Hubert Humphrey and the Early Fight for Civil Rights in the US
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Online Event
Bard College Annandale's Center for the Study of Hate invites the OSUN community to attend a webinar with Sam Freedman, who will discuss his new book Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights.
Most will remember Hubert Humphrey as Lyndon Johnson’s vice president, and as the Democratic candidate for president in 1968 who, unlike his primary opponents Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, supported the Vietnam War. Humphrey lost to Republican Richard Nixon.
Much like the Republican party today, the Democrats were bitterly divided into warring factions in 1948. The issue was civil rights: whether Black people deserved equal protection under the law, whether anti-lynching laws should be passed, whether Black people and Jews and others marginalized people should be able to live in neighborhoods of their choice.
Freedman makes a compelling case that the courageous speech Humphrey – the young mayor of Minneapolis at the time – delivered at the 1948 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, was an important, but largely forgotten, landmark of the modern movement for civil rights.