Hubert Humphrey was born on this day in history in Wallace, South Dakota, but moved to Minnesota for college and remained there. He entered politics and in 1948, he was elected to the US Senate and successfully advocated for the inclusion of a proposal to end racial segregation in the 1948 Democratic National Convention’s party platform.
Humphrey was warned that the plank calling for equality would cost the Democrats the election. But Humphrey countered, “There are those who say . . . we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are a hundred and seventy-two years too late.” (Jules Witcover, in The American Vice Presidency, p. 379). The Humphrey plank led to a walkout of southern delegates, but the convention passed it, and Henry Truman won the nomination easily over Senator Richard Russell of Georgia.
Hubert Humphrey, 1965
Humphrey served in the Senate from 1949 to 1964, and was the Senate Majority Whip for the last four years of his tenure. During this time, he cosponsored a host of social welfare bills, including a health insurance plan for the elderly that later became Medicare. He was instrumental in passing the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963; was the lead author of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; introduced the first initiative to create the Peace Corps; and chaired the Select Committee on Disarmament. After Lyndon B. Johnson acceded to the presidency, he chose Humphrey as his running mate, and the Democratic ticket won a landslide victory in the 1964 election.
Jules Witcover argues that it was Humphrey’s loyalty to LBJ, especially with respect to the Vietnam War, that brought Humphrey down along with Johnson. Humphrey had in fact objected to extending the war, but that only resulted in Humphrey’s exclusion from meetings. Furthermore, Johnson enlisted him in selling the president’s war goals and policies to Congress and the public.
A Miller Center analysis observes:
His tireless support disappointed many of his liberal supporters and negatively affected his national popularity. In addition to representing the administration domestically, Humphrey also served as an ambassador-at-large. During his tenure, he made twelve trips abroad and visited thirty-one countries, traveling far more than any of his predecessors.”
On March 31, 1968, LBJ finally admitted defeat, announcing he would not run for president for another term.
In late April, Humphrey announced his bid for the presidency. HIs main rival for the office, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated on June 6, and Humphrey won the nomination easily, settling on Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine as his running mate against Richard M. Nixon and Governor Spiro Agnew of Maryland.
Left to right: Vice President Hubert Humphrey, former President Harry S. Truman, and Senator Edmund Muskie. Vice President Humphrey and Senator Muskie are running in the presidential election. They are on the porch of Truman home.The photo is from the Post Presidential Truman Papers. Donor: Wesley E. Gibson.
Date(s)
September 1968
In a close race, Nixon won 43.4% of the popular vote to 42.7% for Humphrey and 13.5% for former Alabama governor George C. Wallace, running as an American Independent. But Nixon also got 302 electoral votes compared with 191 for Humphrey and 45 for Wallace. In his memoir LBJ speculated that the failure of the Saigon regime to go to the Paris peace talks “cost Hubert Humphrey the presidency.”
Humphrey returned to the Senate in 1971 once again representing Minnesota, and sought the presidency again in 1972. But with the Vietnam War a focus of American politics, he lost the Democratic nomination to George McGovern. Still serving in the Senate, Humphrey died on January 13, 1978 at the age of 66 from bladder cancer.
Following his death on January 13, 1978, Humphrey was accorded the honor of lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda. In 2011 the Senate passed a special resolution to commemorate the centennial of Humphrey’s birth.
The Miller Center notes: “His career was one of great brilliance and disappointment, although his contribution to history was significant and valuable.”
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