Good morning, it’s Thursday, May 27, 2021, the 110
th birthday of Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. Although he was a famed Minnesota Democrat, HHH was born and raised in South Dakota. After working six years in his father’s pharmacy, he attended college at the University of Minnesota, earning his undergraduate degree in 1939. Only six years later, he was elected mayor of Minneapolis.
Then, three years after that and just 37 he prompted a mass walkout of “Dixiecrats” at the 1948 national political convention. He did so by imploring his fellow Democrats to emerge from the cold shadow of states’ rights and to walk instead “forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”