Hubert Humphrey

Speech for a civil rights plank, Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia, July 1948 Hubert Humphrey was mayor of Minneapolis when he took the convention floor to back a stronger civil rights plank than party leaders wanted. The speech is short, and its famous call to leave the shadows of states' rights for "the bright sunshine of human rights" arrives as the climax of a careful political argument. The plank barely passed, and the whole Mississippi delegation and half of Alabama's walked out; days later the rebels nominated Strom Thurmond on a States' Rights ticket. It is the earliest speech here and shows the fight inside a governing party, years before Montgomery.