impressed
Humphrey's father Hubert Sr. was a licensed pharmacist who served as mayor of the metropolis of Doland, South Dakota (population 600). His mother Ragnild Kristine Sannes was a Norwegian immigrant. Young Hubert attended the University of Minnesota, but left after just one year because of tough economic times. He earned a pharmacist's license from the Capitol College of Pharmacy in Denver, Colorado (completing a two-year program in just six months), and helped his father run the family drugstore from 1931 to 1937. In 1937 he returned to the University of Minnesota and earned a bachelor of arts in 1939 in political science. He earned a master's degree from Louisiana State University in 1940, serving as an assistant instructor of political science there. One of his classmates was future Senator Russell B. Long
In 1934 Hubert began dating Muriel Buck. They were married in 1936 and remained married until Humphrey's death nearly 42 years later. They had four children: Hubert Humphrey III, Nancy, Robert, and Douglas. Muriel Humphrey remarried in 1981 to Max Brown. She died in 1998 at the age of 86.
During the Second World War Hubert Humphrey twice tried to join the armed forces, but he was rejected because of a hernia he had suffered. He worked in various home front programs and from 1943 to 1944 he was a professor in political science at Macalester College in St. Paul. From 1944 to 1945 he was also a news commentator for a Minneapolis radio station.
In 1943, Humphrey made his first run for office, running for mayor of Minneapolis. He lost, but still captured over 47% of the vote despite being poorly financed. He worked on incumbent President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's reelection campaign in 1944 and when Minnesota Communists tried to seize control of the merged Democratic-Farmers Labor party, Humphrey became an anti-Communist and led the successful fight to oust the Communists from the DFL. After the war, he again ran for mayor of Minneapolis and won the election this time with 61% of the vote. He served as mayor from 1945 to 1948. As mayor he worked to reform the Minneapolis police force. The city had been named the "anti-Semitism capital" of the country, and the small African-American population of the city also faced discrimination. Humphrey's number one issues was his effort to combat all forms of bigotry.
The Democratic Party of 1948 was split between liberals who thought the federal government should actively protect civil rights for racial minorities, and social conservatives, mainly Southern Democrats, who believed that states had the right to enforce traditional racial segregation policies within their states. At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, the party platform was weak on protection of civil rights for minorities. President Harry Truman, had shelved most of the recommendations of his 1946 Commission on Civil Rights, for fear of angering Southern Democrats. Humphrey, responded with a take no prisoners approach, stating that "the Democratic Party must lead the fight for every principle in the report. It is all or nothing." He patched together a diverse coalition which opposed the convention's wimpy civil rights platform. This group proposed adding a "minority plank" to the party platform that would commit the Democratic Party to a more aggressive opposition to racial segregation. The minority plank called for federal legislation against lynching, an end to legalized school segregation in the South, and ending job discrimination based on skin color. Despite aggressive pressure by Truman's people to avoid forcing the issue on the Convention floor, Humphrey addressed the convention in favor of the minority plank. He gave a famous speech in which he said:
"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, 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 walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights!"
The convention adopted the pro-civil-rights plank by a vote of 651½ to 582½. As a result, the Mississippi and one half of the Alabama delegation walked out of the hall. Many Southern Democrats were so enraged at this attack on their way of life that they formed the Dixiecrat party and nominated Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as their candidate. Although the strong civil rights plank adopted at the Convention cost Truman the support of the Dixiecrats, it gained him many votes in large northern cities and Truman won an upset victory.
Humphrey was elected to the United States Senate in 1948. He was the first Democrat elected senator from Minnesota since before the Civil War. Humphrey's father died that year, and Humphrey stopped using the "Jr." suffix on his name. He was re-elected in 1954 and 1960. His colleagues selected him as majority whip in 1961, a position he held until he left the Senate on December 29, 1964 to become vice president. Initially Humphrey was ostracized by Southern Democrats, who wanted to punish him for the civil rights platform at the 1948 Convention. His acceptance by the Southerners was helped a great deal when Humphrey developed a good working relationship with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. As Democratic whip in the Senate in 1964, Humphrey was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of that year. Humphrey's cheerful demeanor, and his forceful advocacy of liberal causes, led him to be nicknamed "the Happy Warrior" by many of his Senate colleagues and political pundits.
Humphrey ran for the Democratic presidential nomination twice before his election to the Vice Presidency in 1964. The first time was as Minnesota's favorite son in 1952, where he received only 26 votes on the first ballot and the second time was in 1960. In 1960, Humphrey ran again for the Democratic presidential nomination against fellow Senator John F. Kennedy in the primaries. Their first meeting was in the Wisconsin Primary, where Kennedy's well-organized and well-funded campaign defeated Humphrey's. Humphrey complained to the news media that he "felt like an independent merchant competing against a chain store." During the campaign Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., the son of the former President, stumped for Kennedy in West Virginia and raised the issue of Humphrey's failure to serve in World War II (though in fact Humphrey had tried to enlist). Roosevelt told audiences "I don't know where he was in World War Two," and handed out flyers charging that Humphrey was a draft dodger. Kennedy defeated Humphrey soundly in the West Virgina Primary and that evening, Humphrey announced that he was no longer a candidate for the presidency.
At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Lyndon Johnson selected Humphrey as his running mate. In the 1964 presidential election, the Johnson/Humphrey ticket won overwhelmingly, garnering 486 electoral votes out of 538. Humphrey took office as vice president on January 20, 1965. He was an early critic of the growing conflict in Vietnam. He told President Johnson that bombing North Vietnam was not a solution to the problems in South Vietnam. In response to his advice, President Johnson punished Humphrey by excluding him from his inner circle for a number of months, until Humphrey decided to support the war effort. Humphrey's vocal loyalty to Johnson on the war caused him to lose credibility with his liberal allies, many of whom abandoned him because of his refusal to publicly criticize Johnson's Vietnam War policies. Johnson had told Humphrey that if he publicly opposed his administration's Vietnam War policy, he would destroy Humphrey's chances to become President by opposing his nomination at the next Democratic Convention. Humphrey later wrote that "after four years as Vice-President, I had lost some of my personal identity and personal forcefulness. I ought not to have let a man who was going to be a former President dictate my future."
On March 31, 1968, a week before the Wisconsin primary, President Johnson stunned the nation by withdrawing from his race for a second full term. Following this announcement, Humphrey announced his presidential candidacy in late April 1968. Many people saw Humphrey as Johnson's stand-in. Humphrey avoided the primaries and concentrated on winning delegates in non-primary states. By June it appeared that Senator Robert F. Kennedy would win the nomination, but when Senator Kennedy was assassinated following his victory speech in California, Humphrey became the presumptive nominee. Humphrey went on to easily win the Democratic nomination at the party convention in Chicago, Illinois. Unfortunately for Humphrey, outside the convention hall there were riots and protests by thousands of antiwar demonstrators. These protesters were attacked and beaten on live television by Chicago police, which merely amplified the divisions in the Democratic Party. Humphrey lost the election to Republican candidate Richard Nixon by less than 1% of the popular vote, 43.4% for Nixon (31,783,783 votes) to 42.7% (31,271,839 votes) for Humphrey, with 13.5% (9,901,118 votes) for George Wallace. Humphrey carried 13 states with 191 electoral college votes. Nixon carried 32 states and 301 electoral votes, and Wallace carried 5 states in the South and 46 electoral votes. In his concession speech, Humphrey said: "I have done my best. I have lost, Mr. Nixon has won. The democratic process has worked its will."
After leaving the Vice Presidency, Humphrey taught at Macalester College and the University of Minnesota, and served as chairman of board of consultants at the Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corporation. Initially he had said that he would not return to political life, but when Senator Eugene McCarthy declined to run for re-election, Humphrey won the nomination and the election and returned to the U.S. Senate on January 3, 1971. He was re-elected in 1976, and remained in office until his death.
In 1972, Humphrey once again ran for the Democratic nomination for president. He remained unpopular with college students because of his association with the Vietnam War. He was defeated by Senator George McGovern at the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida. He briefly considered mounting a campaign for the Democratic nomination from the Convention once again in 1976, but ultimately decided against it. It was not yet public knowledge that Humphrey had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Humphrey ran for Majority Leader after the 1976 election but lost to Robert Byrd of West Virginia. On August 16, 1977, Humphrey revealed he was suffering from terminal bladder cancer. President Jimmy Carter honored Humphrey by giving him command of Air Force One for his final trip to Washington on October 23. Humphrey spent his last weeks calling old political acquaintances. One call was to Richard Nixon inviting him to his upcoming funeral, which Nixon accepted. While in hospital, Humphrey went from room to room, cheering up other patients by telling them jokes and listening to the patients' stories.
Hubert Humphrey died on January 13, 1978 of bladder cancer at his home in Waverly, Minnesota. His body lay in state in the rotunda of both the United States Capitol and the Minnesota State Capitol, and was interred in Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis. Former Presidents Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon and the then current President Jimmy Carter all paid their final respects.