40th anniversary of Hubert Humphrey's death

[dflprincess]

Yes. he screwed up big time on Vietnam, but when it came to the domestic agenda and especially Civil Rights, there were few establishment politicians who could match Hubert Humphrey.

http://www.startribune.com/40th-anniversary-of-hubert-humphrey-s-death-how-would-he-view-current-events/469059673/

The 40th anniversary of Hubert Humphrey’s death on Jan. 13, 1978, finds fewer and fewer Minnesotans who remember a decent man who did great things as mayor of Minneapolis, as a U.S. senator and as vice president of the United States....

...Humphrey’s universe of caring was broad and deep, seemingly without boundaries. He got into just about everything there was to get into. He truly subscribed to, and frequently repeated, Franklin Roosevelt’s doctrine that “the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”

Humphrey cared about farmers and agriculture, having grown up in rural South Dakota during the Great Depression and witnessing firsthand the struggles of rural America to survive. He fought for price supports, rural loans, rural economic development and research, and creative ways to use America’s agricultural abundance to fight hunger — at home through food stamps and overseas through the Food for Peace program that he created.

Humphrey cared about the lives of working men and women. Whether the issue was fair labor practices, collective bargaining, worker safety or youth unemployment, he believed that ordinary Americans needed someone to stick up for them, and he devoted his life to doing that.

Humphrey cared deeply about civil rights. As mayor of Minneapolis — known in the mid-1940s as the anti-Semitism capital of America — he created the nation’s first equal-employment commission. He electrified the delegates to the 1948 Democratic National Convention when he proclaimed from the podium that the Democratic Party needed “to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”