Rick Perlstein, writing in the New York Times, reminds us of the "happy warrior"--Hubert Horatio Humphrey--who would be 100 years old today.
Perlstein calls him the "forgotten liberal," but I remember him well enough. I met him in 1965. Then Vice President Humphrey spoke at a Lutheran youth convention in Miami Beach.
Typical Humphrey: He told the assembly of all the Lutherans in his family--his children who were Lutheran and his grandchildren who were Lutheran--then turned to then-LCA President Fry and said, "Now, Dr. Fry, don't say I've never done anything for you."
He spoke for over an hour that day, and was magnificent. Were I to be compelled to name the precise moment at which I became a Democrat, that occasion would compete with few others for the title. (One way or another, all my "liberal ideas" came from the church--I'm still to the right of Jesus, though.)
More than any other single person, Hubert Humphrey put the modern Democratic Party on a path in support of civil rights. In 1948, Hubert Humphrey was the mayor of Minneapolis and a candidate for U.S. Senate. As Perlstein notes, Humphrey led the Minnesota delegation to the Democratic National Convention and also "led a faction insisting the platform include a federal fair employment commission, a controversial goal of the civil rights movement."
The Roosevelt coalition, one will remember, was composed both of urban blacks and rural southerners. The south had been solidly Democratic in those days. Meanwhile, Eleanor Roosevelt's friendly attitude, and the smidgen of aid the administration was able to direct into the black community, swung African-Americans from the party of Lincoln to that of Roosevelt. (One of John Lee Hooker's songs, "Welfare Blues," talks about getting a new pair of shoes "when the Democrats get in.")
Roosevelt had managed to hold all this together, but it was now 1948 and Roosevelt's political magic was no longer available. The southern delegations were absolutely opposed to any civil rights legislation. It was shaping up to be a Republican year anyway. Lose the south and it's all over.
Into this situation, and onto the stage, stepped a 37 year old Mayor Humphrey. Addressing the convention with his and his party's political future on the line, he began slowly, invoking the name of Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the party, and also a slave owner.
Then, building to a crescendo, with everything on the line, Humphrey made his appeal. His young dark hair slick with sweat, head thrown back, arm punching the air, voice ringing and clear, Humphrey gave no quarter:
My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights. People -- human beings -- this is the issue of the 20th century. People of all kinds -- all sorts of people -- and these people are looking to America for leadership, and they’re looking to America for precept and example.
The southern delegations walked out, and that was probably the beginning of the south's slide into the Republican camp. It was the right thing to do, though, for which we can thank Hubert Humphrey.