Samuel G. Freedman: What a Young Hubert Humphrey Can Teach Us

“Humphrey’s insurgency at the convention basically lashed Truman to the mast of [Humphrey’s] own civil rights agenda. And desegregating the armed forces was arguably the single most important civil rights cause of that moment in time.”

Earlier this month, Samuel G. Freedman, a professor at Columbia Journalism School and frequent contributor to The New York Times, responded to a series of questions from Merion West’s Erich Prince regarding his latest book Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights. After having previously published books on subjects from a black church in New York to the life of his own mother, Mr. Freedman turned his attention in his latest book to a figure from American political history arguably on the verge of slipping from the forefront of our collective consciousness: former Vice President and 1968 Democratic presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey. However, instead of focusing on Vice President Humphrey’s role in the Johnson administration or even his return to the Senate in 1971 less than three years after his defeat in the 1968 presidential election, Mr. Freedman brings to light the early years of the crusading young politician from Minnesota and his commitment to civil rights.

Most Americans remember Hubert Humphrey perhaps primarily for his defeat to Richard Nixon in the 1968 presidential, the jockeying that went on in the days immediately preceding the election regarding potential peace plans in Vietnam, or even President-elect Nixon’s post-election remarks to Humphrey that “Hubert, everything is going to be okay. You and me are going to have a great life,” as Humphrey wept and offered his support to the president-elect. As such, what should readers most look forward to learning about when it comes to Humphrey’s early political career, as well as the issue of race?

Humphrey grew up deeply affected by his father H.H., who was a liberal Democrat in a town full of conservative Republicans. It was partly as a result of his father’s open-mindedness that Hubert, at age eleven, ventured to the outskirts of his hometown of Doland, South Dakota to meet and befriend a group of black workers on a road-graveling team. That curiosity tells you something about Humphrey. He was also very affected by the Social Gospel theology, which urged Christians to try to create the “Kingdom of God” on earth by addressing issues of economic need and racial inequality, among others.