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Podcast: Commonwealth Club of California Podcast
Episode: The Young Hubert Humphrey: Fighter for Civil Rights
Description: This July is the 75th anniversary of the critical 1948 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, during which Hubert Humphrey, then the mayor of Minneapolis, gave a stirring and surprisingly successful speech asking the Democratic Party to commit itself to civil rights and to ending segregation. This caused the southern Dixiecrats to walk out and to run Strom Thurman for president—in order to teach the Democrats a lesson. But Truman's upset win over Dewey, caused in no small part by a surge of support from Black voters in northern cities, taught the Democrats a totally different lesson, and set the st...