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

From one of the country''s most distinguished journalists, a revisionist and riveting look at the American politician whom history has judged a loser, yet who played a key part in the greatest social movement of the 20th century.During one sweltering week in July 1948, the Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia for its national convention. The most pressing and controversial issue facing the delegates was not whom to nominate for president -the incumbent, Harry Truman, was the presumptive candidate -but whether the Democrats would finally embrace the cause of civil rights and embed it in their official platform. Even under Franklin Roosevelt, the party had dodged the issue in order to keep a bloc of Southern segregationists—the so-called Dixiecrats—in the New Deal coalition.On the convention''s final day, Hubert Humphrey, just 37 and the relatively obscure mayor of the midsized city of Minneapolis, ascended the podium. Defying Truman''s own desire to occupy the middle ground, Humphrey urged the delegates to "get out of the shadow of state''s rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights." Humphrey''s speech put everything on the line, rhetorically and politically, to move the party, and the country, forward.To the surprise of many, including Humphrey himself, the delegates voted to adopt a meaningful civil-rights plank. With no choice but to run on it, Truman seized the opportunity it offered, desegregating the armed forces and in Nove
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