Hubert Humphrey

Humphrey was born in a room over his father's drugstore in Wallace, South Dakota.[2] He was the son of Ragnild Kristine Sannes (1883–1973), a Norwegian immigrant,[3] and Hubert Horatio Humphrey Sr. (1882–1949).[4] Humphrey spent most of his youth in Doland, South Dakota, on the Dakota prairie; the town's population was about 600. His father was a licensed pharmacist and merchant who served as mayor and a town council member; he also served briefly in the South Dakota state legislature and was a South Dakota delegate to the 1944 and 1948 Democratic National Conventions.[5] In the late 1920s, a severe economic downturn hit Doland; both banks in the town closed and Humphrey's father struggled to keep his store open.[6]

Humphrey working as a pharmacist in his father's pharmacy.

After his son graduated from Doland's high school, Hubert Sr. left Doland and opened a new drugstore in the larger town of Huron, South Dakota (population 11,000), where he hoped to improve his fortunes.[7] Because of the family's financial struggles, Humphrey had to leave the University of Minnesota after just one year.[8] He earned a pharmacist's license from the Capitol College of Pharmacy in Denver, Colorado (completing a two-year licensure program in just six months),[9] and helped his father run his store from 1931 to 1937.[10] Both father and son were innovative in finding ways to attract customers: "to supplement their business, the Humphreys had become manufacturers ... of patent medicines for both hogs and humans. A sign featuring a wooden pig was hung over the drugstore to tell the public about this unusual service. Farmers got the message, and it was Humphrey's that became known as the farmer's drugstore."[11] One biographer noted, "while Hubert Jr. minded the store and stirred the concoctions in the basement, Hubert Sr. went on the road selling 'Humphrey's BTV' (Body Tone Veterinary), a mineral supplement and dewormer for hogs, and 'Humphrey's Chest Oil' and 'Humphrey's Sniffles' for two-legged sufferers."[12] Humphrey later wrote, "we made 'Humphrey's Sniffles', a substitute for Vick's Nose Drops. I felt ours were better. Vick's used mineral oil, which is not absorbent, and we used a vegetable-oil base, which was. I added benzocaine, a local anesthetic, so that even if the sniffles didn't get better, you felt it less."[13] The various "Humphrey cures ... worked well enough and constituted an important part of the family income ... the farmers that bought the medicines were good customers."[14] Over time Humphrey's Drug Store became a profitable enterprise and the family again prospered.[15] While living in Huron, Humphrey regularly attended Huron's largest Methodist church and became scoutmaster of the church's Boy Scout Troop 6.[10] He "started basketball games in the church basement ... although his scouts had no money for camp in 1931, Hubert found a way in the worst of that summer's dust-storm grit, grasshoppers, and depression to lead an overnight [outing]."[16]

Humphrey did not enjoy working as a pharmacist, and his dream remained to earn a doctorate in political science and become a college professor.[9] His unhappiness was manifested in "stomach pains and fainting spells", though doctors could find nothing wrong with him.[17] In August 1937, he told his father that he wanted to return to the University of Minnesota.[15] Hubert Sr. tried to convince his son not to leave by offering him a full partnership in the store, but Hubert Jr. refused and told his father "how depressed I was, almost physically ill from the work, the dust storms, the conflict between my desire to do something and be somebody and my loyalty to him ... he replied 'Hubert, if you aren't happy, then you ought to do something about it'."[18] Humphrey returned to the University of Minnesota in 1937 and earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1939.[19] He was a member of Phi Delta Chi, a pharmacy fraternity. He also earned a master's degree from Louisiana State University in 1940, serving as an assistant instructor of political science there.[20] One of his classmates was Russell B. Long, a future U.S. Senator from Louisiana.

He then became an instructor and doctoral student at the University of Minnesota from 1940 to 1941 (joining the American Federation of Teachers), and was a supervisor for the Works Progress Administration (WPA).[21] Humphrey was a star on the university's debate team; one of his teammates was future Minnesota Governor and US Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman.[22] In the 1940 presidential campaign Humphrey and future University of Minnesota president Malcolm Moos debated the merits of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic nominee, and Wendell Willkie, the Republican nominee, on a Minneapolis radio station. Humphrey supported Roosevelt.[23] Humphrey soon became active in Minneapolis politics, and as a result never finished his PhD.[24]

In 1934, Humphrey began dating Muriel Buck, a bookkeeper and graduate of local Huron College.[25] They were married from 1936 until Humphrey's death nearly 42 years later.[26] They had four children: Nancy Faye, Hubert Horatio III, Robert Andrew, and Douglas Sannes.[27] Unlike many prominent politicians, Humphrey never became a millionaire; one biographer noted, "For much of his life he was short of money to live on, and his relentless drive to attain the White House seemed at times like one long, losing struggle to raise enough campaign funds to get there."[28]

To help boost his salary, Humphrey frequently took paid outside speaking engagements. Through most of his years as a U.S. senator and vice president, he lived in a middle-class suburban housing development in Chevy Chase, Maryland. In 1958, the Humphreys used their savings and his speaking fees to build a lakefront home in Waverly, Minnesota, about 40 miles west of Minneapolis.[29]

During the Second World War, Humphrey tried three times to join the armed forces but failed.[30] His first two attempts were to join the Navy, first as a commissioned officer and then as an enlisted man. He was rejected both times for color blindness.[31] He then tried to enlist in the Army in December 1944 but failed the physical exam because of a double hernia, color blindness, and calcification of the lungs.[31] Despite his attempts to join the military, one biographer would note that "all through his political life, Humphrey was dogged by the charge that he was a draft dodger" during the war.[32]

Humphrey led various wartime government agencies and worked as a college instructor. In 1942, he was the state director of new production training and reemployment and chief of the Minnesota war service program.[33] In 1943 he was the assistant director of the War Manpower Commission.[19] From 1943 to 1944, Humphrey was a professor of political science at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he headed the university's recently created international debate department, which focused on the international politics of World War II and the creation of the United Nations.[34] After leaving Macalester in the spring of 1944, Humphrey worked as a news commentator for a Minneapolis radio station until 1945.[19]

In 1943, Humphrey made his first run for elective office, for Mayor of Minneapolis. He lost, but his poorly funded campaign still captured over 47% of the vote.[21] In 1944, Humphrey was one of the key players in the merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties of Minnesota to form the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL).[35] He also worked on President Roosevelt's 1944 reelection campaign.[36] When Minnesota Communists tried to seize control of the new party in 1945, Humphrey became an engaged anticommunist and led the successful fight to oust the Communists from the DFL.[37]

After the war, he again ran for mayor of Minneapolis; this time, he won the election with 61% of the vote.[21] As mayor, he helped to elect a friend and previous neighbor of his, Edwin Ryan, as he needed a "police chief whose integrity and loyalty would be above reproach."[38] Though they had differing views of labor unions, Ryan and Humphrey worked together to crack down on crime in Minneapolis. Humphrey told Ryan, "I want this town cleaned up and I mean I want it cleaned up now, not a year from now or a month from now, right now", and "You take care of the law enforcement. I'll take care of the politics."[39] Humphrey served as mayor from 1945 to 1948,[40] winning reelection in 1947 by the largest margin in the city's history to that time. Humphrey gained national fame by becoming one of the founders of the liberal anticommunist Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), and he served as chairman from 1949 to 1950.[41] He also reformed the Minneapolis police force.[42] The city had been named the "anti-Semitism capital" of the country,[43] and its small African-American population also faced discrimination. Humphrey's mayoralty is noted for his efforts to fight all forms of bigotry.[44] He formed the Council on Human Relations and established a municipal version of the Fair Employment Practice Committee, making Minneapolis one of only a few cities in the United States to prohibit racial discrimination in the workforce.[45] Humphrey and his publicists were proud that the Council on Human Relations brought together individuals of varying ideologies.[46] In 1960, Humphrey told journalist Theodore H. White, "I was mayor once, in Minneapolis ... a mayor is a fine job, it's the best job there is between being a governor and being the President."[47]

The Democratic Party of 1948 was split between those, mainly Northerners, who thought the federal government should actively protect civil rights for racial minorities, and those, mainly Southerners, who believed that states should be able to enforce traditional racial segregation within their borders.[48]

At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, the party platform reflected the division by containing only platitudes supporting civil rights.[49] The incumbent president, Harry S. Truman, had shelved most of his 1946 Commission on Civil Rights's recommendations to avoid angering Southern Democrats.[50] But Humphrey had written in The Progressive magazine, "The Democratic Party must lead the fight for every principle in the report. It is all or nothing."[48]

Humphrey at the 1948 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

A diverse coalition opposed the convention's tepid civil rights platform, including anticommunist liberals like Humphrey, Paul Douglas and John F. Shelley, all of whom would later become known as leading progressives in the Democratic Party. They proposed adding a "minority plank" to the party platform that would commit the Democratic Party to more aggressive opposition to racial segregation.[51] 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.[20] Also strongly backing the minority plank were Democratic urban bosses like Ed Flynn of the Bronx, who promised the votes of northeastern delegates to Humphrey's platform, Jacob Arvey of Chicago, and David Lawrence of Pittsburgh. Although seen as conservatives, the urban bosses believed that Northern Democrats could gain many black votes by supporting civil rights, with only comparatively small losses from Southern Democrats.[52] Although many scholars have suggested that labor unions were leading figures in this coalition, no significant labor leaders attended the convention, except for the heads of the Congress of Industrial Organizations Political Action Committee (CIOPAC), Jack Kroll and A.F. Whitney.[53]

Despite Truman's aides' aggressive pressure to avoid forcing the issue on the Convention floor, Humphrey spoke for the minority plank.[20] In a renowned speech,[54] Humphrey passionately told the Convention, "To those who say, my friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years (too) 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!"[55] Humphrey and his allies succeeded: the convention adopted the pro-civil-rights plank by a vote of 6511/2 to 5821/2.[56]

After the convention's vote, the Mississippi delegation and half of the Alabama delegation walked out of the hall.[1] Many Southern Democrats were so enraged at this affront to their "way of life" that they formed the Dixiecrat party[57] and nominated their own presidential candidate, Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.[58] The Dixiecrats' goal was to take Southern states away from Truman and thus cause his defeat.[59] They reasoned that after such a defeat, the national Democratic Party would never again aggressively pursue a pro-civil rights agenda. The move backfired: although the civil rights plank cost Truman the Dixiecrats' support, it gained him many votes from blacks, especially in large northern cities. As a result, Truman won an upset victory over his Republican opponent, Thomas E. Dewey.[60] The result demonstrated that the Democratic Party could win presidential elections without the "Solid South" and weakened Southern Democrats. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough has written that Humphrey probably did more to get Truman elected in 1948 than anyone other than Truman himself.[61]

Humphrey was elected to the United States Senate in 1948 on the DFL ticket, defeating James M. Shields in the DFL primary with 89% of the vote,[62] and unseating incumbent Republican Joseph H. Ball in the general election with 60% of the vote.[63] He took office on January 3, 1949, becoming the first Democrat elected senator from Minnesota since before the Civil War.[64] Humphrey wrote that the victory heightened his sense of self, as he had beaten the odds of defeating a Republican with statewide support.[65] Humphrey's father died that year, and Humphrey stopped using the "Jr." suffix on his name. He was reelected in 1954 and 1960.[40] His colleagues selected him as majority whip in 1961, a position he held until he left the Senate on December 29, 1964, to assume the vice presidency.[66] Humphrey served from the 81st to the 87th sessions of Congress, and in a portion of the 88th Congress.

Senator Humphrey

Initially, Humphrey's support of civil rights led to his being ostracized by Southern Democrats, who dominated Senate leadership positions and wanted to punish him for proposing the civil rights platform at the 1948 Convention. Senator Richard Russell Jr. of Georgia, a leader of Southern Democrats, once remarked to other Senators as Humphrey walked by, "Can you imagine the people of Minnesota sending that damn fool down here to represent them?"[67] Humphrey refused to be intimidated and stood his ground; his integrity, passion and eloquence eventually earned him the respect of even most of the Southerners.[68] The Southerners were also more inclined to accept Humphrey after he became a protégé of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas.[20] Humphrey became known for his advocacy of liberal causes (such as civil rights, arms control, a nuclear test ban, food stamps, and humanitarian foreign aid), and for his long and witty speeches.[69] During the McCarthyist period (1950–54), Humphrey was accused of being "soft on communism" despite having been one of the founders of the anticommunist liberal organization Americans for Democratic Action, having been a staunch supporter of the Truman Administration's efforts to combat the growth of the Soviet Union, and having fought Communist political activities in Minnesota and elsewhere. In addition, Humphrey sponsored the clause in the McCarran Act of 1950 threatening concentration camps for "subversives",[70] and in 1954 proposed to make mere membership in the Communist Party a felony, a proposal that failed.[71] He was chairman of the Select Committee on Disarmament (84th and 85th Congresses).[72] Although "Humphrey was an enthusiastic supporter of every U.S. war from 1938 to 1978",[73] in February 1960 he introduced a bill to establish a National Peace Agency.[74] With another former pharmacist, Representative Carl Durham, Humphrey cosponsored the Durham-Humphrey Amendment, which amended the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, defining two specific categories for medications, legend (prescription) and over-the-counter (OTC).[75] As Democratic whip in the Senate in 1964, Humphrey was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act that year. He was a lead author of its text, alongside Republican Senate Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois.[76] Humphrey's consistently cheerful and upbeat demeanor, and his forceful advocacy of liberal causes, led him to be nicknamed "The Happy Warrior" by many of his Senate colleagues and political journalists.[77]

While President John F. Kennedy is often credited for creating the Peace Corps, Humphrey introduced the first bill to create the Peace Corps in 1957—three years before Kennedy's University of Michigan speech.[78] A trio of journalists wrote of Humphrey in 1969 that "few men in American politics have achieved so much of lasting significance. It was Humphrey, not Senator [Everett] Dirksen, who played the crucial part in the complex parliamentary games that were needed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was Humphrey, not John Kennedy, who first proposed the Peace Corps. The Food for Peace program was Humphrey's idea, and so was Medicare, passed sixteen years after he first proposed it. He worked for Federal aid to education from 1949, and for a nuclear-test ban treaty from 1956. These are the solid monuments of twenty years of effective work for liberal causes in the Senate."[79] President Johnson once said that "Most Senators are minnows ... Hubert Humphrey is among the whales."[79] In his autobiography, The Education of a Public Man, Humphrey wrote:[80]

There were three bills of particular emotional importance to me: the Peace Corps, a disarmament agency, and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The President, knowing how I felt, asked me to introduce legislation for all three. I introduced the first Peace Corps bill in 1957. It did not meet with much enthusiasm. Some traditional diplomats quaked at the thought of thousands of young Americans scattered across their world. Many senators, including liberal ones, thought the idea was silly and unworkable. Now, with a young president urging its passage, it became possible and we pushed it rapidly through the Senate. It is fashionable now to suggest that Peace Corps Volunteers gained as much or more, from their experience as the countries they worked. That may be true, but it ought not demean their work. They touched many lives and made them better.

On April 9, 1950, Humphrey predicted that President Truman would sign a $4 billion housing bill and charge Republicans with having removed the bill's main middle-income benefits during Truman's tours of the Midwest and Northwest the following month.[81]

On January 7, 1951, Humphrey joined Senator Paul Douglas in calling for an $80 billion federal budget to combat Communist aggression along with a stiff tax increase to prevent borrowing.[82]

In a January 1951 letter to President Truman, Humphrey wrote of the necessity of a commission akin to the Fair Employment Practices Commission that would be used to end discrimination in defense industries and predicted that establishing such a commission by executive order would be met with high approval by Americans.[83]

On June 18, 1953, Humphrey introduced a resolution calling for the US to urge free elections in Germany in response to the anti-Communist riots in East Berlin.[84]

In December 1958, after receiving a message from Nikita Khrushchev during a visit to the Soviet Union, Humphrey returned insisting that the message was not negative toward America.[85] In February 1959, Humphrey said American newspapers should have ignored Khrushchev's comments calling him a purveyor of fairy tales.[86] In a September address to the National Stationary and Office Equipment Association, Humphrey called for further inspection of Khrushchev's "live and let live" doctrine and maintained the Cold War could be won by using American "weapons of peace".[87]

In June 1963, Humphrey accompanied his longtime friend labor leader Walter Reuther on a trip to Harpsund, the Swedish Prime Minister's summer country retreat, to meet with European socialist leaders for an exchange of ideas.[88] Among the European leaders who met with Humphrey and Reuther were the prime ministers of Britain, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, as well as future German chancellor Willy Brandt.[89]

In the 1960 primaries, Humphrey won South Dakota and Washington, D.C.

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; he received only 26 votes on the first ballot.[90] The second time was in 1960. In between these two bids, Humphrey was part of the free-for-all for the vice-presidential nomination at the 1956 Democratic National Convention, where he received 134 votes on the first ballot and 74 on the second.[91]

In 1960, Humphrey ran for the 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 overcame Humphrey's energetic but poorly funded effort.[92] Humphrey believed defeating Kennedy in Wisconsin would weaken and slow the momentum of the latter's campaign.[93] Kennedy's attractive brothers, sisters, and wife Jacqueline combed the state for votes. At one point Humphrey memorably complained that he "felt like an independent merchant competing against a chain store".[94] Humphrey later wrote in his memoirs that "Muriel and I and our 'plain folks' entourage were no match for the glamour of Jackie Kennedy and the other Kennedy women, for Peter Lawford ... and Frank Sinatra singing their commercial 'High Hopes'. Jack Kennedy brought family and Hollywood to Wisconsin. The people loved it and the press ate it up."[95] Kennedy won the Wisconsin primary, but by a smaller margin than anticipated. Some commentators argued that Kennedy's victory margin had come almost entirely from areas with large Roman Catholic populations,[96] and that Protestants had supported Humphrey. As a result, Humphrey refused to quit the race and decided to run against Kennedy again in the West Virginia primary. According to one biographer "Humphrey thought his chances were good in West Virginia, one of the few states that had backed him in his losing race for vice-president four years earlier ... West Virginia was more rural than urban, [which] seemed to invite Humphrey's folksy stump style. The state, moreover, was a citadel of labor. It was depressed; unemployment had hit hard; and coal miners' families were hungry. Humphrey felt he could talk to such people, who were 95% Protestant (Humphrey was a Congregationalist)[97] and deep-dyed Bible-belters besides."[96]

Kennedy chose to meet the religion issue head-on. In radio broadcasts, he carefully redefined the issue from Catholic versus Protestant to tolerance versus intolerance. Kennedy's appeal placed Humphrey, who had championed tolerance his entire career, on the defensive, and Kennedy attacked him with a vengeance. 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 the armed forces in World War II. Roosevelt told audiences, "I don't know where he [Humphrey] was in World War Two," and handed out flyers charging that Humphrey was a draft dodger.[98] Historian Robert Dallek has written that Robert F. Kennedy, who was serving as his brother's campaign manager, came into "possession of information that Humphrey may have sought military deferments during World War Two ... he pressed Roosevelt to use this."[99] Humphrey believed Roosevelt's draft-dodger claim "had been approved by Bobby [Kennedy], if not Jack".[99] The claims that Humphrey was a draft dodger were inaccurate, because during the war Humphrey had "tried and failed to get into the [military] service because of physical disabilities".[99] After the West Virginia primary, Roosevelt sent Humphrey a written apology and retraction.[98] According to historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Roosevelt "felt that he had been used, blaming [the draft-dodger charge] on Robert Kennedy's determination to win at any cost ... Roosevelt said later that it was the biggest political mistake of his career."[100]

Short on funds, Humphrey could not match the well-financed Kennedy operation. He traveled around the state in a rented bus while Kennedy and his staff flew in a large, family-owned airplane.[101] According to his biographer Carl Solberg, Humphrey spent only $23,000 on the West Virginia primary while Kennedy's campaign privately spent $1.5 million, well over their official estimate of $100,000.[102] Unproven accusations claimed that the Kennedys had bought the West Virginia primary by bribing county sheriffs and other local officials to give Kennedy the vote.[103] Humphrey later wrote, "as a professional politician I was able to accept and indeed respect the efficacy of the Kennedy campaign. But underneath the beautiful exterior, there was an element of ruthlessness and toughness that I had trouble either accepting or forgetting."[104] Kennedy defeated Humphrey soundly in West Virginia with 60.8% of the vote.[105] That evening, Humphrey announced that he was leaving the race.[106] By winning West Virginia, Kennedy overcame the belief that Protestant voters would not elect a Catholic to the presidency and thus sewed up the Democratic nomination.[107]

Humphrey won the South Dakota and District of Columbia primaries, which Kennedy did not enter.[108] At the 1960 Democratic National Convention, he received 41 votes even though he was no longer a candidate.

Vice President-elect Humphrey alongside Coretta Scott King and Civil Rights Leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Vice President Humphrey at a meeting in the Oval Office, June 21, 1965

Humphrey took office on January 20, 1965,[134] ending the 14-month vacancy of the Vice President of the United States, which had remained empty when then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the Presidency after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[135] He was an early skeptic of the then growing Vietnam War. Following a successful Viet Cong hit-and-run attack on a US military installation at Pleiku on February 7, 1965 (where 7 Americans were killed and 109 wounded), Humphrey returned from Georgia to Washington D.C., to attempt to prevent further escalation.[136] He told President Johnson that bombing North Vietnam was not a solution to the problems in South Vietnam, but that bombing would require the injection of US ground forces into South Vietnam to protect the airbases.[136] Presciently, he noted that a military solution in Vietnam would take several years, well beyond the next election cycle. In response to this advice, President Johnson punished Humphrey by treating him coldly and restricting him from his inner circle for a number of months, until Humphrey decided to "get back on the team" and fully support the war effort.[136]

As Vice President, Humphrey was criticized for his complete and vocal loyalty to Johnson and the policies of the Johnson Administration, even as many of his liberal admirers opposed the president's policies with increasing fervor regarding the Vietnam War.[19] Many of Humphrey's liberal friends and allies abandoned him because of his refusal to publicly criticize Johnson's Vietnam War policies. Humphrey's critics later learned that Johnson had threatened Humphrey – Johnson told Humphrey that if he publicly criticized his policies, he would destroy Humphrey's chances to become President by opposing his nomination at the next Democratic Convention.[137] However, Humphrey's critics were vocal and persistent: even his nickname, "the Happy Warrior", was used against him. The nickname referred not to his military hawkishness, but rather to his crusading for social welfare and civil rights programs.[19] After his narrow defeat in the 1968 presidential election, Humphrey 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 [Johnson] who was going to be a former President dictate my future."[138]

While he was Vice President, Hubert Humphrey was the subject of a satirical song by songwriter/musician Tom Lehrer entitled "Whatever Became of Hubert?" The song addressed how some liberals and progressives felt let down by Humphrey, who had become a much more mute figure as Vice President than he had been as a senator. The song goes "Whatever became of Hubert? Has anyone heard a thing? Once he shone on his own, now he sits home alone and waits for the phone to ring. Once a fiery liberal spirit, ah, but now when he speaks he must clear it. ..."

During these years Humphrey was a repeated and favorite guest of Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.[139][140] He also struck up a friendship with Frank Sinatra, who supported his campaign for president in 1968 before his conversion to the Republican party in the early 1970s,[141] and was perhaps most on notice in the fall of 1977 when Sinatra was the star attraction and host of a tribute to a then-ailing Humphrey. He also appeared on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast in 1973.

Humphrey with Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and Gemini 4 astronauts at the 1965 Paris Air Show

On April 15, 1965, Humphrey delivered an address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, pledging the incumbent session of Congress would "do more for the lasting long-term health of this nation" since the initial session in office at the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt assuming the presidency in 1933 and predicting 13 major measures of President Johnson's administration would be passed ahead of the session's conclusion.[142] In mid-May 1965, Humphrey traveled to Dallas, Texas for an off-the-record discussion with donors of President Johnson's campaign. During the visit, Humphrey was imposed tight security as a result of the JFK assassination a year and a half prior and the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald was placed under surveillance by Police Chief Cato Hightower.[143]

During a May 31, 1966 appearance at Huron College, Humphrey said the US should not expect "either friendship or gratitude" in helping poorer countries.[144] At a September 22, 1966 Jamesburg, New Jersey Democratic Party fundraiser, Humphrey said the Vietnam War would be shortened if the US stayed firm and hastened the return of troops: "We are making a decision not only to defend Vietnam, we are defending the United States of America."[145]

During a May 1967 news conference, Humphrey said American anger toward Vietnam was losing traction and that he could see a growth in popularity for President Johnson since a low point five months prior.[146] During an August 2, 1967 appearance in Detroit, Michigan, Humphrey proposed each state consider forming peacekeeping councils focused on preventing violence, gaining community cooperation, and listening to "the voices of those who have gone unheard."[147]

On November 4, 1967, Humphrey cited Malaysia as an example of what Vietnam could resemble post a Viet Cong defeat while in Jakarta, Indonesia.[148] The following day, Vice President Humphrey requested Indonesia attempt mediation in the Vietnam War during a meeting with Suharto at Merdeka palace.[149] On December 7, Vice President Humphrey said in an interview that the Viet Cong could potentially be the factor in creating a political compromise with the government of Saigon.[150]

1968 Presidential election

Main article: Hubert Humphrey 1968 presidential campaign

Vice President Hubert Humphrey, President Lyndon Johnson, and General Creighton Abrams in a Cabinet Room meeting in March 1968

As 1968 began, it looked as if President Johnson, despite the rapidly decreasing approval rating of his Vietnam War policies, would easily win the Democratic nomination for a second time.[165] Humphrey was widely expected to remain Johnson's running mate for reelection in 1968.[166] Johnson was challenged by Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, who ran on an anti-Vietnam War platform.[167] With the backing of out-of-state anti-war college students and activists while campaigning in the New Hampshire primary, McCarthy, who was not expected to be a serious contender for the Democratic nomination, nearly defeated Johnson, finishing with a surprising 42% of the vote to Johnson's 49%.[168] A few days after the New Hampshire primary, after months of contemplation and originally intending to support Johnson's bid for reelection, Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York also entered the race on an anti-war platform.[169] On March 31, 1968, a week before the Wisconsin primary, where polls showed a strong standing for McCarthy, President Johnson stunned the nation by withdrawing from his race for a second full term.[170]

Following the announcement from Johnson, Humphrey announced his presidential candidacy on April 27, 1968.[171] Declaring his candidacy in a speech in Washington, DC alongside Senators Fred Harris of Oklahoma and Walter Mondale of Minnesota (who both served as the co-chairs to his campaign), Humphrey stated:

Here we are, just as we ought to be, here we are, the people, here we are the spirit of dedication, here we are the way politics ought to be in America, the politics of happiness, politics of purpose, politics of joy; and that's the way it's going to be, all the way, too, from here on out. We seek an America able to preserve and nurture all the basic rights of free expression, yet able to reach across the divisions that too often separate race from race, region from region, young from old, worker from scholar, rich from poor. We seek an America able to do this in the higher knowledge that our goals and ideals are worthy of conciliation and personal sacrifice.[172]

Also in his speech, Humphrey supported President Johnson's Vietnam initiative he proposed during his address to the nation four weeks earlier;[172] partially halting the bombings in North Vietnam, while sending an additional 13,500 troops and increasing the Department of Defense's budget by 4% over the next fiscal year.[173] Later in the campaign, Humphrey opposed a proposal by Senators McCarthy and George McGovern of South Dakota to the Democratic Convention's Policy Committee, calling for an immediate end to the bombings in Vietnam, an early withdrawal of troops and setting talks for a coalition government with the Viet Cong.[174]

Hubert Humphrey campaigning for President in 1968

Many people saw Humphrey as Johnson's stand-in; he won major backing from the nation's labor unions and other Democratic groups troubled by young antiwar protesters and the social unrest around the nation.[175] A group of British journalists wrote that Humphrey, despite his liberal record on civil rights and support for a nuclear test-ban treaty, "had turned into an arch-apologist for the war, who was given to trotting around Vietnam looking more than a little silly in olive-drab fatigues and a forage cap. The man whose name had been a by-word in the South for softness toward Negroes had taken to lecturing black groups ... the wild-eyed reformer had become the natural champion of every conservative element in the Democratic Party."[79] Humphrey entered the race too late to participate in the Democratic primaries[176] and concentrated on winning delegates in non-primary states by gaining the support of Democratic officeholders who were elected delegates to the Democratic Convention.[175] By June, McCarthy won in Oregon and Pennsylvania, while Kennedy had won in Indiana and Nebraska, though Humphrey was the front runner as he led the delegate count.[175][177] The California primary was crucial for Kennedy's campaign, as a McCarthy victory would have prevented Kennedy from reaching the number of delegates required to secure the nomination.[177] On June 4, 1968, Kennedy defeated McCarthy by less than 4% in the winner-take-all California primary.[178] But the nation was shocked yet again when Senator Kennedy was assassinated after his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California.[179] After the assassination of Kennedy, Humphrey suspended his campaign for two weeks.[180]

Burial plot of Hubert and Muriel Humphrey at Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis

Humphrey spent his last weeks calling old political acquaintances. One call was to Richard Nixon inviting him to his upcoming funeral, which Nixon accepted. Staying in the hospital, Humphrey went from room to room, cheering up other patients by telling them jokes and listening to them. On January 13, 1978, he died of bladder cancer at his home in Waverly, Minnesota, at the age of 66.

Humphrey's body lay in state in the rotundas of the U.S. Capitol[245] and the Minnesota State Capitol before being interred at Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis. His passing overshadowed the death of his colleague from Montana, Senator Lee Metcalf, who had died the day before Humphrey. Old friends and opponents of Humphrey, from Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon to President Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale, paid their final respects. "He taught us how to live, and finally he taught us how to die", said Mondale.[246]

Humphrey's wife Muriel was appointed by Minnesota governor Rudy Perpich to serve in the U.S. Senate until a special election to fill the term was held; she did not seek election to finish her husband's term in office. In 1981 she married Max Brown and took the name Muriel Humphrey Brown.[247] Upon her death in 1998 she was interred next to Humphrey at Lakewood Cemetery.[27]

• Equality of opportunity; a union approach to fair employment by John Hope, introduced by Hubert Humphrey (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1956)

In 1965, Humphrey was made an Honorary Life Member of Alpha Phi Alpha, a historically African American fraternity.[248]

In 1978, Humphrey received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.[249]

He was awarded posthumously the Congressional Gold Medal on June 13, 1979 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.

He was honored by the United States Postal Service with a 52¢ Great Americans series (1980–2000) postage stamp.[250]

There is a statue of him in front of the Minneapolis City Hall.[251]

• Franklin Cover in the 1982 television film A Woman Called Golda.
• Bradley Whitford in the 2016 television film All the Way.
• Doug McKeon in the 2017 film LBJ.[262]

• Politics of Minnesota
• Humphrey's son, Hubert H. Humphrey III and grandson Buck Humphrey are also Minnesotan politicians.
• List of United States Congress members who died in office (1950–99)
• Humphrey objection

• Berman, Edgar. Hubert: The Triumph And Tragedy Of The Humphrey I Knew. New York: G.P. Putnam's & Sons, 1979. A physician's personal account of his friendship with Humphrey from 1957 until his death in 1978.
• Boomhower, Ray E. "Fighting the Good Fight: John Bartlow Martin and Hubert Humphrey's 1968 Presidential Campaign." Indiana Magazine of History (2020) 116#1 pp 1-29.
• Caro, Robert A. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
• Chester, Lewis, Hodgson, Godfrey, Page, Bruce. An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968. New York: The Viking Press, 1969.
• Cohen, Dan. Undefeated: The Life of Hubert H. Humphrey. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 1978.
• Dallek, Robert. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2003.
• Engelmayer, Sheldon. Hubert Humphrey: The Man and His Dream. London: Routledge, Kegan & Paul, 1978.
• Garrettson, Charles L. III. Hubert H. Humphrey: The Politics of Joy. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993.
• Humphrey, Hubert H. The Education of a Public Man: My Life and Politics. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976.
• Johns, Andrew L. The Price of Loyalty: Hubert Humphrey's Vietnam Conflict (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).
• Mann, Robert. The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell and the Struggle for Civil Rights. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996.
• Offner, Arnold, "Hubert Humphrey: The Conscience of the Country," New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018.
• Ross, Irwin. The Loneliest Campaign: The Truman Victory of 1948. New York: New American Library, 1968.
• Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. Robert Kennedy and His Times. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.
• Solberg, Carl. Hubert Humphrey: A Biography. New York : Norton, 1984.
• Taylor, Jeff. Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006.
• Thurber, Timothy N. The Politics of Equality: Hubert H. Humphrey and the African American Freedom Struggle. Columbia University Press, 1999. pp. 352.
• White, Theodore H. The Making of the President 1960. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2004. (Reprint)

• United States Congress. "Hubert Humphrey (id: H000953)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• University of Texas biography
• Hubert H. Humphrey Papers are available for research use at the Minnesota Historical Society.
• Humphrey's complete speech texts and a broad sample of his speech sound recordings have been digitzed by the Minnesota Historical Society under a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
• Complete text and audio of Humphrey's 1948 speech at the Democratic National Convention – from AmericanRhetoric.com
• Complete text and audio of Humphrey's 1964 speech at the Democratic National Convention – from AmericanRhetoric.com
• Account of 1948 Presidential campaign – includes text of Humphrey's speech at the Democratic National Convention
• Oral History Interviews with Hubert H. Humphrey, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
• Information on Humphrey's thought and influence, including quotations from his speeches and writings.
• Hubert H. Humphrey at the Macedonian Baptist Church, San Francisco, May 23, 1972 Photographs by Bruce Jackson of Humphrey on his last campaign.
• Radio airchecks/recordings of Hubert H. Humphrey from 1946 to 1978 including interviews, radio appearances, newscasts, 1968 election concession speech, etc.
• A film clip "Longines Chronoscope with Hubert H. Humphrey" is available at the Internet Archive
• A film clip "Longines Chronoscope with Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (March 14, 1952)" is available at the Internet Archive
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • "Hubert Humphrey, Presidential Contender" from C-SPAN's The Contenders