What's New

This month we introduce the first installment of our NHPRC funded project to digitize the speech files of Hubert H. Humphrey and already we have come across some great speech texts. On April 14, 1944 when Humphrey was a young professor at Macalester College he gave this keynote address at the Minnesota State Democratic Convention. The next morning, April 15, the Farmer-Labor Party and the Democratic Party became the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and the DFL was born. Humphrey was so influential in this merger that many consider him to be the founder of the DFL. The portrait included in this speech text looks very much as TIME magazine would later describe him when he first entered the Senate four years later: "glib, jaunty spellbinder with a 'listen-you-guys' approach who talks and looks like a high school teacher who coaches basketball on the side" (Lowry, January 17, 1949, p. 13).

The next DFL convention in March of 1946 had a very different feel. Humphrey supported Truman for President and was affiliated with Americans for Democratic Action, an anti-Communist liberal organization. The Communist-controlled parts of the DFL turned against Humphrey and even tried to prevent Muriel Humphrey from entering the St. Paul Hotel hall where Humphrey was to give his keynote address. Though Humphrey was able to arrange an escort for his wife to enter the hall, Humphrey recalls in his autobiography

The Education of a Public Man that, due to the excessive heckling he received, he never gave this particular speech. It is ironic that the speech focuses on the DFL as being a united, liberal and progressive party.

By July of 1947 Humphrey was already forming the political arguments that would be included in his famous 1948 speech on Civil Rights, delivered to the Democratic National Convention the next year in Philadelphia. In this radio address entitled "Neither Free nor Equal" Humphrey uses some of these arguments when describing the community self-survey conducted in Minneapolis concerning racial discrimination and the city's subsequent passage of a fair employment practices ordinance, which only two other cities had at that time.

These speech texts, as well as all of Humphrey's speech files from 1941-1947 can now be viewed in the Hubert H. Humphrey Speech Text Files finding aid. We will continue to make more of Humphrey's speeches available each month during this 12 month NHPRC grant. Look for the next installment including the years 1948-1952 in October!

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.