An American dream of civil rights unfulfilled

This may be more autobiography than you ordered for breakfast, but I think it does have some food for thought. Last Friday, July 14, was the 75th anniversary of a speech at the 1948 Democratic National Convention that was more than simply political rhetoric. The modern civil rights movement was energized by the young mayor of Minneapolis, Hubert Humphrey.

He sought to amend the platform which touts the party’s goals and was usually the declaration of conventional wisdom. When Humphrey took the microphone to deliver the speech he had worked on all night, it was a hot day in Philadelphia. There was no air conditioning, and the inside temperature got over 100 degrees.

Humphrey said, “My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”

Humphrey was elected to the Senate that fall and remained an unwavering advocate for civil rights. I had joined his staff by the time of the March on Washington in 1963. The Minnesota delegates gathered for breakfast in the basement of a church and were fed pancakes flipped by Humphrey and the other Minnesota senator, Gene McCarthy.

A few of our Humphrey staff delivered them., the excitement of the day palpable. As we walked to the Lincoln Memorial, we joined a flow of excited people, ultimately over 250,000. Leaders of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish faiths were there. Mahalia Jackson sang “We Shall Overcome, and Martin Luther King gave his overwhelming, “I have a dream” speech.

The next year I met Dr. King when he was invited to visit Humphrey to discuss strategy for passing the Civil Rights Act. Humphrey pled with him to try to get Black leaders to keep the rhetoric constrained, conciliatory rather than confrontational in order to get wavering senators to vote for the bill. It worked. It passed with some Republican support. Humphrey’s own dream had moved from rhetoric into the law. We all thought we had moved into the sunshine.

Not everyone had. In April 1968, the Democratic Party held a fundraising dinner in Washington with Humphrey as the main attraction. I was at the back of the room beyond the fat cats. A Secret Service agent came to my table and asked me to follow him. When we stopped, he whispered, “Martin Luther King has been shot.” To avid calling attention by an agent doing so. He asked me to tell Humphrey. I did, returned to my seat, when the agent came back to tell me King had died.

When I told Humphrey, he moved toward the microphone to end the dinner. The chairman of the dinner, from Alabama, tried to stop him. He said that the folks had paid a lot of money and deserved the full program. Humphrey pushed him aside and ended the dinner.

Sadly, today, those shadows are back across the land, and with a vengeance in Iowa.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.