Hubert Humphrey

Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978) was an American politician who served from 1965 to 1969 as the 38th vice president of the United States. He twice served in the United States Senate, representing Minnesota from 1949 to 1964 and from 1971 to 1978. As a senator, he was a major leader of modern liberalism in the United States. As President Lyndon B. Johnson's vice president, he supported the controversial Vietnam War. An intensely divided Democratic Party nominated him in the 1968 presidential election, which he narrowly lost to Republican nominee Richard Nixon. Born in Wallace, South Dakota, Humphrey attended the University of Minnesota. In 1943, he became a professor of political science at Macalester College and ran a failed campaign for mayor of Minneapolis. He helped found the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) in 1944; the next year he was elected mayor of Minneapolis, serving until 1948 and co-founding the left-wing non-communist group Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. In 1948, he was elected to the U.S. Senate and successfully advocated for the inclusion of a proposal to end racial segregation in the 1948 Democratic National Convention's party platform. Humphrey served three terms in the Senate from 1949 to 1964, and was the Senate Majority Whip for the last four years of his tenure. During this time, he was the lead author of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, introduced the first initiative to create the Peace Corps, and chaired the Select Committee on Disarmament. He unsuccessfully sought his party's presidential nomination in 1952 and 1960. After Lyndon B. Johnson acceded to the presidency, he chose Humphrey as his running mate, and the Democratic ticket won a landslide victory in the 1964 election. In March 1968, Johnson made his surprise announcement that he would not...