Short Memories Unacceptable

In 1948 President Harry Truman wanted a civil rights plank in the Democratic national platform.  The southern states threatened to walk off the convention floor and pull their support from Truman if any effort was made to introduce anything even remotely resembling such a plank.  

 Hubert Humphrey was running for the U.S. senate for the first time in 1948.  The only elections he had previously won were local city elections.  We had plenty of racial hatred and bigotry in the north as well.  On June 15, 1920, in Duluth, Minnesota, police arrested several young black men accused of raping a white woman. That evening, three of them – Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie – were taken from jail by a mob and lynched. 

 While becoming more subtle, racial hatred and bigotry still existed in Minnesota in 1948.  Hubert Humphrey, in spite of that hatred, and while struggling to gain state wide acceptance for the first time in his career, rose at that 1948 convention and spoke on behalf of civil rights.  As promised, the southern states vacated the convention floor.  He risked everything to engage in this fight – to do what he knew was right. 

Humphrey was also instrumental in the passage of the civil rights act of 1964.  Humphrey, working in close association President Johnson, was influential in convincing and motivating Republican Senator Everett Dirksen to halt the GOP senate filibuster which paved the way for its passage.   

We should be reminded as well of John Kennedy’s struggle to overcome strong religious discrimination in 1960, whenever we see the current day forms of bigotry faced by Muslims, Mormons and homosexuals.  

One would think by now that America would have relegated bigotry to the garbage dump of history rather than tolerating its reappearance.  It is far from complementary to witness the wisdom and guidance provided through pivotal historic events, and by so very many of our predecessors, being ignored and forgotten today.  The ignorance and hatred now focused on homosexuals, Muslims and Mormons demands we, sadly and once again, address this sickness.  

Humphrey’s brand of courage and conviction are no longer the centerpiece of contemporary American politics.  This disintegration of character, along with a momentous lack of historical knowledge and perspective, has halted humanitarian and progressive movements thus allowing the emergence of the bigotry plaguing us today.   It also has led to a deepening of respect and admiration for Hubert H. Humphrey. 

Throughout our history so many beyond Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks have suffered terribly and died to end the brutal and cruel injustices of racism.  “Man’s greatest inhumanity to man has not been war but rather slavery.”  William F. Buckley Jr.

 If we have lost sight of all of this and are no longer appalled by the bigotry and racism that plaques us today, then we have lost our souls, in which case it would be wise for us to prepare for the storm troopers – the brown shirts - for they are not far off.