Everything about Hubert Humphrey totally explained
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. (
May 27,
1911 –
January 13,
1978) was the thirty-eighth
Vice President of the United States, serving under President
Lyndon B. Johnson. Humphrey twice served as a
United States Senator from
Minnesota, and served as Democratic
Majority Whip. He was a founder of the
Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and
Americans for Democratic Action. He also served as
mayor of
Minneapolis,
Minnesota, 1945–1949. In 1968, Humphrey was the nominee of the
Democratic Party in the
United States presidential election but narrowly lost to the
Republican nominee,
Richard Nixon.
In a renowned speech, Humphrey told the
1948 Democratic National Convention, "The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights," winning support for a pro-civil-rights plank in the Party's platform.
Early years
Humphrey was born in
Wallace,
Codington County,
South Dakota. He was the son of Hubert Humphrey, Sr. and Ragnild Kristine Sannes, who was
Norwegian. Humphrey spent most of his youth in the small town of
Doland, South Dakota on the Dakota prairie. His father was the town
pharmacist and a community leader; he served as Doland's mayor and as a town council member. In the late 1920s a severe economic downturn hit Doland; both of the town's banks closed and Humphrey's father struggled to keep his drugstore 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, where he hoped to improve his fortunes. As a result of the family's financial struggles, Hubert had to leave the
University of Minnesota after just one year to help his father in the new drugstore. He earned a pharmacist's license from the Drew College of Pharmacy in
Denver, Colorado (completing a two-year course in just six months), and spent the years from 1930 to 1937 helping his father run the family drugstore. He was a brother of
Kappa Psi, a professional pharmaceutical fraternity and an honorary brother of
Alpha Phi Alpha, an African-American fraternity. Over time the "Humphrey Drug Company" in Huron became a profitable enterprise and the family was able to prosper again.
However, Hubert didn't enjoy working as a pharmacist, and his dream remained to earn a
doctorate in
political science and become a college professor. In 1937 he returned to the University of Minnesota and earned a bachelor's degree in 1939. 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 senator from
Louisiana. He then became an instructor and graduate 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 would soon become active in
Minneapolis politics, and as a result he never finished his
Ph.D.
Marriage and family
In 1934 Hubert began dating
Muriel Buck; she was a bookkeeper and graduate of local
Huron College. They were married in 1936 and remained married until Humphrey's death nearly 42 years later. They had four children:
Hubert Humphrey III, Nancy, Robert, and Douglas. Through most of his years as a U.S. Senator and Vice-President his home was located in a modest middle-class housing development in
Chevy Chase, Maryland, a suburb of
Washington, D.C.. In the 1960s Hubert and Muriel used their savings to build a lakefront home in
Waverly, Minnesota, some forty miles west of
Minneapolis.
City and state politics (1942–1948)
During
World War II, Humphrey tried twice to join the
armed forces, but was rejected both times due to a
hernia. Instead, he served in an administrative capacity in a variety of wartime government agencies; he also 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 1943-1944 Humphrey was a professor in political science at
Macalester College in
St. Paul and from 1944-1945 he was a news commentator for a Minneapolis radio station.
In 1943, Humphrey made his first run for elective office, for
mayor of
Minneapolis. Although he lost, his poorly-funded campaign still captured over 47% of the vote. In 1944, Humphrey was the one of the key players in the merger of the
Democratic and
Farmer-Labor parties of
Minnesota to form the
Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). When in 1945 Minnesota
Communists attempted to seize control of the new party, Humphrey became an engaged
anti-Communist and led the successful fight to oust the Communists from the DFL.
After the war, he again ran for
mayor of Minneapolis and won the election with 61% of the vote. He served as mayor from 1945–1949. He was re-elected in 1947 by the largest margin in the city's history to that time. Humphrey gained national fame during these years by becoming one of the founders of the liberal anti-communist
Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and for reforming the Minneapolis police force. Previously, the city had been declared the
antisemitism capital of the country and the small
African-American population of the city encountered numerous instances of racial discrimination. Humphrey worked hard to end these examples of racism, and his tenure as mayor would be famous for his efforts to fight
bigotry in all its forms.
The 1948 Democratic National Convention
The national Democratic Party of 1948 was split between
liberals who thought the federal government should assertively guarantee
civil rights for non-whites and
southern conservatives who thought the states should be able to choose what civil rights their citizens would enjoy (the "
states' rights" position).
At the
1948 Democratic National Convention, the
party platform reflected this division and contained only platitudes in favor of civil rights. Though the incumbent President
Harry S Truman had already issued a detailed 10-point
Civil Rights Program calling for aggressive federal action on the issue of civil rights, he gave his backing to the party establishment's platform that was a replication of the
1944 Democratic National Convention plank on civil rights.
A diverse coalition opposed this tepid platform, including anti-communist liberals like Humphrey,
Paul Douglas and
John Shelley, all of whom would later become known as leading progressives in the Democratic Party. These liberals proposed adding a "minority plank" to the party platform that would commit the Democratic Party to a more aggressive opposition to
racial segregation. The minority plank called for federal legislation against
lynching, an end to legalized school segregation in the South, and ending job discrimination based on skin color. Also strongly backing the liberal civil rights plank were Democratic urban bosses like Ed Flynn of the
Bronx, who promised the votes of northeastern delegates to Humphrey's platform,
Jacob Arvey of
Chicago, and
David Lawrence of
Pittsburgh. Although viewed as being conservatives, these urban bosses believed that Northern Democrats could gain many black votes by supporting civil rights, and that losses among anti-civil rights Southern Democrats would be relatively small. Though many scholars have suggested that labor unions were leading figures in this coalition, no significant labor leaders attended the convention, with the exception of the heads of the Congress of Industrial Organizations Political Action Committee (CIOPAC), Jack Kroll and A.F. Whitney.
Despite aggressive pressure by Truman's aides to avoid forcing the issue on the Convention floor, Humphrey chose to speak on behalf of the minority plank. In a renowned speech, Humphrey passionately told the Convention, "To those who say, my friends, to those who say, that we're rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we're 172 years too late! To those who say, this civil rights program is an infringement on states' rights, I say this: the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights!" Humphrey and his allies succeeded; the pro-civil-rights plank was narrowly adopted.
As a result of the Convention's vote, the
Mississippi and one half of the
Alabama delegation walked out of the hall. Many Southern Democrats were so enraged at this affront to their "way of life" that they formed the
Dixiecrat party and nominated their own presidential candidate, Governor
Strom Thurmond of
South Carolina. The goal of the Dixiecrats was to take several Southern states away from Truman and thus cause his defeat. The Southern Democrats reasoned that after such a defeat the national Democratic Party would never again aggressively pursue a pro-civil rights agenda. However, this move actually backfired. Although the strong civil rights plank adopted at the Convention cost Truman the support of the Dixiecrats, it gained him important votes from blacks, especially in large northern cities. As a result Truman won a stunning upset victory over his
Republican opponent,
Thomas E. Dewey. Truman's victory demonstrated that the Democratic Party no longer needed the "Solid South" to win presidential elections, and thus weakened Southern Democrats instead of strengthening their position.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian
David McCullough has written that Humphrey probably did more to get Truman elected in 1948 than anyone other than Truman himself.
The Happy Warrior (1948–1964)
Minnesota elected Humphrey to the
United States Senate in
1948 on the
DFL ticket, and he took office on
January 3,
1949. He was the first Democrat ever elected senator from the state of Minnesota since before the civil war. Humphrey's father died that year, and Humphrey stopped using the "Jr." suffix on his name. He was re-elected in
1954 and
1960. His colleagues selected him as
majority whip in 1961, a position he held until he left the
Senate on
December 29,
1964 to assume the vice presidency. During this period, he served in the
81st,
82nd,
83rd,
84th,
85th,
86th,
87th, and a portion of the
88th Congress.
Initially, Humphrey's support of civil rights led to him being ostracized by Southern Democrats, who dominated most of the Senate leadership positions and who wanted to punish Humphrey for proposing the successful civil rights platform at the 1948 Convention. However, Humphrey refused to be intimidated and stood his ground; his passion and eloquence eventually earned him the respect of even most of the Southerners. Humphrey became known for his advocacy of
liberal causes (such as
civil rights,
arms control, a
nuclear test ban,
food stamps, and humanitarian
foreign aid), and for his long and witty speeches. During the period of
McCarthyism (1950–1954), Humphrey was accused of being "soft on
Communism," despite having been one of the founders of the anti-communist liberal organization
Americans for Democratic Action, having been a staunch supporter of the Truman Administration's efforts to combat the growth of the
Soviet Union, and having fought Communist political activities in Minnesota and elsewhere. In 1954 Humphrey proposed to make mere membership in the
Communist Party a felony — a proposal that failed. He was chairman of the
Select Committee on Disarmament (
84th and
85th Congresses). As Democratic
whip in the Senate in 1964, Humphrey was instrumental in the passage of the
Civil Rights Act of that year. Humphrey's consistently cheerful and upbeat demeanor, and his forceful advocacy of liberal causes, led him to be nicknamed "The Happy Warrior" by many of his Senate colleagues and political journalists.
While
President John F. Kennedy gets credit for creating the
Peace Corps, the first initiative came from Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Jr. (D-
Minnesota) when he introduced the first bill to create the Peace Corps happened in 1957—three years prior to JFK and his University of Michigan speech. In his autobiography The Education of a Public Man, Hubert Humphrey wrote: "There were three bills of particular emotional importance to me: the
Peace Corps, a disarmament agency, and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The President, knowing how I felt, asked me to introduce legislation for all three. I introduced the first Peace Corps bill in 1957. It didn't meet with much enthusiasm. Some traditional diplomats quaked at the thought of thousands of young Americans scattered across their world. Many senators, including liberal ones, thought it silly and unworkable idea. Now, with a young president urging its passage, it became possible and we pushed it rapidly through the Senate. It is fashionable now to suggest that Peace Corps Volunteers gained as much or more, from their experience as the countries they worked. That may be true, but it ought not demean their work. They touched many lives and made them better."
Presidential and Vice-Presidential ambitions (1952–1964)
As one of the most respected members of the U.S. Senate, Humphrey ran for the
Democratic presidential nomination twice before his election to the Vice Presidency in 1964. The first time was as Minnesota's "favorite son" in 1952, where he received only 26 votes on the first ballot; the second time was in 1960. In between these two presidential bids, Senator Humphrey was part of the free-for-all for the vice-presidential nomination at the
1956 Democratic National Convention, where he received 134 votes on the first ballot and 74 on the second.
In 1960, Humphrey ran again for the Democratic presidential nomination against fellow Senator
John F. Kennedy in the primaries. Their first meeting was in the
Wisconsin primary, where Kennedy's well-organized and well-funded campaign defeated Humphrey's energetic but poorly-funded effort. Kennedy's attractive brothers, sisters, and wife combed the state looking for votes, at one point Humphrey memorably complained that he "felt like an independent merchant running against a chain store." Kennedy won the Wisconsin primary, but by a smaller margin than anticipated; some commentators argued that Kennedy's victory margin had come almost entirely from areas that were heavily
Roman Catholic, and that
Protestants actually supported Humphrey. As a result, Humphrey refused to quit the race and decided to run against Kennedy again in the
West Virginia primary. Humphrey calculated that his midwestern populist roots and Protestant religion (he was a
Congregationalist) would appeal to the state's disenfranchised voters more than the
Ivy League and Catholic millionaire's son, Kennedy. But Kennedy led comfortably until the issue turned to religion. When asked why he was quickly losing ground in polls, one adviser explained to Kennedy, "no one knew you were a Catholic then."
Kennedy chose to engage the religion issue head-on. In radio broadcasts, he carefully repositioned the issue from one of Catholic versus
Protestant to tolerance versus intolerance. Kennedy appealed to West Virginia's long-held revulsion for prejudice and placed Humphrey, who had championed tolerance his entire career, on the defensive; Kennedy attacked him with a vengeance.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., the son of the former President, stumped for Kennedy in West Virginia and raised the issue of Humphrey's failure to serve in the armed forces in World War II (though in fact Humphrey had tried to enlist). Humphrey, who was short on funds, couldn't match the well-financed Kennedy operation. Humphrey traveled around the state in a cold rented bus, while Kennedy and his staff flew around West Virginia in a large, modern, family-owned airplane. There were also accusations (both by Humphrey and numerous historians) that the Kennedys "bought" the West Virginia primary by paying bribes to county sheriffs and other local officials to give Kennedy the vote; however, these accusations have never been conclusively proven. Kennedy defeated Humphrey soundly, winning 60.8% of the vote in that state. That evening, Humphrey announced that he was no longer a candidate for the presidency. By winning the West Virginia primary, Kennedy was able to overcome the belief that Protestant voters wouldn't elect a Catholic candidate to the Presidency and thus sewed up the Democratic nomination for President.
Humphrey did win the South Dakota and District of Columbia primaries, which JFK didn't enter. At the 1960 Democratic Convention he received 41 votes even though he was no longer an active presidential candidate.
At the
1964 Democratic National Convention,
Lyndon B. Johnson kept the three likely vice presidential candidates, Connecticut Senator
Thomas Dodd, fellow Minnesota Senator
Eugene McCarthy, and Humphrey, as well as the rest of the nation in suspense before announcing Humphrey as his running-mate with much fanfare, praising Humphrey's qualifications for a considerable amount of time before announcing his name.
The following day Humphrey's acceptance speech overshadowed Johnson's own acceptance address:
Hubert warmed up with a long tribute to the President, then hit his stride as he began a rhythmic jabbing and chopping at Barry Goldwater. "Most Democrats and Republicans in the Senate voted for an $11.5 billion tax cut for American citizens and American business," he cried, "but not Senator Goldwater. Most Democrats and Republicans in the Senate — in fact four-fifths of the members of his own party — voted for the Civil Rights Act, but not Senator Goldwater."
Time after time, he capped his indictments with the drumbeat cry: "But not Senator Goldwater!" The delegates caught the cadence and took up the chant. A quizzical smile spread across Humphrey's face, then turned to a laugh of triumph. Hubert was in fine form. He knew it. The delegates knew it. And no one could deny that Hubert Humphrey would be a formidable political antagonist in the weeks ahead.
In
1964, the Johnson/Humphrey ticket won overwhelmingly, garnering 486 electoral votes out of 538. Only five Southern states and Goldwater's home state of Arizona supported the Republican ticket.
The Vice Presidency
Humphrey took office on
January 20,
1965. As Vice President, Humphrey was controversial for his complete and vocal loyalty to Johnson and the policies of the Johnson Administration, even as many of Humphrey's liberal admirers opposed Johnson with increasing fervor with respect to Johnson's policies during the
war in Vietnam. Many of Humphrey's liberal friends and allies over the years abandoned him because of his refusal to publicly criticize Johnson's Vietnam War policies. Humphrey's critics later learned that Johnson had threatened Humphrey — Johnson told Humphrey that if he publicly opposed his Administration's Vietnam War policy, he'd destroy Humphrey's chances to become President by opposing his nomination at the next Democratic Convention. However, Humphrey's critics were vocal and persistent - even his nickname, the Happy Warrior, was used against him. The nickname referred not to his military hawkishness but rather to his crusading for social welfare and civil rights programs.
While he was Vice President, Hubert Humphrey was the subject of a satirical song by songwriter/musician
Tom Lehrer entitled "Whatever Became of Hubert?" ("I wonder how many people here tonight remember Hubert Humphrey. He used to be a senator..."). The song addressed how some liberals and
progressives felt let down by Humphrey, who had become a much more mute figure as Vice President than he'd been as a senator. The song goes
"Whatever became of Hubert? Has anyone heard a thing? Once he shone on his own, now he sits home alone and waits for the phone to ring. Once a fiery liberal spirit, ah, but now when he speaks he must clear it. ..."
In
Germany, Humphrey indirectly earned fame during an April 1967 visit when some
hippies, armed with what looked like a bomb, planned to cause trouble at the place Humphrey was to speak. However, the "bomb" contained nothing but pudding, and the plan was foiled by the police. The would-be vandals were dubbed "
assassins" and "ten little
Oswalds" in some widely-read conservative German newspapers; this characterization sparked riots by
left-wing student activists. The well-known left-wing journalist
Ulrike Meinhof (who hadn't yet connected herself to
terrorism) wrote in
Konkret magazine: "It is thought rude to throw custard pies at politicians, but not to welcome politicians who have villages wiped out and cities bombed...
napalm yes, custard, no." This "pudding assassination" thus became an early defining moment of the "68er"
German student movement, many of whose leaders moved into national politics later.
The 1968 Presidential election
As 1968 began, it looked as if President Johnson, despite the rapidly decreasing approval rating of his Vietnam War policies, would easily win the Democratic nomination for a second time. Humphrey indicated to Johnson that he'd like to be his running mate again. However, in the
New Hampshire primary Johnson was nearly defeated by Senator
Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota; McCarthy had challenged Johnson on an anti-war platform, but hadn't expected to become an actual contender for the Democratic nomination. A few days later, Senator
Robert Kennedy of
New York also entered the race on an anti-war platform. On
March 31,
1968, a week before the
Wisconsin primary, where the polls predicted a loss to McCarthy, President
Lyndon B. Johnson stunned the nation by withdrawing from his race for a second term.
Following this announcement, Humphrey quickly re-evaluated his position, and announced his presidential candidacy in late April 1968. Many people saw Humphrey as Johnson's stand-in; he won major backing from the nation's
labor unions and other Democratic groups that were troubled by young antiwar protesters and the social unrest around the nation. Humphrey avoided the primaries (and/or was too late to enter them) and concentrated on winning delegates in non-primary states; by June he was seen as the clear front-runner for the nomination. However, following a key victory over McCarthy in the
California primary, it appeared that Kennedy could possibly challenge Humphrey for the nomination. But the nation was shocked yet again when Senator Kennedy was assassinated the night of his victory speech in California.
With the support of Mayor
Richard J. Daley, Humphrey and his
running mate,
Ed Muskie went on to easily win the Democratic nomination at the
party convention in
Chicago,
Illinois. (In later years,
changes to the party rules made such an outcome virtually impossible.) Unfortunately for Humphrey and his campaign, outside the convention hall there were riots and protests by thousands of
antiwar demonstrators, many of whom favored
Eugene McCarthy,
George McGovern, or other "anti-war" candidates. These protesters - most of them young college students - were attacked and beaten on live television by Chicago police, which merely amplified the growing feelings of unrest in the general public. Humphrey's inaction during the riots, as well as public backlash from securing the presidential nomination without entering a single primary, highlighted turmoil in the Democratic party's base that proved to be too much for Humphrey to overcome in time for the general election. Humphrey was also hurt by the third-party campaign of former
Alabama Governor
George Wallace, a Southern Democrat whose veiled
racism and militant opposition to anti-war protesters attracted millions of Northern and Midwestern
blue-collar votes that would otherwise have probably gone to Humphrey. Thus, Humphrey lost
the 1968 election to
Richard Nixon.
Although he lost the election by less than 1% of the popular vote, (43.4% for Nixon to 42.7% for Humphrey, with 13.5% (9,901,118 votes) for
George Wallace), Humphrey only carried 13 states with 191 electoral college votes. Richard Nixon carried 32 states and 301 electoral votes, and Wallace carried 5 states in the South and 46 electoral votes (270 were needed to win).
Immensely admired by associates and members of his staff, Humphrey couldn't break loose from the domination of Lyndon Johnson. The combination of the unpopularity of Johnson, the Chicago riots, and the discouragement of liberals and African-Americans when both
Robert F. Kennedy and
Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated during the election year were all contributing factors that caused him to lose the election to former Vice President Nixon. The war that Humphrey was saddled with in the Johnson Administration continued until the early 1970s.
Post-Vice Presidency (1969–1978)
Teaching and return to the Senate
After leaving the Vice-Presidency, Humphrey utilized his talents by teaching at
Macalester College and the
University of Minnesota, and by serving as chairman of board of consultants at the
Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corporation.
Initially he hadn't planned to return to political life, but an unexpected opportunity changed his mind. Eugene McCarthy, a DFL U.S. Senator from Minnesota who was up for re-election in
1970, realized that he'd only a slim chance of winning even re-nomination (he had angered his party by opposing Johnson and Humphrey for the 1968 presidential nomination), and declined to run. Humphrey won the DFL nomination and the election, and returned to the U.S. Senate on
January 3,
1971. He was re-elected in
1976, and remained in office until his death. In a rarity in politics Humphrey served as a Senator by holding both seats in his state (Class I and Class II). This time he served in the
92nd,
93rd,
94th, and a portion of the
95th Congress.
In 1972, Humphrey once again ran for the Democratic nomination for president. He drew upon continuing support from organized labor and the African-American and Jewish communities, but remained unpopular with college students because of his association with the Vietnam War, even though he'd altered his position in the years since his 1968 defeat. Humphrey initially planned to skip the primaries, as he'd in 1968. Even after he revised this strategy he still stayed out of New Hampshire, a decision that allowed
George McGovern to emerge as the leading challenger to Muskie in that state. Humphrey did win some primaries, including those in Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania, but was defeated by Senator McGovern in several others, including the crucial California primary. Humphrey also was out-organized by McGovern in caucus states and was trailing in delegates at the
1972 Democratic National Convention in
Miami Beach, Florida. His hopes rested on challenges to the credentials of some of the McGovern delegates. For example, the Humphrey forces argued that the winner-take-all rule for the California primary violated procedural reforms intended to produce a better reflection of the popular vote, the reason that the Illinois delegation was bounced. The effort failed, as several votes on delegate credentials went McGovern's way, guaranteeing his victory.
Humphrey also briefly considered mounting a campaign for the Democratic nomination from the Convention once again in
1976, when the primaries seemed likely to result in a deadlock, but ultimately decided against it. At the conclusion of the Democratic primary process that year, even with
Jimmy Carter having requisite number of delegates needed to secure his nomination, many still wanted Humphrey to announce his availability for a "draft" movement. However, he didn't do so, and Carter easily secured the nomination on the first round of balloting. What wasn't known to the general public was that Humphrey already knew he'd terminal cancer.
Deputy President pro tempore of the Senate (1976–1978)
In 1974, along with
Rep. Augustus Hawkins of
California, Humphrey authored
Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, the first attempt at full employment legislation. The original bill proposed to guarantee full employment to all citizens over 16 and set up a permanent system of public jobs to meet that goal. A watered-down version called the
Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act passed the House and Senate in 1978. It set the goal of 4 percent unemployment and 3 percent inflation and instructed the
Federal Reserve Board to try to produce those goals when making policy decisions.
Humphrey ran for
Majority Leader after the 1976 election but lost to
Robert Byrd of
West Virginia. The Senate honored Humphrey by creating the post of
Deputy President pro tempore of the Senate for him. On
August 16,
1977, Humphrey revealed his terminal cancer to the public. On
October 25,
1977, he addressed the Senate, and on
November 3,
1977, Humphrey became the first person other than a member of the House or the president to address the
House of Representatives in session.
President Carter honored him by giving him command of
Air Force One for his final trip to Washington on
October 23. One of Humphrey's speeches contained the lines "It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped," which is sometimes described as the "liberals' mantra."
Death and funeral
In late 1977, Humphrey was diagnosed with terminal
bladder cancer. He spent his last weeks calling old political acquaintances on a special long-distance telephone his family had given him. One call was to
Richard Nixon, his former foe in the 1968 presidential election in which Humphrey invited Nixon to his upcoming funeral; Nixon accepted.
Humphrey died on January 13, 1978 at his home in
Waverly, Minnesota. His body lay in state in the rotunda of both the
United States Capitol and the
Minnesota State Capitol, and was interred in
Lakewood Cemetery in
Minneapolis. His wife,
Muriel Humphrey, was appointed by Minnesota's governor
Rudy Perpich to serve in the US Senate until a special election to fill the term was held. She didn't seek election to finish her husband's term in office.
Muriel Humphrey remarried in 1979 (to Max Brown) and took the name Muriel Humphrey Brown. She died in 1998 at the age of 86 and is interred next to her first husband.
Honors
In 1965, Humphrey was made an
Honorary Life Member of
Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate
Greek-letter fraternity established for African American males.
He was awarded posthumously the
Congressional Gold Medal on
June 13,
1979 and the
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.
Buildings and institutions named for Humphrey
Electoral history
Further Information
Get more info on 'Hubert Humphrey'.
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