Hubert H. Humphrey

Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr May 27 1911 January 13 1978 was an American pharmacist and politician who served as the 38th vice president of the United States from 1965 to 1969 He twice served in the United States Senate representing Minnesota from 1949 to 1964 and 1971 to 1978 As a senator he was a major leader of modern liberalism in the United States As President Lyndon B Johnsons vice president he supported the controversial Vietnam War An intensely divided Democratic Party nominated him in the 1968 presidential election which he 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 DemocraticFarmerLabor Party DFL in 1944 the next year he was elected mayor of Minneapolis serving until 1948 and cofounding the liberal anticommunist group Americans for Democratic Action in 1947 In 1948 he was elected to the US Senate and successfully advocated for the inclusion of a proposal to end racial segregation in the 1948 Democratic National Conventions 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 partys 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 seek reelection and Humphrey launched his campaign for the presidency Loyal to the Johnson administrations policies on the Vietnam War he received opposition from many within his own party and avoided the primaries to focus on winning the delegates of nonprimary states at the Democratic National Convention His delegate strategy succeeded in clinching the nomination and he chose Senator Edmund Muskie as his running mate In the general election he nearly matched Nixons tally in the popular vote but lost the electoral vote by a wide margin After the defeat he returned to the Senate and served from 1971 until his death in 1978 He ran again in the 1972 Democratic primaries but lost to George McGovern and declined to be McGoverns running mate From 1977 to 1978 he served as Deputy President pro tempore of the United States Senate From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia