Hubert Humphrey 1948 Civil Rights Speech

Number 66 on the Top 100 Greatest Speeches of the 20th Century List - http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html

Hubert Humphrey gave this speech supporting civil rights, causing 35 delegates from Mississippi and Alabama to walk out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention. Humphrey urged the Democratic Party to "get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights". When President Truman endorsed this civil rights plank, governor of South Carolina Strom Thurmond helped organize the walkout of delegates into a separate party. The party Thurmond formed was called the "Dixiecrats" and it's racist slogan was "Segregation Forever!".

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Education

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• Dixiecrat
• Hubert Humphrey
• Civil Rights
• Human Rights
• Segregation
• Harry Truman
• Strom Thurmond
• Top 100 Speeches
• American Rhetoric
• Dewey defeats Truman

[ryviuz]

Storm Thurmond and allies, which walked out during this speech, and disagree with Human Rights platform later move to Republican Party

and thats, my friend, are the beginning of Right-Wing GOP as we know it

[AmericanSpeeches]

@ryviuz Both extreme Right-Wing and extreme Left-Wing are very dangerous for America. Our country has always see-sawed between people who stress individual rights and those who stress rights of the community. If taken to the extreme, either philosophy would destroy the country.

[ferociousmadman]

but they vacilate on gay rights today and I'm sure they always will, they don't have the same courage today that they used to have on civil rights.

[AmericanSpeeches]

Don't forget it took 100 years and the horror of "Bloody Sunday" in Selma being televised to the whole shocked nation to get Civil Rights legislation, it took way over a 100 years to get the vote for women, so don't despair in the fight for gay rights yet, it may take some time, but it won't take a 100 years.

[dpludwig]

humphrey argued for civil rights, but johnson made it happen...

[AmericanSpeeches]

You are correct, but Humphrey gave this speech in 1948 - it would be 16 more years before Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

[marcostar57]

HHH was a true Progressive, a great American! A man ahead of his time.

[ToaJoe]

Mr. Johnson was a cunt, Humphrey should have become president in his place, he deserved it a lot more and he would not have sent US troops to Vietnam. Johnson threatened him to support the Vietnam war, otherwise he would demote him from his position and ruin his chances of presidency.

[evergreenpotato]

As someone who went to white schools until age 11 and to racially intergrated with many blacks from that point onward, I can only view this man and his speech as pathetically naive. To be fair, I certainly would have agreed with his views until I experienced integrated schools myself. But there is a huge difference between what sounds good in theory and raw, in-your-face reality. HHH never had to experience what I did, so he had the luxury of making foolish speeches like this.

[damo2353]

@AmericanSpeeches But only 9 before the Civil Rights Act of 1957, without which, the progress made under LBJ would have been much delayed.

[ChannelGameshow]

The statement at 7:30 to 7:51 caused the Dixecrats to walk out.

[1967Rasmus]

Just as America has a shameful history of shocking racist injustice, it also has a very proud tradition of "Noble Whites" who stand up for and even walk shoulder to shoulder with their oppressed African-Americam fellow human beings. The greatest hero of all "Noble Whites" was, of course, John Brown, but HH is also up there among the bravest in that tradition.

[PC3900]

A landmark.

[jaybirdzz]

This speech changed the platform of the DNP, and represents a true profile in courage by a great American. HHH took a position that was contrary to that of both Lucas, the Dem. Senate Majority leader, and Senator Dick Russell, who led the Southern caucus. HHH certainly knew that there would be consequences. Many Democrats sneared, but Senator Paul Douglas of Ill. led a parade in support.

[electrictroy2010]

@AmericanSpeeches Apparently you've forgotten about the Civil Rights bills passed by the Republicans in the 1860s and 70s. They guaranteed to blacks the right to equal treatment and access to government services

.

[toddsmitts]

@sweatyshorts I didn't mean a literal equivalent, but certainly the kind of ignorant, paranoid, reactionary attitudes prevalent in one party have since passed to another. Defending segregation may be beyond the pale for even the most conservative politician today, but painting gay people as a threat to marriage somehow and inferring that all Muslims want to take over the country and impose Sharia law shows the more things change, the more they stay the same.

[sweatyshorts]

@toddsmitts Of course, Southern conservatives are morons, but to suggest that the GOP, now, is what the Democrat Party was, then (mob lynchings, bombings, beatings, segregation, slavery, the KKK), is disingenuous. Those bigots have, more or less, been marginalized.

[toddsmitts]

@sweatyshorts I didn't say there wasn't been some abysmal democrats, but most of the intolerance that permeated the party has shifted to Republicans. It's not a coincidence that that the states that resisted integration 50 years ago are now red states.