Turtledove
Register
Advertisement
Hubert Humphrey
Humphrey
Historical Figure
Nationality: United States
Year of Birth: 1911
Year of Death: 1978
Cause of Death: Bladder cancer
Religion: Congregationalism
Occupation: Pharmacist, politician
Spouse: Muriel Buck
Children: Four
Political Party: Democratic Party
Political Office(s): Mayor of Minneapolis,
United States Senator from Minnesota,
Vice President of the United States
Fictional Appearances:

Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978) was the 38th Vice President of the United States, serving under President Lyndon Johnson. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, Before that, he also served as mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1945–1949. Humphrey was the nominee of the Democratic Party in the 1968 presidential election but narrowly lost to the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon.

Born in Wallace, South Dakota, Humphrey attended the University of Minnesota. At one point he helped run his father's pharmacy. He earned a master's degree from Louisiana State University and worked for the Works Progress Administration, the Minnesota war service program, and the War Manpower Commission. In 1943, he became a professor of political science at Macalester College and ran a failed campaign for mayor of Minneapolis. He helped found the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) in 1944; the next year he was elected mayor of Minneapolis, serving until 1948 and co-founding the liberal anti-communist group Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. In 1948, he was elected to the U.S. Senate and successfully advocated for the inclusion of a proposal to end racial segregation in the 1948 Democratic National Convention's party platform.

Humphrey served three terms in the Senate from 1949 to 1964, and was the Senate Majority Whip for the last four years of his tenure. During this time, he was the lead author of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, introduced the first initiative to create the Peace Corps, sponsored the clause of the McCarran Act that threatened concentration camps for "subversives", proposed making Communist Party membership a felony, and chaired the Select Committee on Disarmament. He unsuccessfully sought his party's presidential nomination in 1952 and 1960. After Lyndon B. Johnson acceded to the presidency, he chose Humphrey as his running mate, and the Democratic ticket won a landslide victory in the 1964 election.

In March 1968, Johnson made his surprise announcement that he would not seek reelection, and Humphrey launched his campaign for the presidency. Loyal to the Johnson administration's policies on the Vietnam War, he received opposition from many within his own party and avoided the primaries to focus on winning the delegates of non-primary states at the Democratic Convention. His delegate strategy succeeded in clinching the nomination, and he chose Senator Edmund Muskie as his running mate. In the general election, he nearly matched Nixon's tally in the popular vote but lost the electoral vote by a wide margin. After the defeat, he returned to the Senate and served from 1971 until his death in 1978.

Hubert Humphrey in "The Fillmore Shoggoth"[]

Shared Universe Story
Cthulhu Mythos Stories
Appearance: "The Fillmore Shoggoth"
Type of Appearance: Contemporary reference

The fact that Hubert Humphrey, Robert Kennedy, and Eugene McCarthy were in a three-way battle for the "soul" of the Democratic Party in the Spring of 1968 was seen as a "portent".

Another such portent was an iceberg that had broken from the Antarctic Ross Ice Shelf in 1966 and floated north to the coast of San Francisco in May 1968.

Hubert Humphrey in The Hot War[]

The Hot War
POD: November, 1950
Appearance(s): Fallout
Type of Appearance: Contemporary references
Date of Death: 1952
Cause of Death: Killed in an atomic bombing (World War III)
Political Office(s): United States Senator from Minnesota

Senator Hubert Humphrey (1911-1952) of Minnesota was one of several Democrats who joined the race for the party's presidential nomination after Harry Truman decided not to run again in October 1951, as a consequence of the disastrous course of World War III. Humphrey was seen as being the farthest to the political left.[1] Unfortunately, Humphrey and several of his rivals were killed in May 1952 when the Soviet Union successfully dropped an atomic bomb on Washington, DC.[2]

Hubert Humphrey in The Man With the Iron Heart[]

The Man With the Iron Heart
POD: May 29, 1942;
Relevant POD: May, 1945
Type of Appearance: Direct
Political Office(s): Mayor of Minneapolis
Humphreymayor
Hubert Humphrey was the mayor of Minneapolis after World War II. When Diana McGraw came to Minneapolis' Loring Park to organize a rally against the continued occupation of Germany in 1946, Mayor Humphrey made his way to the stage, and began an impromptu speech begging the audience to think twice about what they were doing. When Diana McGraw threatened to have him arrested for disrupting their rally, Humphrey retreated.[3]

Hubert Humphrey in Worldwar[]

Worldwar
POD: May 30, 1942
Appearance(s): Down to Earth
Type of Appearance: Contemporary reference
Political Office(s): Governor of Minnesota

Hubert Humphrey was Governor of Minnesota when he became the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States in 1964. His running mate was Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.[4] The Democratic ticket was easily defeated by the incumbent Republican ticket of President Earl Warren and Vice President Harold Stassen (a fellow Minnesotan). The Warren ticket took 39 states, with the remainder going to Humphrey.[5]

Hubert Humphrey in Southern Victory[]

Southern Victory
POD: September 10, 1862
Appearance(s): The Victorious Opposition
Type of Appearance: Contemporary reference (unnamed)
Humphreypharmacy
In the late 1930s, a pharmacist from Minneapolis had planned to open a shop in Rosenfeld, Manitoba in Occupied Canada. However, concerns over anti-US violence dissuaded the pharmacist from making the move.[6] The building he'd planned to rent was instead converted into a library.

See Also[]

References[]

  1. Fallout, pg. 246, HC.
  2. Ibid., pg. 397.
  3. The Man With the Iron Heart, pg. 284.
  4. Down to Earth, pg. 320-21.
  5. Ibid. pg. 346.
  6. The Victorious Opposition, pg. 421.
Advertisement