Hubert Humphrey

Hubert Humphrey (born May 27, 1911, Wallace, South Dakota, U.S.—died January 13, 1978, Waverly, Minnesota) was the 38th vice president of the United States (1965–69) in the Democratic administration of Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson and presidential candidate of the Democratic Party in 1968. A liberal leader in the United States Senate (1949–65; 1971–78), he built his political base on a Democrat–Farmer-Labor coalition reminiscent of the Populist Movement.

Hubert Humphrey was the son of Hubert H. Humphrey, Sr., a pharmacist, and Christine Sannes. After studying pharmacy and working in his family’s drugstore in South Dakota, Humphrey moved to Minneapolis to enter the University of Minnesota, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1939. He did graduate work at Louisiana State University and returned to Minnesota to teach college and work as a radio commentator in the Twin Cities. In 1944 he became the Minnesota campaign manager for U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt. During this period he was instrumental in merging the state’s Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties.

After an unsuccessful bid for mayor of Minneapolis in 1943, Humphrey won election two years later. At the Democratic National Convention in 1948, he led an unsuccessful effort to include a strong civil rights plank in the party’s presidential platform. In the same year, he was elected to the United States Senate, where he served for the next 16 years; in 1961 he became assistant majority leader. As a senator, he developed a reputation as an effective, outspoken debater, a prolific initiator of legislation, and a skilled parliamentary leader. He won particular acclaim for achieving bipartisan support for the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (1963) and the Civil Rights Act (1964).

When he became vice president under Lyndon B. Johnson, Humphrey’s earlier reputation as a glib and sometimes abrasive “do-gooder” was supplanted by a more conservative image, especially after he defended American participation in the Vietnam War, and he was often vilified by left-wing opponents of the Johnson administration. As vice president, he served as chairman of the National Advisory Council of the Peace Corps, coordinator of the antipoverty program, and chairman of the Civil Rights Council, and he worked with Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act and Medicare.

Following Johnson’s withdrawal from the 1968 presidential election, Humphrey sought the Democratic nomination, though he chose not to contest primaries against Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated on the night of the California primary. Although the party was deeply divided, Humphrey captured the nomination at a tumultuous convention in Chicago but trailed far behind Republican Richard M. Nixon in the polls. His fortunes began to reverse at the end of September, when he announced his plans to halt the bombing campaign in North Vietnam if he were elected. Rising steadily in the polls throughout October, he eventually lost by only 510,000 votes, one of the slimmest margins in any U.S. presidential election. Many observers concluded that he would have won the election had it been held a week later.

After leaving office, he pursued his interest in education by teaching at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and at the University of Minnesota and by serving as a consultant to Encyclopædia Britannica. He was reelected to the Senate in 1970 as a Democratic–Farmer-Labor Party candidate. He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1972 and considered a presidential bid in 1976. Afterward he wrote his autobiography, The Education of a Public Man: My Life and Politics (1976, reissued 1991), and played an active role as elder statesman and party sage in the Senate. Observers both in and out of the Senate regarded him as one of the giants in the history of that body.