How did Hubert Humphrey’s time as mayor change Minneapolis?

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A Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport terminal is named for him. So is the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Affairs.

He’s arguably one of Minnesota’s most significant politicians of all time — but mayor of Minneapolis isn’t the role that most think of when they hear the name Hubert H. Humphrey.

Minneapolis resident Jeff Goldenberg has been wondering about Humphrey — who rose to become vice president in 1965 — and his first years in politics. Goldenberg wrote to Curious Minnesota, the Strib’s reader-powered reporting project, to ask: What kind of Minneapolis mayor was Humphrey in the 1940s?

According to historians, Humphrey experts and newspaper reports, Humphrey was one of Minneapolis’ most popular and consequential mayors. He served just three years in office, but took on racism and antisemitism, ushering in fair employment laws and police reform.

And he was re-elected by a margin that, at the time, was the widest in city history.

Minneapolis would not be the city it is today without him, said Samuel Freedman, author of the Humphrey biography “Into the Bright Sunshine.”

Humphrey, who was originally from South Dakota and worked as a pharmacist for a few years, found his path into politics in the classroom. He graduated from both the University of Minnesota and Louisiana State University with degrees in political science.

He was pursuing a Ph.D. in the same field when political science professors and party leaders approached him about taking his passion outside of academia, said Bill Convery, the Minnesota Historical Society’s director of research.

“He was essentially drafted for his [1943] mayoral run,” Convery said. “He had no political experience at all, and he made some pretty blatant missteps in his first campaign that reflected his inexperience.”

During Humphrey’s first run for mayor, he could not keep up with incumbent Mayor Marvin Kline’s negative attacks, Convery said.

While Humphrey was a strong proponent of civil rights during his first campaign, it was not his primary focus. As an unknown, Humphrey tried a “conventional” approach to the mayor’s office during his first foray into politics, said Freedman.

While he received more votes than expected, Humphrey lost to Klein, a Republican, in the 1943 election.

Following that campaign, Humphrey got busy. The unseasoned politician poured his heart into building a stronger campaign over the next two years, Convery said.

He helped merge the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and Democratic Party into the DFL in 1944.

When the 1945 election rolled around, Humphrey put civil liberties and equal rights at the center of his campaign. In the Minneapolis of that era, this was a bold move.

“Minneapolis was notorious for its racism and its anti-Semitism,” Freedman said of the city in the 1940s. “And not just the conservative business forces that wouldn’t hire Black workers, [but] the labor unions wouldn’t have Black members. It was even people who thought themselves as being liberal who indulged in many elements of racism and anti-Semitism.”

The mayor’s office was “weak” when Humphrey entered office in 1945, Freedman said. The Minneapolis City Council held more power.

Humphrey found his way around the council by creating citizens committees to push his agenda forward.

“He got private funding to work on issues like civil rights and police reform and fair employment, and basically built public demands for reform on issues,” Freedman said. “That put pressure on members of the City Council to support Humphrey’s programs. He successfully and quite brilliantly circumvented them.”

Those committees helped Humphrey’s agenda succeed. In his years in office, Humphrey passed one of the nation’s first fair employment laws and began to dismantle the city’s discriminatory housing policies.

Humphrey also reformed the police, bringing in a new, FBI-trained police chief.

Humphrey also built bipartisan coalitions, supporting veterans and focusing on economic development, Convery said.

But the mayor‘s policies did not make him popular with everyone.

On a freezing night in February 1947, Humphrey returned home from a dinner with Hennepin County officials. He passed on being walked to his front door by a police officer to ensure those traveling with him got home sooner.

As he fumbled with his keys at his door, three gunshots rang out. Humphrey wasn’t hit.

He went inside but came out minutes later and looked for the assailant, the Minneapolis Morning Tribune wrote at the time. No one was around. The attempt on Humphrey’s life was never solved, and the mayor and police kept it quiet for three weeks.

Humphrey received hate mail and threats often, Freedman said. “It’s a testament, in a certain way, to how much moral courage Humphrey showed in taking up civil rights as an issue because it could get you killed,” he said.

Humphrey continued to push for civil rights. In 1948, he delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that paved the way for the party to put civil rights on its agenda.

“To those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late,” Humphrey said in the speech. “To those who say that this civil 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, at just 37, faced opposition and threats from party leaders about the speech, but it ended up being a turning point for the Democratic Party at a time of racial segregation across the U.S.

The speech earned Humphrey national attention, and he soon was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he became known as the “Happy Warrior.” In 1964, he was elected vice president under President Lyndon B. Johnson.

“Humphrey ranked his time as mayor of Minneapolis as one of the greatest times in his political career,” Convery said. “I suspect he felt that, even though he had not achieved everything he wanted, he’d achieved more as mayor than he was able to achieve, at least initially, in the US Senate.”

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