Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights by Samuel G. Freedman (review)

Reviewed by: Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights by Samuel G. Freedman Dean J. Kotlowski Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights By Samuel G. Freedman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. xv, 488. Clothbound, 34. 95. ) Hubert Humphrey left a large stamp on midwestern, and American, liberalism. As mayor of Minneapolis, U. S. senator from Minnesota, vice president under Lyndon B. Johnson, and the Democratic nominee for president in 1968, Humphrey looked to an activist State to improve the lives of working people and to protect America's interests abroad. Humphrey's career, including his support for LBJ's war in Vietnam, has received thorough treatment in Hubert Humphrey: The Conscience of the Country (2018) by Arnold A. Offner. Samuel Freeman's new book goes a step further by focusing on Humphrey's life up to his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1948, when he exhorted delegates "to get out of the shadows of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights" (p. 370). The convention responded by adopting a platform plank that strongly endorsed civil rights and sent incensed southern Democrats to the exits. Freedman paints a familiarly sympathetic portrait of Humphrey. Economic hardships, the teachings of the social gospel, close family ties, and a belief in fair play marked Humphrey's youth. His experiences at university, and as mayor, made him aware of the racism and injustices inflicted on African Americans, Jews, and other groups. His speech in 1948 had lasting significance. It boosted the electoral prospects of President Harry S. Truman by rallying African Americans in critical northern and western states, including Minnesota, where Humphrey won a U. S. Senate seat. It showed that the Democratic Party could retain the White House without carrying the so-called Solid South. And it signaled the arrival of a leader who went on to push the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through a reluctant Senate. Humphrey, according to Freedman, "put his racial privilege" on the line for the "sacred cause" of civil rights (p. 381). Freedman breaks new ground by detailing the depth of racism and anti-Semitism in Minneapolis. African Americans endured segregated housing, police harassment, low-paying jobs, and violence when they challenged the color line. During the 1930s and 1940s, the city became a magnet for the Silver Legion of America, a fascistic organization, and for the Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith, an anti-Semite and former protégé of Huey Long. Other traffickers in anti-Semitism included the Reverend William Bell Riley and the German American Bund, which published a newspaper in Minneapolis. Local leaders raised their voices in protest. Samuel Scheiner, director of the Anti-Defamation Council, documented acts of anti-Semitism End Page 177 in Minneapolis, and Cecil Newman published and edited the Minneapolis Spokesman, the city's African American newspaper. Minneapolis's reputation for anti-Semitism eventually drew reproaches from the national press, albeit without comparable expressions of outrage against the mistreatment of Black Minneapolitans. By the mid-1940s, however, civil rights for African Americans had become a national concern. The labor leader A. Philip Randolph discouraged Black people from enlisting in the United States military as long as it remained racially segregated. Randolph's often-overlooked campaign, alertly covered by Freedman, influenced President Truman's decision to sign an executive order desegregating the armed forces. African American and Jewish leaders knew that they needed partners among the majority population, and, as Freeman shows, they found one in Humphrey. Like many politicians, Humphrey blended high purpose with political expediency. His sister, Frances, and his wife, Muriel, prodded him to remain steadfast on racial equality. His speech at the 1948 convention proved a thunderous success. Newman sent a wire calling it "courageous" and "magnificent" (p. 381). Humphrey replied by praising Newman: "It's people like yourself who have labored patiently in the vineyards for years who prepared the moral climate that made my speech and its acceptance at Philadelphia possible" (p. 381). Freedman writes clearly and cogently in a tone more instructive than academic. For the author, the story of Humphrey and. . .