Hubert H. Humphrey

Minnesota Happy Warrior whose 1948 civil rights speech remade the Democratic Party.

Overview

Mayor of Minneapolis, Humphrey entered the Senate in 1949, and at the 1948 convention had urged the party to walk into the sunshine of human rights, leading the civil rights plank that prompted the southern walkout. In the Senate he steered the 1960 civil rights act, served as majority whip, pushed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and as vice president under Johnson became the administration's salesman, including for the Vietnam War he grew to doubt. He returned to the Senate in 1971, farming and arms control among his late causes, until his death in 1978.