Hubert Humphrey

Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr.born in a room over his father's drugstore in Wallace, South Dakota. He was the son of Ragnild Kristine Sannes (1883–1973), a Norwegian immigrant, and Hubert Horatio Humphrey Sr. (1882–1949). 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. The father also served briefly in the South Dakota state legislature and was a South Dakota delegate to the 1944 and 1948 Democratic National Conventions. 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.

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. Because of the family's financial struggles, Humphrey had to leave the University of Minnesota after just one year. 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), and helped his father run his store from 1931 to 1937. 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." 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." 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." 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." Over time Humphrey's Drug Store became a profitable enterprise and the family again prospered. While living in Huron, Humphrey regularly attended Huron's largest Methodist church and became scoutmaster of the church's Boy Scout Troop 6. 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]."

Humphrey did not enjoy working as a pharmacist, and his dream remained to earn a doctorate in political science and become a college professor. His unhappiness was manifested in "stomach pains and fainting spells", though doctors could find nothing wrong with him. In August 1937, he told his father that he wanted to return to the University of Minnesota. 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'." Humphrey returned to the University of Minnesota in 1937 and earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1939. 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. 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). 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. 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. Humphrey soon became active in Minneapolis politics, and as a result never finished his PhD.

In 1934, Humphrey began dating Muriel Buck, a bookkeeper and graduate of local Huron College. They were married from 1936 until Humphrey's death nearly 42 years later. They had four children: Nancy Faye, Skip Humphrey, Robert Andrew, and Douglas Sannes. Money was an issue that plagued the Humphreys consistently. 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." 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.

During World War II, Humphrey tried three times to join the armed forces but failed. 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. 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. 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.

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. In 1943 he was the assistant director of the War Manpower Commission. 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. After leaving Macalester in the spring of 1944, Humphrey worked as a news commentator for a Minneapolis radio station until 1945.

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. 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). He also worked on President Roosevelt's 1944 reelection campaign. 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

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

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.

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.

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

Humphrey's legacy is bolstered by his early leadership in civil rights, and undermined by his long support of the Vietnam War. His leading biographer Arnold A. Offner says he was "the most successful legislator in the nation's history and a powerful voice for equal justice for all." Offner writes that Humphrey was:

A major force for nearly every important liberal policy initiative....putting civil rights on his party's and the nation's agenda [in 1948] for decades to come. As senator he proposed legislation to effect national health insurance, for aid to poor nations, immigration and income tax reform, a Job Corps, the Peace Corps, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the path breaking 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty....[He provided] masterful stewardship of the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act through the Senate.

While acknowledging his accomplishments, some historians emphasize that Humphrey was "a flawed, and not entirely likeable, figure who talked too much and neglected his family while pursuing a politics of compromise that owed as much to his vaunting personal ambition as to political pragmatism.