What's New

This is the ninth installment of our NHPRC funded project to digitize Hubert H. Humphrey's speech texts. This month we focus on the first half of 1968, a year of great challenge for Vice President Humphrey and the nation.

"In January 1968 there were 492,900 American men and women at war in Vietnam. Nearly seventeen thousand of their compatriots had already died there. President Johnson had only 48 per cent approval in the Gallup Poll, Gene McCarthy had announced for the presidency, and Bob Kennedy, waiting in the wings, had not" (Education of a Public Man, p. 264).

On January 30, 1968 the Vietnamese New Year celebration of Tet was encroached upon by a massive attack from the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong against the South Vietnamese and American forces. The administration, continually promoting an optimistic view of the war, experienced a huge loss of credibility. In this TV interview with the United Press International Humphrey answered questions from the panel about the nature of this brutal offensive and the administration's reaction to it, saying that he sensed a "steeling of the American attitude, that is a fixing of our desire" to see the war through.

In February of 1968 the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, commonly known as the Kerner Commission, released its report concluding that frustration and lack of economic opportunity were the cause of the 1967 riots. It included the famous phrase "our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal." Humphrey confronted these findings in this speech at a National Housing Conference dinner on March 4th. He tried to explain how the administration had actually been doing a lot to combat this huge domestic problem, but that it also needed support at the neighborhood level.

In March Bobby Kennedy joined the presidential race after Eugene McCarthy took 46 percent of the New Hampshire primary vote against Lyndon Johnson. In this ABC TV program Humphrey was questioned about the administration's answer to the Kennedy candidacy and whether or not President Johnson would run again. Humphrey replied that he thought it highly likely the president would run for another term.

By the end of the month, however, Humphrey received confidential information from the President that Johnson would deliver a speech the night of March 31st during which he might possibly announce that he would not be seeking another term. Left out of the loop, Humphrey would not know until he could listen to the speech, which inconveniently occurred during the middle of a United States Embassy dinner in Mexico City with President Gustavo Diaz Ortiz.

Humphrey recalled later that when Johnson announced he would indeed not seek another term, Humphrey's wife Muriel "was very shaken and emotionally upset. To say the least, I felt the same way. I resolved however to say little or nothing except to commend the President in my toast at the dinner" (Hubert Humphrey: A Biography, p. 322).

In a speech at the Gardner Cowles dinner a few days after Johnson's announcement, Humphrey explained in greater detail how the President had equivocated over two endings for his March 31 speech: one that proposed a limit to the bombing; another that announced his decision not to seek re-election. At the last moment, Johnson realized he could not run for office and try to end the war in Vietnam at the same time.

A few days later, on the 4th of April, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. The next day, at the National Alliance of Businessmen meeting Humphrey ended his remarks by saying "If we do recognize the testament in the life and death of Martin Luther King -- if we do rededicate ourselves to the mission of healing the torment of our poor and hungry, our deprived and our illiterate -- then truly this tragedy will be remembered, not as the moment when America lost her faith, but as the moment when America found her conscience."

Humphrey had been thinking about announcing his candidacy for the presidency. After King's death, however, all campaigning stopped. On April 27th Humphrey finally declared his candidacy in this carefully written twenty minute speech. It was during this speech that Humphrey, excited about the support of the crowd and filled with a sense of personal triumph at finally reaching this height in his career, added the words: "here we are the way politics ought to be in America, the politics of happiness, politics of purpose, politics of joy." This positive attitude was not meant to detract from the severe realities of Dr. King's assassination, domestic rioting in United States cities, or the casualties and uncertainty of the ten-year Vietnam war. The media, however, took this phrase out of context and berated Humphrey for being out of touch with current events.

Humphrey had decided not to enter any primaries, though he made many speeches during his travels, sometimes even at events that included his two rivals. McCarthy and Kennedy, meanwhile, competed for similar voters in primary states, and allowed Humphrey to focus on delegates in non-primary states and the Southerners, who were not swayed by either of his rivals. Kennedy had won the Nebraska primary by a majority but then lost Oregon to McCarthy. Since no Kennedy had ever lost an election before, it was a terrible blow and imperative that Kennedy win in California. Humphrey stayed away from California during the primary and was preparing to give a speech in Colorado Springs when he heard about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy after his primary win.

Humphrey refused to give his speech the next day. Instead he flew back to the east coast for the funeral and internment and gave this short speech in the Senate on June 6th. He did not campaign for two weeks and was terribly shaken by the death of another Kennedy, as was his friend and adversary Eugene McCarthy.

As Humphrey's biographer describes: "that period from Kennedy's death to the convention in August, this most voluble of American politicians had almost nothing to say about the issues that troubled his fellow citizens most . . . He was a man in the middle: tied to a president who dominated him, pulled by all the forces on the Democratic left that demanded a candidate who stood for anything different from Nixon" (Hubert Humphrey: A Biography, p. 341-342).

These speech texts, as well as all of Humphrey's speeches from 1941-1967 are linked to the inventory of his Speech Text Files. More of Humphrey's speeches will be made available each month throughout this project. Look for the second half of 1968 in June!

This project was awarded the support of a $46,000 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) administered by the National Archives.

Learn more about how the NHPRC helps preserve records of enduring national historical value and promotes their public access and interpretation through archival and documentary programs.