching position at LSU in 1940. It is safe to say that experience had perhaps
the greatest effect on Humphrey’s views on the world.
Humphrey had never been to
the South, but within a few months he became aware not only of the evils of
segregation in the South, but also the prejudice in the North. As he put in
later this gave ‘flesh and blood commitment to what before had been only an
abstract concept of human rights.”
After earning his master’s
degree – and a reputation for verbosity that he would never escape (though he
really never tried that hard) – he returned to Minnesota a year later. There he
took on what was his first full-time job as the WPA’s head of the worker’s education
service. Within a year he was the regional director of the War Manpower
Association and made his first foray to politics when he ran for Mayor of
Minneapolis in 1942. He narrowly lost the election but had no intention of that
being the end of his career – even then, he was always ambitious and looking
towards the next election.
He spent the next two
years playing a critical role in the union between the often feuding but kindred
Democratic and Farm-Labor parties, eventually becoming the leader of what would
be known in Minnesota as the DFL. In 1994, he attended his first Democratic
National Convention as a delegate and would later run Minnesota’s Roosevelt-Truman
campaign. (Minnesota went for FDR that year.) The next year he ran again for
mayor of Minneapolis and this time won.
Much of his time as Mayor
was directed towards reducing the severe crime problem in the city but the Mayor
had few official duties. Humphrey would rely on his personality and boundless
energy to aid the government. After winning reelection, one of his key measures
was to reform the city’s official and unofficial discrimination against minorities.
This would lead to the nation’s first ever Fair Employment Practices
Commission, which opened doors not only to African Americans, but also Jews and
Native Americans.
Eventually he would join
fellow national liberal leaders to form the Americans for Democratic Action
(ADA). At their first national convention in 1947, he made a powerful and passionate
call for action on Civil Rights, something that the Democratic Party, still
heavily dominated by the South, refused to do. The next year the Minnesota
Democrats nominated him as their candidate for Senate.
The 1948 Democratic
Convention in Philadelphia was a gloomy affair. Everyone was certain that the
incumbent Harry Truman was doomed for defeat in November against the Republican
Thomas Dewey. (Dewey will earn his own series someday.) Well before the
convention began there had been a movement to have Truman removed from the head
of the ticket with Dwight Eisenhower who had refused. Truman was facing a
revolt from both the left and right wing of his party. Henry Wallace, who
Truman had replaced as Vice President in 1944, was running as the candidate of
the New Progressive Party, a very far left wing that opposed the administration’s
policies towards the Soviet Union’s rise in Eastern Europe. On the right wing,
a movement known as the Dixiecrats was rising in the South, infuriated by the
growing position on civil rights. Members of the Southern States delegation
were planning a walkout during the convention.
One Southern Democrat had
no plans to join the walkout, despite his sympathy with the Dixiecrats views.
Richard Russell had represented Georgia in the Senate since 1932 and while he
did not agree with the direction the party was turning, party unity was always
at the forefront of his mind. He agreed to have his name placed in nomination for
President as a measure of defiance at the convention: he would receive 263
votes. During the nominations for Vice President, an obscure Alabama delegate
named George Wallace would place his name in nomination. He would be asked to
head the Dixiecrat Presidential ticket but would turn them down.
Russell was one of the
most prominent pro-segregation voices in the Senate in 1948 and was as racist
as many of them. But unlike so many of the other adamant segregationists in elected
office, Russell would eventually come to realize that he was fighting a losing
battle, one that was merely delaying the inevitable. Like many of the Southern
Democrats Russell had the potential to be a great President, but his unyielding
behavior on the most important domestic issue of the 20th century
would make him unacceptable to the party.
This would be the first
time that Russell and Humphrey would be at center stage on the national landscape
and as would almost always be the case, they would be at complete loggerheads.
Humphrey was determined to challenge the Democratic platforms basically
innocuous position on civil rights.
Humphrey faced an
impossible choice. If the challenge he was planning failed, he would be a
national laughingstock. But if it succeeded, the South would walk out, the
party would lose votes from the South and he would be a scapegoat for the
defeat in November. After receiving the support of both his father and his wife
– both of whom told him it was the right thing to do – he decided to speak in
favor of the amendment.
The speech that Humphrey
gave in support of the minority amendment is one of the great speeches in the
history of American politics. Reading from his speech word for word, the
emotion in his voice began to build arguing that there could be ‘no hedging, no
watering down” before he reached the full flower of his power in one of the
great speeches in twentieth century
history:
“My friends, to those who
say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say we are 172 years too
late! To those who say that this civil rights program is an infringement on
states’ rights, I say this, that 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…This is the issue of the
Twentieth Century, people of all kinds, and these people are looking to America
for leadership and they are looking to America for precepts and examples!...Let
us forget the evil patience and the blindness of the past…Now is the time to
recall those on that path for American freedom!”
(The speech in its
entirety can be found on YouTube as the Philadelphia convention was the first
broadcast on national TV.)
Humphrey’s speech
galvanized the moribund convention. He was interrupted twenty times during the
eight speech and the ovation lasted nearly as long – incredible for a speech
from a practically unknown mayor from Minnesota. As many as seventy million
people may have seen or heard Humphrey’s speech.
The effect was immediate.
The states’ rights platform was overwhelmingly crushed and the stronger
language by Humphrey narrowly prevailed. The South had been the deciding vote
on civil rights for over half a century; on what was their textbook issue they
had, in the words of a former Georgia Senator, not merely been defeated but
overwhelmingly humiliated.
The walkout that had been
feared did happen - the Alabama
delegation and half that of Mississippi did walk out of the convention. But the
day belonged to Hubert Humphrey.
There were many factors
that led to Truman’s upset victory that November. But one of the critical ones
was not only fact that the so called Dixiecrat defection was not nearly as
severe as had been thought at the time – they would carry four states and 39
electoral votes for Strom Thurmond – but the civil rights plank would help add
African-American voters in the north to the Democratic coalition.
Another factor was almost
certain several strong Democrats Senators
and Governors on many states. They included Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, Estes
Kefauver of Tennessee, Paul Douglas of Illinois, – and Hubert Humphrey of
Minnesota.
Texas had also been a
strong factor in Truman’s win, but it was hard to argue that the man running for
election to the Senate had been a key factor in the victory. Lyndon Johnson had
finished Election day behind his opponent in the Texas runoff by less than 400
votes. In what would be one of the most consequential cases of election fraud
in American history, Johnson supporters in two Texas counties manufactured the
votes of more than 200 citizens. The amended results – combined with ‘corrections’
in other counties would give him a margin of 87 votes over Coker Stevenson.
Stevenson fought a massive challenge but ‘Landslide Lyndon’ as he would be
sarcastically dubbed, managed to prevail.
For the next sixteen years
the careers of Johnson, Russell and Humphrey would clash over the issue of civil
rights again and again. Johnson’s relation towards both men ended up
responsible for some of the greatest legislative actions of the 20th
century – as well as one of the greatest foreign disasters of all time.
In my next article I will
deal with Humphrey’s early years in the Senate and his first attempts to put
himself forward as a national candidate.
No comments:
Post a Comment