Minnesota’s Civil Rights Advocacy Reshaped the Nation
I grew up politically influenced by my grandmother, Hylda Levin. She was a huge fan of Hubert Humphrey so I became one as well. I used to describe myself as a Hubert Humphrey Democrat. I have never forgotten how distraught I felt as progressive activists attacked Humphrey in his 1968 presidential race against Richard Nixon. That election changed the course of United States history.
And not in a good way.
I was 12 in 1968. Had I been in college in 1968 I probably would have also been condemning Humphrey. At that critical political moment his pro-Vietnam War stance overshadowed his historic support for civil rights, labor unions, and the entire New Deal approach to government.
I never knew much about Humphrey’s political history. That’s what attracted me to Jennifer Deltorn’s reissued, Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party. Delton reminds readers that on domestic and civil rights issues Hubert Humphrey was the Bernie Sanders of his time. He played a key role in transforming Minnesota politics and the national Democratic Party into supporters of Black civil rights.
Making Civil Rights a National Issue
Delton’s book traces the development of Minnesota politics into the two-party system that exists today. She spends a lot of time explaining how the state’s powerful third party—the Democratic Farm Labor Party—transitioned to the Democratic Party. Humphrey played a key role in this.
After taking office as Mayor of Minneapolis in 1945, Humphrey became Minnesota’s first Democratic Senator after winning the 1948 election.
But Humphrey did something far more significant and historic in 1948. He went to the Democratic Convention and led the fight for the national party to adopt a strong civil rights platform for black Americans.
President Truman, running in 1948, feared alienating Southern Democrats by pushing for black civil rights. FDR had allowed these racists to insulate Jim Crow laws from the New Deal. This strategy would have prevailed in 1948 had a mayor of Minneapolis named Hubert Humphrey not initiated a convention floor fight for a civil rights platform. Truman was forced to give in. And likely won the 1948 election as a result, as longtime black Republicans in swing northern states switched to Truman.
Hubert Humphrey was from a city and state where there were few black voters. Delton shows how he seized the national stage not so much for his own career but because the felt the national Democratic Party and America needed to back black civil rights.
Humphrey saw supporting black civil rights as promoting a broader politics of caring for people. That message is how he persuaded farm groups and other constituencies which had virtually no blacks to back civil rights legislation.
A Racial Backlash
Delton’s chief focus is on Minnesota and United States politics from the 1930’s into the 1950’s. Her epilogue addresses what many readers are likely thinking: how did advocacy for black civil rights soon bring a huge racial backlash? A backlash that continues to this day?
Part of the answer is that Minnesota was not Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina or any other southern state vested in Jim Crow laws. Humphrey and his allies underestimated how white supremacy was a core value for millions. Even in 2026, with talk of an upcoming blue wave in November, this surge is not present in many of the core Southern states that long practiced Jim Crow.
Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy helped him defeat Humphrey in 1968. Focusing on white perceptions of their own racial mistreatment began in that presidential race and has continued ever since. I don’t think Hubert Humphrey ever imagined that his support for civil rights would be so turned against him—and the Democratic Party.
As for his anticommunism that led the left to abandon Humphrey in 1968, Delton makes a convincing case that it emerged from his conflict with Communist Party DFL members over local and state politics. She details these conflicts between Humphrey’s anti-communist Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and Communist Party supporters in the DFL. Few foresaw these conflicts would later have national implications.
Vice-President Humphrey’s support for the Vietnam War likely cost him the presidency. Humphrey was always a “team player.” This led him not only to back LBJ’s war but at the 1964 Democratic Convention to force Freedom Delegates like Fannie Lou Hamer to give up seats to the Jim Crow-backing Mississippi delegation.
These actions have come to overshadow Humphrey’s historic 1948 convention actions and his leadership in passing the core 1964 Civil Rights bills. Jennifer Delton’s thoughtful book will remind a new generation of Hubert Humphrey’s broader agenda.
While at times too steeped in internal Minnesota political fights for my interest, Delton provides a rare big picture view of where Americans stood on black civil rights in the pre-1964 era. Progressive activists can learn a lot from this book about how to broaden political coalitions without sacrificing principles.
