Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party

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Making Minnesota Liberal

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Making Minnesota Liberal Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party

Jennifer A. Delton

University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London

Copyright 2002 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Delton, Jennifer A. (Jennifer Alice), 1964– Making Minnesota liberal : civil rights and the transformation of the Democratic party / Jennifer A. Delton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8166-3922-1 (HC/j : alk. paper) 1. Minnesota—Politics and government—1858–1950. 2. Liberalism— Minnesota—History—20th century. 3. Democratic party (Minn.)— History—20th century. 4. Political parties—Minnesota—History— 20th century. 5. African Americans—Civil rights—Minnesota— History—20th century. 6. African Americans—Minnesota—Politics and government—20th century. 7. Minnesota—Race relations—Political aspects. 8. Racism—Political aspects—Minnesota—History—20th century. I. Title. F606 .D45 2002 323.1'960730776'09041—dc21 2001008251 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

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In memory of my mother, Judy Jaschke Delton


Contents Acknowledgments Preface

ix

xi

Introduction: Postwar Liberalism and Antiracism in Minnesota ONE

The Rise and Fall of the Farmer-Labor Party

1

TWO

The New Two-Party Liberalism

19

THREE

Antiracism and the Politics of Unity

40

FOUR

The Black Communities in Minnesota

61

FIVE

An Independent Black Interest Group

79

SIX

Civil Rights in Local Politics

93

SEVEN

Civil Rights in Party Politics

111

EIGHT

The 1948 Election and the Triumph of the Democratic Political Order 129 Epilogue: Civil Rights and the Fate of Postwar Liberalism Notes

171

Bibliography Index

223

211

160

xv


Acknowledgments

This book owes its existence to the kindness, interest, and support of many people. Nell Painter’s guidance, enthusiasm, and unexpected interest in Minnesota politics shaped this book from the beginning. Her sharp questions and well-placed skepticism have continued to inspire and guide my writing about politics and race, as well as my teaching. Over the years Gary Gerstle has offered substantial criticism on various aspects of this project, which always prompted me to reconsider my arguments and assumptions in ways that made this work stronger. I was introduced to the central question of this book at the University of Minnesota in a class taught by Lary May. Lary asked what had happened to the promise of American politics in the 1940s with such urgency, such investment, that I have wrestled with it ever since. He has been a wonderful mentor and friend. The folks at the Minnesota Historical Society are perhaps the most helpful and attentive people one can ever hope to meet. Patrick Coleman especially went out of his way to share with me ephemeral bits of political history and anecdote. To all these people, and others unnamed, I offer appreciative and humble thanks. I would also like to thank Skidmore College and especially the history department for the generous financial support that allowed this book to be completed. Finally, I dedicate this book to the memory of my mother, Judy Delton, who had little use for politics, but with all her heart loved a good story.

ix


Preface

In July 1948 the mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota, delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention that began the end of southern white supremacist control of the Democratic party, and paved the way for the modern, liberal, national Democratic party we know today. The convention that year had begun in a cloud of resignation. The party was divided, its leaders uninspired. Northern bosses were prepared to compromise yet again with southern Democrats in the name of party unity, and liberals were trying to recruit General Dwight Eisenhower to run for president instead of Harry Truman. Then, on the third night of the convention a virtually unknown Hubert Humphrey took the podium and called on delegates to turn the tide of history and add a civil rights plank to the Democratic platform. To a surprised audience, Humphrey declared: There will be no hedging—no watering down—of the instruments of the civil rights program. 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 bill of rights program is an infringement of states’ rights, I say this—the time has arrived for the Democratic party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.1

In our age of political cynicism it is hard to recapture the genuine shock, joy, and dismay this exhortation excited on the convention floor. Since the Civil War the Democratic party had upheld the South’s “Jim Crow” system of African American disfranchisement and segregation. xi

xii Preface

Democratic progressives such as Franklin Roosevelt had always assented to it in exchange for southern support of their programs. By 1948 demographic and attitudinal changes had weakened northern Democrats’ willingness to appease southerners. The wartime migration of some two million African Americans out of the South, where they could not vote, to northern and western cities, where they could, combined with growing international attention to America’s “Negro problem,” had forced the issue into politics, and even induced Truman to support a civil rights program. But Truman nonetheless promised southern Democrats that he would not press the issue at the convention and warned liberals to abstain from doing so as well. Backed by an unlikely coalition of big-city bosses and liberals, Humphrey broke this crippling tradition of appeasement. As the speech ended, exuberant liberals marched up and down the convention floor, waving banners, cheering, carrying on. Delegates voted to add the liberal civil rights plank to the Democratic platform. Outraged Mississippians followed Birmingham police commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor out of the convention hall, accompanied by cries of “good riddance,” and eventually organized behind the presidential candidacy of South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond. Southerners of course remained in the Democratic party—they had nowhere else to go until later—but 1948 broke their unassailable power to keep civil rights out of party politics and platforms. It has always struck me as curious that a man from Minnesota activated this momentous turning point in American political history. In the 1940s, the focus of this book, Minnesota was especially lacking in what we call today racial diversity. African Americans constituted not even 1 percent of the population of this mainly Scandinavian, largely Republican state. And yet Humphrey was part of an active civil rights and antiracism movement there. In 1947 Minneapolis activists pushed into being a municipal fair employment law banning racial and religious discrimination in employment, one of the first in the nation. Dozens of interracial relations committees and workshops sprouted up in the Twin Cities in the 1940s, and the Republican governor conducted a series of investigations into the state of Minnesota race relations. Republicans and Democrats alike applauded Humphrey’s speech that summer. This book attempts to explain this unexpected, mainly white activism for racial fairness.

Preface xiii

Minnesotans tend to see this history of antiracism as an indication, if not a result, of a heightened sense of moral acuity. Non-Minnesotans, on the other hand, are oblivious to this history at all. Indeed, when I told easterners I was writing a book about civil rights in Minnesota, I was universally met with skeptical stares and quips about the brevity of such a book. Rather than merely insisting defensively that Minnesota does in fact possess a history of civil rights and antiracist activism, or accepting blindly a peculiar morality on the part of Minnesotans, I have chosen to take the skepticism seriously. Why were white Minnesotans interested in race? What did they get out of it? What did it help them avoid? I ask these questions not to deflate the good deeds of well-intentioned people, nor to challenge their sincerity, but rather to more fully understand this phenomenon. In the end, it is the overt whiteness of the state, the unlikeliness of civil rights activism there, that makes this story compelling.


INTRODUCTION Postwar Liberalism and Antiracism in Minnesota

In his failed 1984 presidential bid against Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale won only his home state of Minnesota and the largely black District of Columbia. It seems appropriate that a Minnesota liberal should have shouldered this stunning repudiation of postwar liberalism. After all, so many Minnesota liberals, including Mondale himself, had helped define and enact the set of ideas and assumptions about “big government” that Reagan so gleefully tore down. And it seems fitting that at its end, it would be African American voters who were postwar liberalism’s last, loyal adherents, for they too had been a key part of its birth, even in Minnesota. This book examines the relationship between the development of what became known as postwar liberalism and the emergence of antiracism and civil rights in the largely white state of Minnesota. It focuses on Minnesota’s political transformation in the 1940s from the regional, thirdparty radicalism of the Farmer-Labor party to the national, two-party, interest-group liberalism of the post–World War II Democratic-FarmerLabor party (DFL). Antiracism (educative efforts to stop racism) and civil rights (legislative efforts to insure racial minorities’ constitutional rights) were just two of many factors that contributed to the rise of interest-group liberalism in 1940s Minnesota. But while historians have examined how political economy, anticommunism, and the cold war shaped this transformation, no one has yet examined how antiracism and civil rights facilitated it.1 Considering the importance of civil rights to the eventual demise of postwar liberalism, it behooves us to understand the original, xv

xvi Introduction

mutually beneficial context of this relationship as it developed in at least one northern, prominently liberal, largely white state. This story also illuminates the origins and development of Minnesota’s distinctive brand of liberalism. In 1959 political observer William S. White identified “programmatic politics,” the idea that people voted on national issues and national platforms, as a midwestern phenomenon, “developed by the Humphrey people in Minnesota.”2 This generation of Minnesota liberals, people like Hubert Humphrey, Orville Freeman, Donald Fraser, Walter Mondale, and Eugene McCarthy, played a prominent role in the postwar Democratic party on both the state and national levels. They served as governors, senators, congressmen, and presidential cabinet members. They defended the welfare state and “state-centered” reform, meaning reforms and programs initiated and administered by a federal government—the state—on behalf of its polity. Humphrey was vice president, a leader in civil rights and Great Society reforms of the 1960s, and the Democratic presidential candidate in 1968. Mondale was likewise vice president and a Democratic presidential candidate. The DFL party itself was recognized as an unusually active and well-organized political party at a time when parties were declining in importance.3 While commentators today attribute Minnesota’s fabled liberalism to its Farmer-Labor past, the postwar DFL was not the natural heir to FarmerLaborism, but rather was born out of a clash with it. What continuity there was between the two traditions is less important for understanding postwar liberalism than the differences that separated them. Minnesota’s tiny African American communities also played an important, though hitherto unexamined, role in the creation of this distinctive brand of liberalism, mainly by publicizing an issue that tied liberals to national two-party politics. Historians generally recognize a shift in political sensibility from a grassroots, movement-oriented politics in the 1930s to a top-down, managerial style of liberal politics in the years following World War II. But the substance of that transformation is still open to interpretation. Was there a “lost opportunity” for class-oriented social democracy or real racial progress in the 1940s that was stamped out by cold war anticommunism and interest-group pluralism?4 Or did the shift that reduced the viability of “grassroots” radicalism in American liberalism occur before the war, during the late 1930s, as liberals made choices about the direction of the New Deal?5 Or was postwar liberalism the logical, natural

Introduction xvii

fulfillment of 1930s pragmatic, democratic New Deal liberalism?6 How we interpret this political transformation determines our assessment of both the limits and promises of state-centered, interest-group liberalism, which some have blamed for a decline in citizens’ participation in politics.7 The political struggle that occurred between the left-wing and anticommunist liberals in Minnesota in 1945–48 goes to the heart of these scholarly debates. The issues that divided the young, idealistic, anticommunist Senate candidate Hubert Humphrey from his nemesis, former Farmer-Labor governor Elmer Benson, between 1945 and 1948 were the same ones that are currently contested in the scholarship. When did grassroots democracy die? What happened to class in American politics? Was there an alternative to interest-group pluralism? Was consensus a mask for tyranny? Was anticommunism poisonous to participatory democracy? Their struggle over the direction of American liberalism is the main focus of this book. In 1944 the once powerful Farmer-Labor party was merged with the state’s perennially ineffectual Democratic party in the name of wartime unity and Franklin Roosevelt’s fourth-term bid for reelection. The various individuals who participated in the creation of the new Democratic-Farmer-Labor party did so for different reasons. Former Farmer-Labor governor Elmer Benson reluctantly agreed to the merger as a temporary, necessary evil in order to defeat fascism and salvage what was left of the New Deal. For Democratic leader Elmer Kelm, on the other hand, the merger ended the unfortunate and undeserved marginality of Minnesota Democrats. For a group of political scientists from the University of Minnesota centered around the young Hubert Humphrey, the merger was an opportunity to correct Minnesota’s thirdparty regionalism, make the Democrats a truly national party, and usher in a new kind of politics based on people’s organized economic interests, not their class, ethnic, or sectional loyalties. There has long been a tendency to equate the idea of people voting according to their economic interests with “class.” Beginning in the 1930s, observers noted the rise of “class-based” politics, by which they meant people, workers mainly, were voting on the basis of their economic interests, rather than on the basis of party loyalty or ethnic identity.8 Yet class-based once held another, different meaning, which was the basis of Humphrey’s conflict with Benson, and which was erased with his victory over Benson. For Humphrey, a person’s economic interests were organized in and represented by interest groups like unions, professional

xviii Introduction

organizations, or business associations, all equally deserving of a voice in the political arena. For old left-wingers like Benson, on the other hand, class signified a view of politics as a contest between the ruling class and the working class. For Benson, the labor movement was not an interest group but rather an agent in the historical struggle for social and economic justice; it represented the promise of democracy, not a finite set of interests. Labor historians such as George Lipsitz and Nelson Lichtenstein likewise understand class-based as a way of organizing politics around the working class, which was discredited during the cold war.9 Since the 1970s, class-based, now meaning economic interests and jobs, has been defined against race- or identity-based politics. So, for instance, some commentators have mourned the decline of “class-based” politics in the Democratic party, and attributed the defection of workingclass Democrats to the rise of race-based identity politics in the party.10 Likewise, civil rights historians distinguish between those civil rights activists who emphasized economics and jobs (denoting for them “class”) from those who focused on race and identity. Timothy Thurber’s recent book on Humphrey’s civil rights career, for instance, argues that Humphrey, though briefly inveigled in race-based issues like desegregation, always focused on “class,” meaning jobs and economic opportunity, in his approach to resolving America’s race problem.11 It is true that Humphrey always focused on jobs and economic opportunities for blacks, and indeed for all Americans, but whether or not economic opportunity is all that was ever encompassed by the term class-based is one of the things this book will clarify. In 1940s Minnesota the ideological distinction between economic interests and class solidarity was clear, if contested. The difference between economic interests and class was only one of many issues that separated Humphrey and Benson and their respective allies within the new DFL party. They also disagreed about the role of communists in progressive reform, the efficacy of capitalism, the goals of a political party, and the burgeoning cold war with the Soviet Union. These disagreements were not particular to Minnesota politics. They were the same disagreements that embroiled and eventually destroyed the left–liberal progressive alliance in America.12 Benson and his left-wing allies were willing to work with communists to achieve their goals; they opposed any kind of anticommunism. Humphrey and his supporters believed that communists alienated otherwise politically active citizens

Introduction xix

and thus gave strength to conservatives. They embraced a liberal anticommunism that helped distinguish their brand of welfare statism from European socialism and that blunted Republican attacks on their loyalty. Benson vigorously opposed President Truman’s anti-Soviet, militaristic foreign policy. Humphrey equally as passionately feared the expansion of Soviet communism and supported Truman’s efforts to stop it. Benson did not feel that workers’ search for justice could ever be reconciled with corporate interests, whereas Humphrey sought to build consensus and find common ground between corporations and their employees. These differences led to open conflict when the left wing took control of the DFL party in 1946. For the next two years the two factions fought an acrimonious battle for control of the DFL party and, as they both believed, the fate of liberal politics not just in Minnesota, but in America. The Benson-led left wing attempted to align the DFL with Henry Wallace’s anti–cold war Progressive party in 1948, which would have required Truman to run as a third-party candidate in Minnesota, if indeed he were even on the ballot. In the end Humphrey’s liberal anticommunist faction squelched Wallace’s third-party bid in Minnesota and drove the left wing out of politics. Events that followed affirmed Humphrey’s greatest expectations and Benson’s worst fears. Humphrey’s victory helped establish liberal two-party pluralism in Minnesota and a national, liberal Democratic party that promoted and defended a welfare state. As Benson had feared, the Left’s defeat in 1948 marked the end of radical politics and participatory democracy, the rise of what C. Wright Mills called the “Power Elite,” and the acceptance of polyarchy, the idea that democracy is best understood as the competition between groups of elites. Benson’s warnings of the dangers of a military contest with the Soviet Union foresaw the arms race and the tragedy in Vietnam.13 But the fact that Benson correctly predicted what would happen if consensus-oriented liberalism triumphed does not mean that he, or the Left, offered a viable alternative in 1946–48. Those who write about Henry Wallace’s Progressive party rarely, if ever, mention Benson, even though he was the Progressive party’s national chairman and before that a leader of the Progressive Citizens of America, one of the first organizations to openly criticize Truman’s policies.14 The absence of Benson in stories about Wallace and the Progressive party, especially those pertaining to civil rights, speaks to a tendency to emphasize the more forward-looking,

xx Introduction

eastern and southern aspects of the campaign, at the expense of the agrarian radicals, who were just as active in Wallace’s campaign as the Paul Robesons of the movement. Old progressives like Benson attached a different meaning to the Wallace movement than the black and white southern activists that Patricia Sullivan, for instance, writes about.15 For African Americans, Wallace was a wedge into national politics, a way to take advantage of wartime population shifts, the first salvo of a new political presence. For Benson, on the other hand, Wallace was a defender of an old, rapidly diminishing, radical, regional, third-party democratic tradition. The same nationalizing tendencies that made African American concerns no longer merely southern, but rather national, also led to the evisceration of the regional, third-party tradition that Benson sought to salvage.16 Thus, it becomes hard to identify precisely what alternative the Progressive party actually offered and for whom. Moreover, these competing motivations further hampered the already small movement that formed the Progressive party. The Left, of course, has always been weakened by competing visions within it, but in 1948 that weakness was countered by the peculiar unity of vision among their opponents, the anticommunist liberals. The anticommunist liberals’ success in Minnesota illustrates David Plotke’s analysis of “the Democratic political order.” Plotke argues that there was something called a Democratic political order that defined the center and margins of American politics from 1932 to around 1970, from the New Deal through the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. The Democratic political order was based on a coherent set of liberal ideas about the group-based nature of society, the need for an interventionist state, and the necessity of redistributive economic policies. It was connected to the Democratic party—indeed it had transformed the Democratic party from a sectional party of white southerners and northern machine bosses to a party of organized interest groups and activist government—but it relied less on party structures for its power than on the agencies and administrative offices of the state, universities, and organized interest groups. The Democratic political order was established by a group of what Plotke terms “progressive liberals,” based in the academy and state agencies, who allied themselves with powerful mass movements like the labor movement to self-consciously create a new political order.17 Based in the political science department of the University of Minnesota, Humphrey and his liberal allies were just this sort of progres-

Introduction xxi

sive liberal political actors. In the late 1940s their vision of a Democratic political order was under attack from the Republican party’s conservative, antistatist politics and from the left wing’s ideology of “class-based” politics. Progressive liberals like Hubert Humphrey fought back against both the Right and the Left. Plotke believes the threat from the Left has been exaggerated by recent historians and that the Republican Right was far more threatening to liberals than the Left. That assertion holds true in national politics, but in Minnesota the left wing actually controlled what was supposed to be the Democratic party, the DFL, and thus presented a bit more of a threat than Plotke allows. The left wing, however, did not represent a viable alternative to Humphrey’s vision of a Democratic political order in part because the political world that had created it had disappeared and in part because Humphrey’s vision was bolstered by moral energy and fresh rhetorical ballast supplied by the early civil rights movement. The transformation from third-party regionalism to national liberal pluralism occurred during the same years that Minnesotans embraced antiracism and became interested, however superficially, in civil rights as a political issue. The timing was not coincidental. Humphrey’s zeal for civil rights and white Minnesotans’ apparent openness to it have always been a little puzzling in this state with such a historically tiny African American population. The state’s black population of 14,022 hovered just below one-half of 1 percent of the population during the late 1940s.18 Historians attribute the emergence of race in northern politics to the sudden wartime influx of black migrants into northern cities, which led to economic competition, housing conflicts, new voters, violence, and shifts in political power.19 But Minnesota experienced no great increase in its black population during the war. It experienced no race riots, no new influx of voters to be courted. Nonetheless, Minnesotans made racism and civil rights a political issue. As mayor of Minneapolis, Humphrey set up a Human Relations Council to resolve “group” tensions, and a municipal Fair Employment Practices Committee to enforce the city’s new prohibition on racial discrimination in hiring. In 1948 he gave the rousing speech at the Democratic convention that secured the Democratic party’s first civil rights plank and caused southern Democrats, known as “Dixiecrats,” to bolt the party. One explanation for Humphrey’s embrace of civil rights is that he could afford to support this controversial issue precisely because there was no significant black

xxii Introduction

population: no black threat, hence no opposition. But there was opposition, and, moreover, why bother with the issue at all? Those Minnesotans who identified racism as a problem did so for the same reasons other Americans embraced antiracism during World War II: a sense of right and wrong, the paradox of fighting for democracy while twelve million citizens were denied basic democratic rights, the migration of black Americans out of the South, where they could not vote, to the North, where they could, fear of racial strife, and African American activism. These reasons motivated many Minnesotans to organize seminars and workshops about racism and religious prejudice, to study the racial situation in Minnesota, and to prohibit racial discrimination. When they did this, they encountered some resistance, but they also found support from a wide group of civic officials, politicians, labor leaders, religious leaders, and industrialists. That the guardians of society were open to antiracist programs was perhaps because of genuine concern, but it can also be explained by their historical context. The 1944 merger of the Farmer-Labor and Democratic parties was the culmination of political-economic processes that had occurred during the preceding decades. The Farmer-Labor party (1921–44) had developed in a political context circumscribed by anti-Catholicism, antiSemitism, a rural economy, and a vague sense of anticapitalism. The Farmer-Labor party was successful in large part because those who sought to challenge Republican dominance were antagonistic to the Catholicdominated, alcohol-imbibing Democratic party. Because the Democratic party was unavailable to them as a site of political opposition, those who opposed Republican rule were forced to create an alternative party based on their identities as “producers” and on what they called class interests. By the 1940s, however, assimilation and the New Deal Revolution, which put citizens’ economic interests before their ethnic hostilities or allegiances, had weakened the ethnic differences and class consciousness that once defined Minnesota politics. The antiracism activism of the wartime years also contributed to reshaping those political divisions by creating a public space for the symbolic cooperation between once competing groups of Minnesotans. The wartime fight against racism reconfigured concepts of race, color, and ethnicity in Minnesota by focusing attention on the plight of “the Negro,” a group that, due to its small numbers, was outside of political competition. As historian Matthew Frye Jacobson has shown, the antiracism

Introduction xxiii

campaigns of World War II, in their particular focus on African Americans, had the effect of defining race as solely black, while simultaneously redefining hitherto problematic, racialized groups, such as Jews and eastern European immigrant groups, as “white,” and hence no longer problematic.20 In Minnesota Jews and Catholics served prominently on interracial councils that were increasingly less concerned with antiSemitism than with antiblack racism. Their participation on these interracial councils affirmed their status as non-problems in a state where they had once been very problematic. Antiracism activism did not make previously racialized groups “white,” because they already saw themselves as white with regard to blacks. But the new humanitarian emphasis on blacks made their own whiteness more universal and changed the way they related to and were perceived in politics. In a state where politics had always been divided along ethnic, religious, and class lines, cooperation between Yankees and Jews, Lutherans and Catholics, industrialists and labor leaders in antiracist workshops and seminars paved the way for new kinds of political alliances that affirmed Humphrey’s attempts to redefine the Democratic party. No longer would fears of Catholic domination prevent Minnesotans from voting for the Democratic party. Antiracist rhetoric and arguments for civil rights helped deflate anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism, while at the same time showcasing Humphrey’s vision of pluralistic, state-centered liberalism. The language of tolerance, diversity, group relations, and respect for others, as well as economic arguments for Fair Employment legislation, dovetailed with, bolstered, and gave larger meaning to the language and ideas of the consensus-oriented postwar Democratic order, which likewise emphasized ideological flexibility, tolerance, and economic pragmatism. Antiracism and civil rights enacted the principles of consensus, flexibility, and pluralism in civic life. When “race” emerged as a salient issue in Minnesota, moreover, it provided a bold new position for the anticommunist politics of consensus liberalism. While genuinely committed to the cause of civil rights, Humphrey also understood that it conferred moral legitimacy and an aura of courage upon those who embraced it. Humphrey’s fight against the left wing in Minnesota was for the hearts and minds of progressive voters. While engaging in what many viewed as old-fashioned anticommunism, Humphrey and his liberal supporters could point to their substantive civil rights record as an indication of their progressive bona fides.

xxiv Introduction

While burdened in Minnesota by the unfortunate label “right wing,” Humphrey could quote white southerners’ exclamations such as, “If these people are supposed to be Minnesota’s reactionaries, God save us from their radicals!”21 The civil rights issue conferred progressive legitimacy not only on anticommunist liberals but also on the much maligned Democratic party in which northern liberals like Humphrey intended to base the new liberalism. Historically, most Minnesotans viewed the Democratic party as the party of corrupt bosses, Catholics, and southern racists. Humphrey saw civil rights as the means by which liberals could stand up to the reactionary forces within the Democratic party, which obstructed not only black civil rights but also the liberal–labor program of state-centered social and economic reform. A strong stand against southern Democrats was necessary to insure liberal ascendancy in the party, as well as to eradicate the deeply held notion in Minnesota and elsewhere that the Democrats were dominated by white supremacists and conciliatory machine bosses. Humphrey’s civil rights initiatives in the Democratic party helped solidify a liberal, administrative, social service state, which eventually, as historian Sidney Milkis has argued, transferred power from local party functionaries to academic experts and policymakers in Washington.22 Antiracism and civil rights were never the major, real political issues for most Minnesotans in the 1940s. Only a small minority of politically conscious white and black activists were really concerned with fighting racism and legislating civil rights. But at those moments when race appeared in the 1940s, in those instances when it entered politics, it did ideological and political work to which we need to pay attention. It provided common ground and good will between competing groups of Minnesotans, it helped refocus regional politics on a national Democratic party issue, and it brought a sense of moral mission to the political scientists’ bid for power. Antiracism did not end ethnic tension or class conflict in Minnesota. Rather, it was one of many historical factors that reduced the power of those tensions to wholly define political discourse as they had in the past. The fact that antiracism and race became political issues at all in the largely white state of Minnesota in the 1940s challenges the traditional understanding of racial politics as primarily about the resolution of ten-

Introduction xxv

sions and inequities between whites and blacks. Minnesota allows us to see things about race that are obscured in places where the immediate stakes—housing, jobs, and political power—make the goals of racial politics fairly obvious. Recent studies of Detroit, Chicago, and other industrial cities that became racial powder kegs during World War II have contributed to our understanding of postwar racial politics, but Minnesota provides a unique opportunity to explore the larger effect of race, racial politics, and antiracism in those areas of the nation that do not, apparently, have anything to do with race. My analysis of the political and ideological work performed by antiracism recognizes that antiracism, even in its most sincere forms, operates in the world in a variety of different ways. In an account of Detroit’s racial politics in the years following World War II, Thomas Sugrue reminds readers that the significance and dimensions of racial discrimination and indeed “race” itself depend on the particular economic, regional, political contexts of any given historical moment. He notes that historians have tended to see race and racism as “transhistorical constants” rather than historical variables.23 The same holds true of antiracism. The meaning and significance of antiracism are likewise dependent on political contexts and historical moments. Yet, historians have generally seen the struggle against racism as a transcendent mission that moves history forward but is not of history itself. They frame antiracism and civil rights in terms of how particular incidents or strategies either contributed to or hindered the ongoing struggle for racial justice. Those efforts deemed “sincere” become part of a heroic, transhistorical narrative of justice.24 Those efforts that are seen as instrumental, on the other hand, are dismissed as serving specific political and economic imperatives that limit the possibilities for true justice, even as they may incrementally appear to be furthering it.25 Humphrey’s biographers, for instance, celebrate his interest in civil rights for the most part at face value, noting his progressive, selfless contributions to the struggle for justice at a time when racism was the norm. On the other hand, others have argued that because cold war liberals like Humphrey supported civil rights as part of their espousal of liberal anticommunist ideals, their contributions to racial justice were limited, flawed by their rejection of class-based organizing and their faith in economic growth.26 Both interpretations depend on a transhistorical narrative of racial justice—either Humphrey

xxvi Introduction

contributed or hindered the quest for racial justice—rather than analyzing liberal antiracism as a historical factor that shaped and influenced the politics of which it was a part. The intersection of anticommunism, antiracism, and political imperatives is about something more than the limits of postwar liberalism. It is about the power of antiracism as a political catalyst in areas hitherto unaffected by race. Antiracism in Minnesota redefined liberal political purpose and reconfigured liberal political alliances. While motivated by genuine moral outrage, antiracism nonetheless helped redefine liberal politics in Minnesota and nationally in the Democratic party. This may well have limited the possibilities of antiracism, and yet it should prompt us to wonder whether antiracism and civil rights could have fit as snugly and effectively into white politics in any other way. Minnesota was not “every state.” It was not typical. Yet its peculiar political heritage produced Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, and a generation of liberals who articulated and fought for the kind of state-centered, social-welfare reforms that transformed the Democratic party. That antiracism was a part of this development, in a state where “race didn’t matter,” tells us something new and important about the dynamic relationship between antiracism and American politics in the twentieth century.

CHAPTER ONE The Rise and Fall of the Farmer-Labor Party

To understand the novelty of Hubert Humphrey’s vision of two-party pluralist politics in Minnesota, we need first to establish what he was building onto and reacting against. Third-party movements had flourished in Minnesota in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries due to a combination of sectional politics, ethnic divisions, and the rural economy of the state. The New Deal and World War II disrupted these conditions and destroyed the political and economic context that had given rise to the Farmer-Labor party. When this happened, Humphrey and his liberal allies stood ready to instruct Minnesota voters in their own brand of two-party politics, which they defined in part against the movement-oriented, regional third-party politics of the past. “The Impossible in American Politics” In 1918 the Minnesota Federation of Labor joined forces with the Nonpartisan League, a farmers’ organization from North Dakota. Arthur C. Townley, a failed flax farmer and founder of the Nonpartisan League, presided over a frenzied two-day celebration of the endorsement. As the wiry North Dakotan led farmers in wild cheers of appreciation for the workers, tears rolled down the cheeks of a St. Paul Street Railway worker, baby in his arms, wife by his side, as he watched “the impossible in American politics” come to pass: a farmer–labor alliance. The tearstained face of that St. Paul railway worker was first reported in the Nonpartisan Leader, but it has been mentioned in almost every account since, so well does it capture the long struggle and deep hopes such an alliance embodied for ordinary people.1 1

2 The Rise and Fall of the Farmer-Labor Party

Since statehood in 1858, Minnesota had been home to a variety of self-consciously anti-party, sometimes radical third parties and farmers’ movements, including the Anti-Monopoly party, the Greenback party, the Peoples’ party, the Prohibition party, any number of Socialist parties, and the Nonpartisan League.2 An Elk River farmer named Oliver Kelley founded the Patrons of Husbandry in 1867. Otherwise known as the Farmers’ Grange, it was responsible for the first laws regulating railroad rates. Populist leader Ignatius Donnelly, author of the 1892 Populist Platform and the fiery anticapitalist dystopia Caesar’s Column (1890), began his career in Minnesota, serving as a Republican congressman in the 1860s, and later as president of the Minnesota Farmers’ Alliance. Several factors contributed to the prevalence of farmers’ movements in the state. First, nineteenth-century Minnesota was almost completely rural. Sixty-six percent of the population lived in rural areas in the 1880s.3 The issues that concerned most people in Minnesota were agricultural issues. Second, the Republican party dominated state politics. This was in part due to the Civil War, which had branded the Democratic party the party of treason, but the Minnesota Republican party was powerful in its own right. The province of wealthy Yankee industrialists, grain dealers, and railroad magnates, the Republican party also attracted the votes of Norwegian and Swedish farmers, two of the largest immigrant groups in the state. The Democrats, on the other hand, were dominated by a despised Irish Catholic minority. They posed no threat to the Republicans. The power of the Republican party and the irrelevance of the Democratic party meant that the only political avenues open to discontented farmers were the great agrarian, anti-party protest movements of the late-nineteenth century.4 Townley’s Nonpartisan League was one such movement. It had won control of North Dakota’s government in 1916 by running its own candidates in the Republican party primaries.5 Townley’s Nonpartisan League attempted to organize in Minnesota in 1917. However, Minnesota’s rural population made up a smaller majority than North Dakota’s, its economy was becoming more diversified, and many farmers had already organized in other ways to address their situations, such as in cooperatives.6 Thus, in order for the League to be successful in Minnesota it had to win non-rural support, most likely from the labor movement. The gulf separating farmers and workers was huge. The two groups had competing economic interests. Farmers supported inflationary eco-

The Rise and Fall of the Farmer-Labor Party 3

nomic policies to raise the price of their crops. As debtors they benefited from inflation. Workers, on the other hand, almost always favored lower prices, and were usually not in a position to be concerned about interest rates and loans. Moreover, ethnic allegiances still divided Minnesota’s overwhelmingly immigrant population and deepened the rural–urban divide. Proportionately, the rural states of the upper Midwest—Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Dakotas—were among the most “foreign” in the nation. In 1880 71 percent of the people in Minnesota were foreign-born or of foreign-born parents. The majority of voting age males in 1900 were foreign-born.7 The plains of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas had been virtually uninhabited (by non-Indians) when émigrés from Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Ireland arrived in the latter half of the nineteenth century to clear the land and set up farms. Separated by different customs, religions, and languages, these groups were thrust into competition for land. In Giants of the Earth, O. E. Rölvaag captures the weird internationalism that existed out on the plains, as translators tried to resolve disputes between suspicious Irish, Swedish, Norwegian, and German settlers, who viewed each other in terms of nationality and Old World prejudices. Their prejudices were solidified in the inevitable violence that followed the translators’ failed attempts to sort through competing claims about deeds and stakes.8 Immigration was restricted in 1920, but ethnic identity continued to define the state’s politics, towns, and newspapers. In 1930, after ten years of immigration restrictions, over 50 percent of the population was still of foreign-born parentage.9 Until the eve of World War II, German was spoken in New Ulm, Czech in New Prague, Polish in sections of Winona, and Swedish, Norwegian, or Danish in any number of counties across the state.10 Ethnic and religious tensions flourished, especially in the forms of anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism. Major political issues such as Prohibition were defined according to ethnic and religious identities, pitting a “dry” Lutheran majority against a “wet” Catholic minority. Politicians and observers took it for granted that Scandinavian Lutherans would never vote for an Irish Catholic Democrat. While farmers in Minnesota were overwhelmingly Scandinavian (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish) or German, a more polyglot group of Italians, Finns, Czechs, Poles, Croatians, Lithuanians, Slovakians, Serbs, and Hungarians arrived around 1900 to mine the iron ore on the Iron Ranges in northern Minnesota and to work in the meatpacking plants in the south-


ern part of the state.11 Socialists and labor organizers had a difficult time organizing across the ethnic lines of workers in the same industries, let alone bridging the farmer–worker divide. The farmers tended to be socially conservative, Lutheran, prohibitionist, and settled, whereas the newer immigrants from Finland and southern Europe, especially those who became miners and lumbermen, were unmarried, transient, and wild. They were not churchgoers. The towns on the Range were wideopen havens of gambling, whiskey, prostitution, and untimely deaths.12 The IWW did well organizing these kinds of men, but it was hard to imagine what type of leadership could bring together staid Lutheran wheat growers and hardscrabble miners. The one thing farmers and workers shared was repression. The grain dealers, railroad magnates, bankers, and mine owners who controlled the economy and politics used state power to repress both farmers’ movements and workers’ unions. Violence against rural and labor organizers reached a peak during World War I with the creation of the Commission of Public Safety. Formed to quell antiwar activities and monitor the possibly seditious activities of the foreign-born (who still made up almost 40 percent of the population), the commission shut down German-language presses, condoned mob violence against Nonpartisan League organizers, vandalized the stores of League supporters, and deported agitators.13 The commission’s flagrant use of red-baiting to whip up opposition to League organizers would not be forgotten, and was a major reason that the left wing would so strenuously oppose any kind of anticommunism in the 1940s. The happy product of this brutal repression, however, was organized labor’s endorsement of the Nonpartisan League gubernatorial candidate Charles A. Lindbergh Sr. in the Republican primary of 1918, the first farmer–labor alliance. Lindbergh lost the race in the primary, but the Federation of Labor and the Nonpartisan League sponsored a full slate of candidates in the general election, which ran under the label “Farmer-Labor.” This slate of candidates finished ahead of the Democratic candidates in most races. The unexpected success of the Farmer-Labor ticket led the president of the St. Paul Trades and Assembly, a Socialist named William Mahoney, to form the Working Peoples’ Nonpartisan League (WPNL), which he intended to be the political arm of the Minnesota Federation of Labor.14 At first the WPNL and the Nonpartisan League worked together on an ad hoc basis, endorsing the same candidates at separate conventions,


and running the ticket in the Republican primary. They chose to run their candidates in the Republican primary, as opposed to forming a separate party, because this strategy had secured Nonpartisan League victories in North Dakota. They used the Republican party because Democratic candidates rarely won elections. The Republicans, however, passed legislation that banned this practice in 1921, and this action forced the Working Peoples’ Nonpartisan League and the farmers’ Nonpartisan League to reconsider the nature of their alliance.15 At issue was whether to form a separate third party, a Farmer-Labor party. League leader Arthur Townley opposed the idea of a separate third party. He believed that American political history was against the success of third parties, and wanted to keep the farmers organized as “a great mobile voting bloc.”16 Socialist Mahoney, representing the labor movement, saw the rare opportunity to put labor at the fore of a viable political organization, and favored a separate party. Despite Townley’s vigorous opposition to an independent third party, the Nonpartisan League voted with Mahoney’s forces to support the creation of the Farmer-Labor party.17 In 1922 a Norwegian dentist from Kandiyohi County named Henrik Shipstead became the new Farmer-Labor party’s first U.S. senator. The election also sent two Farmer-Laborites to Congress, and from then on, until 1944, the Farmer-Labor party was the chief rival of the Republicans. The Democrats were relegated to the status of a third party. From the start the new party was divided about its mission. In general, the rural wing favored using the party to obtain specific, short-term goals that helped the “common folks” stay out of debt and maintain a decent standard of living. The party’s two senators, Henrik Shipstead and Magnus Johnson (elected in a 1923 special election), exemplified this vision. Both from rural areas, they aligned themselves with western Republican progressives in the Senate and veered away from the class consciousness that marked their labor compatriots in the party. The labor wing, led by William Mahoney, held out an overarching program of economic justice based on a Marxist critique of capitalism. Mahoney left the Socialist party in the early 1920s, but he continued to advocate government ownership of industries and utilities and militant mass struggle. He saw the Farmer-Labor party as the first step toward a national mass movement against the capitalist order, and allied the FarmerLabor party with national progressive organizations like the League for


Independent Political Action (LIPA). A small group of Farmer-Laborites, including Arthur and Marion Le Sueur and their daughter Meridel, transcended the rural–urban divide. They came from rural areas and had been part of the Nonpartisan League, yet they embraced the Socialist ideals of mass struggle, class consciousness, and the redistribution of wealth. Despite their rural, small-town backgrounds, they would almost always side with the radical labor faction’s commitment to systemic change. They would later be the core part of the left wing. The initial clashes between the rural and labor factions of the party were over organization. Mahoney wanted to merge the independent Nonpartisan League and his own WPNL into a single, efficient, federation dedicated to educational and political activities. Townley opposed such a move. He feared that labor unions would dominate the organization. The party membership, however, voted to merge and formed what would become the Farmer-Labor Association (FLA) in 1924. Mahoney became president of the organization, and as Townley feared, labor’s interests and perspectives began to dominate the party.18 Mahoney’s Minnesota Union Advocate replaced the Nonpartisan League’s Minnesota Leader as the official voice of the Farmer-Labor party. While this seemed to be a victory for those who favored a principled long-term commitment to economic justice, it weakened interest in the party among rural voters. The importance of Farmer-Labor governor Floyd B. Olson (1931–36) lies in how well he united the strained alliance between the farmers and the workers. Floyd Bjornesterne Olson, a magnetic, affable Norwegian, was the Farmer-Labor party’s first governor and most popular leader. Olson possessed an earthy charm that seemed to transcend all political differences. Although he was from Minneapolis, he represented, initially, the more moderate faction of the party. Later he would become an outright radical, but by then his old-time populist rhetoric, Scandinavian heritage, and bold commitment to Farmer-Labor principles had endeared him to rural and urban Farmer-Laborites alike. Not only did he reunite the farmers and workers in his own party, but he also attracted widespread support among both Republican and Democratic voters. Reporters from across the nation were enamored with the populist hero, whom they invariably described as big, honest, and down-to-earth. “He is a hard-headed, two-fisted, deep-drinking, humorous, hearty man, without an ounce of social theory in his head,” began one typical ac-


count.19 Reporters and, indeed, the people of Minnesota seemed to love that he had grown up in the slums of north Minneapolis, that he had worked as a lumberjack and flirted with the IWW, that he hung out at bars to all hours with newspapermen, cigarette girls, and card sharks instead of attending social functions. And they loved that he was a little bit sheepish about it all. Olson had won the governorship in 1930 on a deliberately moderate platform of efficiency in government, but the depression soon radicalized both him and the Farmer-Labor party. Forced to deal with the effects of the depression, Olson worked with advisers, party leaders, and to a lesser extent the legislature to enact a public works program, protect farmers from foreclosure, and prohibit labor injunctions. The legislature eventually adopted his old-age pension and unemployment compensation programs, which were seen as prototypes of the New Deal programs that Roosevelt eventually proposed and saw passed.20 None of these accomplishments came easily. Indeed, the stress of cajoling and fighting the conservative legislature and of holding together the unwieldy rural-urban, moderate-radical factions of his party eventually killed him.21 His premature death from stomach cancer in 1936, however, elevated his achievements to near mythic proportions. During the 1930s, the labor movement became more powerful and generated new votes for the Farmer-Labor party. As historian Lizabeth Cohen has shown, the depression overwhelmed ethnic institutions and prejudices that had sustained ethnic lines in politics, and forced workers to unite in unions to secure basic necessities for their families and communities. The increasing viability of unions was the first step in reconfiguring politics away from old ethnic allegiances to what political scientists referred to as “class,” meaning economic interests.22 While elsewhere in the nation new unionists revived the Democratic party, in Minnesota they replenished the ranks of the Farmer-Labor party. Throughout the 1920s, the Republicans had successfully and notoriously stopped union organizing in the state. In Minneapolis, in particular, a group of businessmen called the Citizens’ Alliance had kept the city an “open-shop town.”23 The businessmen’s sustained repression incubated a labor movement that needed only economic turmoil and the legal sanction of section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 to spark a powerful rank-and-file movement that looked to the Farmer-Labor party for political leadership.


In 1934 the Teamsters Union led a series of strikes that broke the Citizens’ Alliance, energized the labor movement, and strengthened workers’ ties to what was seen as the labor movement’s party, the Farmer-Labor party. A generation of Farmer-Laborites came of political age during these strikes, manning the soup kitchens, tending the wounded, and halting traffic into the city. These experiences affirmed and made real the hitherto abstract idea that there was a fundamental struggle between the haves and the have-nots. There were three strikes in all between February and August, which made the summer seem like one prolonged pitched battle between the Citizens’ Alliance and transportation workers, who had been organized into Teamsters Local 574 by three Trotskyist brothers, Grant, Victor, and Miles Dunne.24 During the strikes, the city existed in a state of near warfare. Both the workers and the Citizens’ Alliance set up strike headquarters, their own first-aid stations, and elaborate communication networks. The Citizens’ Alliance would try to get food and supplies into the city, while strikers rushed to the scene of any moving truck or vehicle. On May 22, strikers clubbed two deputies to death and injured dozens more. On July 20, another riot broke out, and police and armed deputies fired into the crowd, wounding sixty-seven and killing two. Governor Olson declared martial law, and the National Labor Relations Board sent mediators. The eventual settlement was a huge victory for the Teamsters, as well as the rest of the labor movement, because it forced Minneapolis employers to recognize unions. All of these activities radicalized and energized the Farmer-Labor party. Even the farmers became more radical. Organizers in the Farmers’ Union revived the old agrarian radicalism in the rural wing of the Farmer-Labor party, leading farmers’ strikes, called “farm holidays,” dumping milk into the roads and generally wreaking havoc.25 Olson moved more to the left, coming to believe that some form of socialism was inevitable in the United States. By 1934, he was calling for a change in the economic system: Now, all this destitution that confronts us in this nation must suggest to every thinking man and woman that the system under which we have operated is a poor system, that it is a bad system, that a nation can’t endure as has been fittingly said, part rich and almost entirely poor. And what causes it? Why the system itself causes the conditions which exist under it. And so every thinking man and woman must know that the system must be changed.26


He considered himself a radical, not a liberal. Although he cultivated an alliance with New Dealers in the Democratic party, Olson was at the same time critical of the New Deal’s limitations. He joined the group of East Coast radicals centered around Common Sense magazine and the League for Political Action (LIPA), calling for more radical change than, it seemed, Roosevelt was willing to deliver. His name was tossed around as a possible presidential contender on a third-party ticket. Olson opposed all forms of anticommunism and red-baiting. Denounced as a communist almost daily, he understood anticommunism as a conservative scare tactic. Olson believed the real threat to democracy came not from a few communists but from the anticommunists: “When the final clash comes between Americanism and Fascism, we will find the so-called Red as the defender of Democracy and the superpatriot and captain of industry on the side of mass slavery.”27 Real communists, however, Communist party–type communists, were a fact of life in 1930s politics. Olson dealt with them as other labor leaders had; that is, he allowed them into the party as part of the “Popular Front” against fascism, and used their organizational skills and zealotry to further his own agenda.28 Personally, however, Olson had little patience with their self-righteous dogmatism. At one rally presided over by Olson, a communist shouted, “When the revolution comes, Olson, we’ll get you,” to which, apparently, the governor replied, “When the Revolution comes, I’ll be leading it, and you’ll be just a corporal.”29 Olson tried to keep his radical views from interfering with the fragile rural–labor alliance. He was above all a pragmatist when it came to politics, and he understood that the fate of the Farmer-Labor party was in the rural voters’ hands. He reached out to the party’s rural leaders, endeared himself to farmers, and tried not to appear to favor one faction of the party over any other. In other words, he was a politician, holding together a coalition of farmers, small-town businessmen, and the labor movement through personal charm and political favors. In 1934, for instance, after the platform committee adopted a platform that called for the immediate abolition of capitalism and state ownership of mines, power plants, packinghouses, and all factories except those cooperatively owned and operated, Olson quickly distanced himself and the party from the controversial platform. But he did so with a flippancy that preserved his own reputation for boldness. When asked why he had backpedaled on


the platform, Olson reportedly replied, “Because it scared the hell out of Minnesota.”30 Despite Olson’s efforts, Farmer-Labor support in the countryside began to decline in 1934. In 1930 Olson had won all but 6 percent of the state’s counties; in 1934 he lost 44 percent. Part of this decline was due to an increase in rural voters who had not voted in 1930 and were reacting against the infamous platform and the Teamsters’ strikes. However, it was also true that New Deal farm programs and agricultural recovery had alleviated the need for the Farmer-Labor party’s radicalism. After 1935 the national government delivered almost everything the FarmerLabor party had promised, only better and more efficiently. Moreover, whereas New Deal legislation revived the labor movement and tied workers to the Farmer-Labor party, the New Deal’s agricultural programs seemed to pull farmers away from the Farmer-Labor party. As historian Richard Valelly has argued, New Deal farm programs not only ameliorated the economic conditions that had politicized farmers but also strengthened the ties between conservative farmers’ organizations and once radical farmers.31 The Agricultural Adjustment Agency (AAA) was administered through the already existing infrastructure of the allegedly nonpolitical, independent American Farm Bureau Federation. Loosely affiliated with the university system, the Farm Bureau had become expert in nonpartisan “pressure group” tactics in the 1920s. Its reputation in Washington as a “nonpolitical” organization was one reason New Dealers chose it to administer the AAA. The Farm Bureau was conservative, however. In contrast to the radical Farmers’ Union, which sought to ally workers and farmers in common cause, the Farm Bureau promoted the idea that farmers had more in common with businessmen than with workers. Before the AAA came to town, farmers might have been involved in other organizations, like the Farmers’ Union, cooperatives, or Farmer-Labor clubs, or with no organization at all, but now, with checks and benefits to hand out, the Farm Bureau became the center of rural life in a way it had not been before. Farmers came to their local Farm Bureau to pick up their checks, consult about loan programs, or just hang out, perhaps perusing the bureau’s antilabor pamphlets. This likely contributed to the dwindling rural strength of the FarmerLabor party.32 Olson’s sudden and premature death in August 1936 was a blow to the people of Minnesota, who turned out in droves to mourn his passing.


They also delivered a huge sympathy vote for the Farmer-Labor party that fall, which gave the party both Senate seats, eight out of nine congressional seats, the governorship, and assorted state offices.33 Apparently at the height of its power, the party would lose everything in two short years. Elmer Benson was elected governor in 1936 by over 60 percent of the vote. He had been a senator, but Olson had been planning to run for the Senate that year, so party leaders had chosen Benson to run for governor. A Norwegian farmer and banker from the western part of the state, Benson was committed to the struggle against fascism, big banks, railroads, and anything that threatened the principles and integrity of the FarmerLabor movement.34 As governor, Benson restructured the tax system to protect small farmers and small businessmen, taxing butter substitutes, chain stores, and mail-order houses. He banned the antilabor Pinkerton’s Detective Agency from the state. He used the National Guard to protect striking workers. These things should have made him a popular governor, at least among Farmer-Labor voters. However, he lacked the political charm of Olson and failed to cultivate connections among the moderate, midlevel party people. A rather prim, self-righteous Lutheran teetotaler, Benson had no stock of jokes and flatteries. His most damaging decision was to continue Olson’s Popular Front alliance with the Communist party. The communists had a strong presence in Minnesota, mainly in the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO), which was a key component of the Farmer-Labor party. Communist organizers ran for Farmer-Labor offices in the late 1930s, and they made the local Farmer-Labor clubs some of the best-organized political clubs in the country. Benson got along well with the small group of urbane communists and Popular Front activists. Because he shared their political views, because he trusted them, and because he lacked ties to other groups within the Farmer-Labor party, Benson appointed communists and so-called communist sympathizers to key positions in his administration. They did not let him down. In intraparty politics they stood by his side; they were his loyalists. This exacerbated the already debilitating factionalism in the party.35 In 1937–38, the years of Benson’s governorship, only conservative Republicans were concerned about communism as an ideological threat to democracy. Farmer-Laborites, however, were concerned about power and competition within the party and were increasingly hostile toward


the communist presence in their party. Because the Farmer-Labor party was structurally intertwined with the labor movement, in terms of funding, membership rosters, meeting halls, and printing presses, factional battles within the labor movement often spilt into the Farmer-Labor party. The labor movement was increasingly divided by clashes between the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the newly organized CIO, communists, the Trotskyists who controlled the powerful Teamsters Union, and the railroad brotherhoods. Benson’s close ties to the communists and the CIO angered these other groups wrangling for power within the Farmer-Labor party. As Benson’s seeming favoritism fed the CIO’s power within the party, the AFL officially withdrew from the party and returned to an official nonpartisan stance.36 The deepest rift in the party remained that between the rural moderates and the labor movement. While rural voters had begun to desert the party in 1934, rural, small-town Farmer-Labor leaders had managed to maintain a place in the party. Indeed, the party’s senators and congressmen were from the rural parts of the state. Olson, at least, had always recognized their existence. Benson, however, ignored the rural leaders. As labor radicalism and Popular Front internationalism further alienated their rural constituencies, the leaders of the rural, moderate wing organized behind small-town newspaper editor Hjalmar Petersen and plotted to take control of the party in 1938. Petersen had been governor for a few months after Olson’s death (because he had been Olson’s lieutenant governor) and resented how Benson and the Popular Front activists had rebuffed him when they took office.37 The 1938 primary between Benson and Petersen destroyed the party. Unconcerned about communism as an ideology, Petersen nonetheless understood the political uses of anticommunism and anti-Semitism. Anticommunism and anti-Semitism have a long tangled history. Indeed, in Petersen’s campaign literature it is unclear what the greater fear was, a communist takeover of Minnesota or Jews in positions of power. AntiSemitism was widespread in Minneapolis during the 1920s and 1930s, and it proved useful to Petersen.38 Benson, for his part, never addressed the issues of resentment behind the cranky anti-Semitism and anticommunism but rather dismissed the charges as a Republican ploy, as indeed they were in part.39 Benson went further, however, and accused Petersen and his supporters of being reactionaries and fascists, which


exacerbated their feelings of marginality in the party. Benson barely won the primary. In the general election, a young Republican lawyer named Harold Stassen co-opted the Farmer-Labor program of graduated income taxes, old-age pensions, and unemployment relief, and refashioned the Republican party into a moderate party of reform. Stassen promised to do everything the Farmer-Laborites had, only more efficiently and without the communists and factionalism. In his campaign against Benson, he exploited the raw rifts in the Farmer-Labor party, replaying Petersen’s charges of anticommunism and allowing Republican functionaries to exploit anti-Semitism on his behalf.40 Stassen beat the incumbent governor with 59 percent of the vote. Benson carried only six counties, a far cry from his victory of two years earlier. Just when it seemed things could not be any worse, the Farmer-Labor party was further divided by the heated debates surrounding U.S. involvement in the war in Europe. There was a strong tradition of isolationism and pacifism within the Farmer-Labor party, especially among those who had been in the Nonpartisan League and remembered the repression that accompanied the Great War. Indeed both Farmer-Labor senators at this time, Ernest Lundeen and Henrik Shipstead, were staunch isolationists. Lundeen, who died in a plane crash in 1940, was a member of the anti-interventionist organization America First. In 1940 FarmerLabor Senator Henrik Shipstead bolted to the Republican party to protest Roosevelt’s interventionist position, taking his constituency with him. The tradition of isolationism in Minnesota prompted a liberal educational campaign about the interdependence of the nations of the world, the need for tolerance, and the threat of fascism in Europe.41 Thus, when the communist-influenced Farmer-Labor Association came out against U.S. intervention during the period of the Hitler–Stalin pact (August 1939 to July 1941), after so vigorously championing anti-fascist interventionism previously, they betrayed the Popular Front alliance and confused regular Farmer-Laborites. Benson was among a small group of noncommunist Farmer-Laborites who followed the so-called communist line and opposed U.S. intervention between 1939 and 1941. This led his enemies to call him a communist and an isolationist. He was neither. He felt that the conflict over American intervention was not between “isolationism” and “internation-


alism,” but between two kinds of internationalism: democratic or imperialist. In allying with Britain, France, and a bevy of war-mongering industrialists, Roosevelt could hardly be said to be on the side of democracy. “I am just as much in favor of defeating Hitler now as I was four years ago,” Benson wrote to a friend in 1941, “but I doubt if that is the true aim of those directing the present government.”42 After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in July 1941, Benson reversed his position, following the “communist line.” Having the Soviet Union as an ally, however, changed everything for Benson. It meant that the “British Tory ruling class” and American industrialists would have to contend with the Soviet Union in organizing the postwar world. It meant the “beginning of a program of world industrial and agricultural democracy.”43 For Benson, that was what the war became about, and he would eventually sacrifice his beloved Farmer-Labor party to that promise. Merger After 1938, a divided and confused Farmer-Labor party hobbled on without its traditional rural electoral base. The persistent weakness of the Democratic party insured that the Farmer-Labor party would remain the second party in the state, but the Republicans in Minnesota were winning elections by larger margins than Republicans anywhere in the nation, a fact commented on by the Republican National Committee.44 There were murmurs of a possible merger between the Farmer-Laborites and the Democrats. State Democrats had long sought a merger. They were tired of being on the margins of politics and of splitting patronage positions with Farmer-Laborites. The national Democratic organization also favored a merger, since they were tired of having to negotiate patronage between the two parties. The national party also wanted a united effort for Roosevelt’s 1944 bid for an unprecedented fourth term.45 Farmer-Laborites had always rebuffed Democratic advances. Not only was the Farmer-Labor party still pulling in more votes than the Democrats, but most Farmer-Laborites saw their party as a uniquely principled party dedicated to the pursuit of democracy as represented by the New Deal. To merge with state Democrats would be to turn the party over to what many viewed as conservative party hacks. By 1943, however, a variety of internal aims and outside pressures came together to prod Farmer-Laborites to consider a merger. First, noncommunist, moderate Farmer-Laborites thought that a merger might weaken


the power of the Popular Front left-wingers who controlled the party. Second, Popular Front activists themselves were pressured by the national leadership of the CIO and the Communist party to consider a merger in the interests of New Deal victory and wartime unity.46 A third group also pushed for merger. They were political scientists at the University of Minnesota who wrote about and debated the major questions of politics and government with a fervor demanded of the times in which they lived. They were committed liberal New Dealers, but they were outsiders in politics. What eventually drove them into politics was their frustration with the absence of any political vehicle for their version of New Deal liberalism. That this group had any political stock at all was due to a young gogetter named Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey had been a student at the university in the late 1930s, taking politics classes from Evron Kirkpatrick, a young professor who had recently received his Ph.D. from Yale, and others. After receiving a master’s degree in political science at Louisiana State University, Humphrey returned to the Twin Cities in the early forties to continue his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. To support his family, he took a job as an educational director for the WPA (Works Progress Administration). His work with the WPA introduced him to labor leaders across the state, who were impressed with his dynamic speaking style and enthusiasm for the New Deal. He broadened his reputation outside the labor movement by speaking before such organizations as the Kiwanis clubs, the Hallie Q. Brown House, a settlement house for African Americans, the League of Women Voters, and the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. By 1943, his professors and colleagues at the university were urging him to run for office. The Minneapolis Central Labor Union (CLU), a clearinghouse for the city’s AFL unions, asked Humphrey to run for mayor in the 1943 nonpartisan election. The CLU had once played a powerful role in the FarmerLabor party, but since the ascendancy of the CIO in the party, they had retreated to an officially nonpartisan position. The CLU had created its own political committee for the selection of candidates for city offices, and in 1943 they were looking for a “new face” to run for mayor, someone not associated with the recent factionalism and anticommunism, someone with appeal beyond the labor movement. On the suggestion of Vincent Day, an old Farmer-Laborite and trusted political adviser to the labor movement, they asked the young Humphrey, who agreed.


The CLU financed the campaign. Humphrey’s friends and colleagues from the University of Minnesota chipped in. Arthur Naftalin, a graduate student who was writing a dissertation on the Farmer-Labor party, managed the campaign. Democrats also contributed, attracted by the fact that Humphrey was not a labor leader. Humphrey’s dynamic rhetorical style stirred the disaffected, while his easygoing personality won him a wide variety of friends and allies. He was constantly compared to Floyd B. Olson in his ability to bridge social and ideological differences. He finished a close second to the Republican-supported incumbent. His unexpected showing in that election put him in a position to help with the merger between the Democrats and the Farmer-Laborites.47 There were those who resisted the seemingly inevitable pull into twoparty politics and opposed the merger. The remaining rural moderate Farmer-Laborites found the idea of being in the Democratic party so alienating and disturbing that they were forced to turn, with regret, to the Republican party. Congressman Harold Hagen, for instance, the only remaining Farmer-Laborite in Washington in 1944, ran for reelection as a Republican. He still considered himself a “progressive,” but he did not believe he could win as a Democrat in his solidly rural, Lutheran northwestern district.48 Also opposed to the merger was that part of the left wing that believed that the Farmer-Labor party had been a Jeffersonian movement of the common folk against the interests. They were not beholden to directives from outside organizations. Although these old Farmer-Labor veterans opposed the merger, they remained in the merged party in order to continue their struggle for some kind of social democracy. Elmer Benson was among those who were initially loathe to turn the Farmer-Labor party over to the two-party system. The larger aims of the CIO and the Communist party were important enough to him, however, so that after impassioned letters from his friends and much anguish, Benson finally relented. He agreed to do it in the name of wartime unity and Roosevelt’s reelection. Benson was no fan of Roosevelt’s, but a New Deal victory was essential to the survival of the CIO. The Farmer-Labor party’s resolution for amalgamation of the “Liberal Forces” in Minnesota to form the “Farmer-Labor-Democrat party” highlighted concerns about the war and the postwar peace process. Drawn up by an eight-person committee of Benson’s friends and allies, the resolution asserted that the fight against fascism and for lasting peace had to be carried on in the national political arena, and that because a na-


tional third party was not yet feasible, the Farmer-Labor party had decided to merge with the Democrats to most effectively wage that fight. The resolution also spelled out a domestic platform that guaranteed all Americans a decent-paying job, medical care, and housing. After the war, neither the peace process nor the domestic program went the way they had envisioned, and Benson and his left-wing allies would try to salvage their old party from the corruption of the Democrats, but by then it would no longer be their party.49 The new Democratic-Farmer-Labor party (DFL) was finally formed in April 1944. Humphrey and his academic cohort acted as liaisons between the two parties, smoothing over disagreements between the German Catholic machine boss Elmer Kelm and Farmer-Laborite Benson. The negotiations put Democratic boss Kelm at the head of the new DFL party, while left-wing activists John Jacobsen, regional director of the CIO-PAC and a Communist party member, and Paul Tinge and Robert Wishart, both of the United Electrical Workers (CIO), made up the executive committee. The real struggle for control of the new party would be fought out in the county conventions that fall, as former Democrats and former Farmer-Laborites competed against each other for control of the county organizations. Left-wingers gained a footing in the three most populous counties: Hennepin (Minneapolis), Ramsey (St. Paul), and St. Louis (Duluth and the Iron Range). The new party managed to win two congressional seats that fall, in both cases former Democrats from the Democratic stronghold of St. Paul. The state went for Roosevelt, but just barely.50 A Lost Opportunity? For the next four years, 1944–48, the liberal Democrats, united behind Humphrey, waged an anticommunist fight against the left wing for control of the newly merged DFL party. Some historians argue that there was a missed opportunity after the war for real structural change that could have delivered social justice, economic equality, and guaranteed social services for all Americans. These historians point to government planning agencies like the National Resources Planning Board and leftwing movements like those in Minnesota as evidence for the existence and viability of such ideas in the political sphere.51 The political struggle for control of the DFL party would at first glance appear to support the contention that the demise of the Left was not inevitable, that anticom-


munism was used to stamp out a viable political alternative. However, while it is true that anticommunism and the cold war created a repressive political atmosphere, it does not follow that deeper reforms in the economic and political structure were a real possibility. The type of social democracy envisioned by the left wing had already been routed before the war even started. Historians Alan Brinkley and Sidney Milkis have shown that New Dealers within the Roosevelt administration had already made decisions about governmental organization and administration in 1938 that insured a top-down, managerial, state-centered style of reform, focused on maintaining economic growth as opposed to reordering the economic structures of power, and that these decisions marginalized left-leaning plans for a planned economy.52 Historian David Plotke also rejects the idea that there was a liberal repudiation of New Deal reform with the onset of the cold war, arguing that liberals in the forties staunchly defended their already formulated state-centered vision of a Democratic political order against attacks from the Right. Elmer Benson’s brand of class-based labor politics had been discredited in Minnesota as early as 1938. The left wing had no electoral base in the state. Although it controlled the party machinery of the DFL from 1946 to 1948, and although its leader, Benson, commanded memories of the old Farmer-Labor party in its heyday when it had meant allday picnics and democratic struggle, these things could not win statewide elections; these things could not overcome the Left’s association with communists and factionalism. It was all liberal Democrats like Humphrey could do to defend the New Deal gains of the 1930s against right-wing, antistatist attempts to roll them back.53 Benson’s failed struggle against the postwar liberal Democrats was nonetheless significant and deserves to be taken seriously. What the left wing’s control of the DFL party and command of old memories did was force liberal Democrats like Humphrey to find new ways to explain old evils like anticommunism, cooperation with business elites, an alliance with the British Empire, and a coalition with reactionary southern Democrats. Benson’s struggle for class-based, radical politics is important, then, not as an untried path or unrealized possibility, but rather as key to understanding the nature of the political conflict in which Humphrey developed and argued his ideas about politics and his commitment to racial democracy.

CHAPTER TWO The New Two-Party Liberalism

In 1944 the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party’s gubernatorial candidate Barney Allen traveled around Minnesota rousing citizens to the polls with statements like these: “Third parties are essential and necessary whenever the two major parties, as they have at times, offer too little divergence in programs and advocacy . . . ,” and “The two-party system is preferable and a multiple party system is to be avoided.”1 These statements were a far cry from the fiery speeches of Farmer-Labor Governor Floyd B. Olson, which excoriated the rich and denounced capitalism. Written by political science student and Humphrey adviser Arthur Naftalin, the speech exemplifies what historians have identified as a fundamental shift in political sensibility from a grassroots, movement-oriented politics in the 1930s to the postwar top-down, managerial style of politics.2 What is curious, even poignant, about the speech, however, is that it was an effort on the part of academic liberals to explain to Minnesota voters how the two-party system, bolstered by a responsive federal government, could in fact fulfill the aims of the old Farmer-Labor party. These academic liberals, based at the University of Minnesota and centered around Hubert Humphrey, were what David Plotke has called “progressive liberals,” political outsiders, experts, who sought to preserve the beneficent, administrative state embodied in the New Deal reforms of the 1930s.3 Unlike Farmer-Labor party leaders, these liberals were solidly middle-class, and they were academics, as opposed to being farmers, workers, small-business owners, or activists. They facilitated the merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties in 1944 in order to make 19

20 The New Two-Party Liberalism

the Democratic party a vehicle for the New Deal and to align Minnesota politics within the national two-party system. This entailed replacing the machine politics of the state’s Democratic party and the movementoriented politics of the old Farmer-Labor party with their own ideas about how politics worked. It entailed legitimating the two-party system and interest groups in a state that had traditionally eschewed both. The set of ideas they marshaled to accomplish this task developed into what became known as interest-group pluralism. Interest-group pluralism was the theoretical basis of postwar liberalism. It held that politics were best seen as the competition for power between organized interest groups, which in turn determined the shape of the state. Pluralists such as Robert Dahl and Charles Lindblom were later faulted for erasing notions of the public interest, “the state,” and citizen participation from democratic theory.4 Humphrey was not a pluralist in that sense. He always believed in both the public interest and citizen participation, and indeed, hoped that a responsible two-party system would protect the public interest against the formless influence of interest group competition. But his faith in a centralized two-party system legitimated interest groups in politics and delegitimated the decentralized, regional politics of the old Farmer-Laborism. Political Scientists and the State Hubert Humphrey was introduced to the ideas that guided his career in the political science department at the University of Minnesota. In 1937 he took Evron Kirkpatrick’s class on American government. A Yale graduate who had begun teaching at the University of Minnesota in 1935, Kirkpatrick attracted an engaged group of students, who later became involved in launching Humphrey’s career and reforming the Democratic party. They included Orville Freeman, later governor of Minnesota (1954– 60) and secretary of agriculture (1960–69), and Arthur Naftalin, later mayor of Minneapolis. Max Kampelman, who became a diplomat and Democratic insider, came to Minnesota as a conscientious objector during the war. Initially assigned to the army’s starvation experiments at the university, he remained to get his Ph.D.5 In addition to Kirkpatrick, other faculty members who influenced Humphrey were William Anderson, an expert on federalism, Benjamin Lippincott, Earl Latham, and Herbert McClosky (who had initially been Kirkpatrick’s student). Latham and McClosky later became important pluralist theorists. In this regard

The New Two-Party Liberalism 21

it is interesting to note the presence of two other renowned pluralists: Charles E. Lindblom was a faculty member in the 1940s, and Malcolm Moos received his M.A. there in 1938.6 Humphrey graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1939, and received his master’s degree at Louisiana State University in 1941. He returned to Minneapolis, intending to get a Ph.D. in political science, but entered politics instead. These political scientists were part of a long line of reformers who sought to convince the American public of the beneficence of a strong central state, fairly administered by trained social scientists, who alone understood the complexity of modern social and economic problems.7 Like Lester Ward, Charles Beard, and Arthur Bentley before them, they saw modern society as an interwoven, “interdependent” whole, a “web” of social relations. In this complex, interdependent world, the traditions of individualism and decentralization on which American government had been based were irrelevant and, indeed, dangerous.8 The strength and persistence of those traditions cast political scientists as reformers ever preaching the virtues of an efficiently managed centralized state. As Kirkpatrick saw it, their mission was to teach the individual to see himself as part of a vast socio-political complex which is the world to-day, to end his isolation, to so stimulate his imagination that he will come to see society as one vast interrelated whole, in which the problems of geographically or socially remote persons are in some fashion connected to his own. Facts about political institutions and their operation are essential to this end, but facts in themselves are valueless unless fitted into a completed mosaic embracing not only what is, but what ought to be.9

Given the eventual repudiation of the “ought to be” aspect of their profession and the unapologetic turn to empiricism beginning in the mid-1950s, it is interesting to note Kirkpatrick’s attention to the social scientist’s responsibility for acting in the world, not merely analyzing it. Like his New Left critics a generation later, the young Kirkpatrick chastised political scientists for being “blinded by the illusion of objectivity.”10 Far from being dispassionate recorders of the way things were, the young Kirkpatrick, McClosky, and Lindblom sought to change the world they studied.11 The New Deal was the triumph of liberal reformers’ struggle to realize their ideas in American government. Its celebrated, self-conscious pragmatism affirmed their arguments that the centralization of government


was not the result of “greed for power,” as its opponents charged, but rather an imperfect attempt to adapt government to the interdependent reality of modern civilization.12 In his M.A. thesis, an ode to the New Deal completed at Louisiana State University in 1940, Humphrey saw the “trial-and-error” methods of the New Deal as evidence that an enlarged state need not threaten human agency or democratic processes. He compared the New Deal to a football game, wherein the quarterback, Roosevelt, recognized “that every play, every motion, must be executed by men, so that even the most perfectly conceived attack may bog down and fail through imperfect performance.”13 For political scientists in the 1940s, the “social service state” was not the Leviathan of classical political theory or Hitler’s Germany, but rather a harmonizing force in a multigroup society. “Society consists of a multitude of social forces which pull in every direction,” Kampelman told students in Political Science 166, “the balancer of these forces, giving it direction, energy is the state.”14 In this conception the state did not regulate or dictate, but rather balanced, or integrated, the various interests and groups in society. The New Deal government approached conflicts between rich and poor, farmer and worker, North and South, with a vision of equilibrium and integration. Siding with no one segment, it worked to harmonize the whole.15 The idea that the state had an integrative role in society, rather than a regulatory one, was a recognition of the plural nature of society, and it was what set the New Deal apart from earlier efforts to tame the excesses of capitalism. Whereas earlier politicians had sought social peace through the suppression of disruptive groups, such as labor unions, political scientists believed that the government’s integrative function required it to recognize the legitimacy of once marginal groups like labor. The incorporation of labor’s concerns into the political arena illustrated how a strong state fostered democracy rather than suppressed it. Political scientists shared the labor movement’s condemnation of concentrated wealth and power, but they did not see it as an eternal historical injustice (as, for instance, the old Farmer-Laborite Elmer Benson did). Rather, they abhorred concentrated wealth and power because it created a dangerous social imbalance. The imbalance could be remedied through statecentered redistributive economic policies, which restored equilibrium by insuring economic security for all.16 Similarly, they did not see the labor movement as “a new cultural base for democracy,” as did a group


that Humphrey, lifting from Max Lerner’s It’s Later Than You Think (1943), identified as “democratic-collectivists.”17 Rather, they saw labor as another interest group jostling for power in the political arena. The idea that politics was about the adjustment of conflicting group interests was not new of course. But whereas James Madison had worried about the effect of such competition on the public interest (even as he developed a theory about why Americans need not worry about it), by the 1930s group competition was seen as a fact of politics. Arthur Bentley’s The Process of Government (1908) reworked Madison’s fears of interest-group competition into a positive argument about the groupbased nature of society and politics. In the 1920s English political thinkers like Harold Laski focused their analysis on groups, as opposed to the state, arguing that individuals identified more with churches and unions than with the abstraction of the state.18 Pendleton Herring’s 1929 Group Representation before Congress is generally seen as the beginning of American pluralism, and its group-based view of politics is taken for granted in Harold Lasswell’s Politics: Who Gets What Where How (1936). Thus, even before those works that developed a “group-based” theory of all political interaction, such as David Truman’s The Governmental Process (1950) and Earl Latham’s The Group Basis of Politics (1952), most political scientists believed that politics was about competing groups of interests.19 But the idea was still anathema to grassroots activists and radicals, not just in Minnesota but throughout the nation. The New Deal’s recognition of the way politics “really worked”—in terms of group competition and power—supported political scientists and liberal propagandists’ contention that New Deal reforms were not “ideological.” In the fullness of time, we can see that that contention itself was part of an ideology, an ideology that I am right now describing. But what they meant, as they explained so often, was that unlike the Left, they had no predetermined utopian end, and unlike the Right, they were not invested in preserving the old order, which they felt was based on an ideology of “individualism.”20 They positioned themselves against, not between, ideologues on the Left and the Right. In their minds, both extremes held a rigid political commitment to ideologies that could not accommodate the diversity of groups in a democratic society. Even the briefly influential economic planners and technocrats, who envisioned a “planned society” wherein the state allotted resources and determined the production and distribution of goods and services, eventually proved


too rigid for liberals like Humphrey. Liberal proponents of the New Deal state presented themselves as open-minded, flexible, pragmatic, and experimental, as opposed to “ideological,” which for them meant rigid, inflexible, dogmatic. When attacked as confused or inconsistent, they used those attacks as an opportunity to explain the problem with ideology and the common sense of their own position.21 The liberal reconception of Left and Right as “ideological” defined a new center in the American political spectrum that was distinctly more “left” than anything the nation had seen before, if by left we mean state responsibility for its citizens’ economic and social well-being. Despite disagreements with the Marxian Left about the future of capitalism, liberal proponents of the New Deal state shared the Left’s critique of unrestrained capitalism, its rhetoric of economic justice, and its faith in the democratic promise of grassroots activism. They saw the main threat to American democracy as the gray-haired, hard-hearted Republicans and southern Democrats who feared the empowerment of the federal government and who sanctified the idea of “rugged individualism.” Thus, before their ideological differences came to a head in the 1940s, leftwingers and liberals were often allied in political struggles against the Right. The rejection of the “ideological” derived in large part from new understandings of how the economy worked. After 1945 the economic doctrine known as Keynesianism would dominate the thinking of American economists and liberals, as well as U.S. economic policy. As theorized by British economist John Maynard Keynes, Keynesianism held that the key to economic growth was consumption, or demand, and that governments could promote consumption through public spending and fiscal policy that put money into the pockets of consumers.22 Although Keynesianism as a doctrine did not become widely accepted until after World War II, and although New Dealers and academics in the 1930s were undecided about the actual form of state intervention in the economy, some of the ideas and assumptions later codified by Keynesianism were part of the New Deal repertoire, and hence part of political scientists’ thinking about the role of the state and the future of capitalism. Two ideas especially resonated with political scientists’ self-consciously nonideological, state-centered, self-mechanized balancing system. The first was the idea of “purchasing power.” During the 1930s economists and activists alike began to attribute the cause of the depression to lack


of demand. The problem was not that the factories were not producing, but rather that no one was buying the goods. As the ubiquitous commentator Stuart Chase put it, “Today we cannot buy back a third of what our labor, our farms and factories are clamoring to produce.”23 Economists such as George Soule thought economic policy ought to aim to put money into the hands of would-be consumers, and advocated job security and higher wages. Workers, farmers, consumers, and their advocates agreed. Their arguments for higher wages and stable incomes no longer seemed selfish and divisive because by increasing “mass purchasing power,” such measures contributed to the economic wellbeing of the nation. Both rhetorically and in practice, the idea of “mass purchasing power” advocated a redistribution of wealth and hence carried the tone of righteous critique so prevalent in the 1930s. But the idea itself was an acceptance of the capitalist system, a rejection of foolhardy “isms.” The second idea that resonated with political scientists was the state’s “invisible hand” role in insuring purchasing power for the masses. That is, the state did not have to interfere in the private business of business to create economic stability. Rather, it could adjust the context in which economic activity occurred through public spending, taxation, and other measures designed to encourage mass consumption.24 For political scientists who saw the social service state as a harmonizer of the whole, rather than a regulator of the parts, this was both an ideal and a pragmatic economic policy. The Two-Party System Although the conception of the state as an integrative, benevolent force alleviated some theoretical discomfort, the political scientists at the University of Minnesota, like political scientists in general, worried about democratic participation in government as government became more distant, more centralized, and more in the hands of academics like themselves. Even as they promoted professional administrators in government, political scientists fretted that such experts displaced elected legislators.25 On his graduate school application, young Max Kampelman wrote that he was interested “in relating the need for ‘experts’ in modern government with democratic political theory.”26 How to reconcile top-down managerial government with democratic processes was an old dilemma, but it was especially acute in the 1940s because of the new


threat of totalitarianism. As William Anderson asked in a 1942 address to the American Political Science Association, “What right have we . . . to assume that a highly active, powerful national government will in the long run be amenable to popular control?” What kept the “modern trend toward strong executive leadership” from becoming “a drift into dictatorship”?27 An expert on federalism and local government, Anderson devoted his career to studying what happened to local and state governments when federal administrators took over their functions.28 These concerns led to an interest in political parties. As mediators between citizens and politics, Congress and the president, and interest groups and government, parties seemed to facilitate the entire political process, and might hold the key to keeping those processes democratic. As political scientist E. E. Schattschneider put it, “The most important distinction in modern political philosophy, the distinction between democracy and dictatorship, can be made best in terms of party politics.”29 Dictatorships tolerated no opposition, while the party system insured organized opposition to the ruling party and preserved citizens’ freedom of association. Pendleton Herring’s The Politics of Democracy: American Parties in Action (1940), Schattschneider’s Party Government (1942), and a new edition of Charles E. Merriam and Harold T. Gosnell’s The American Party System (1940) all opened with statements about totalitarianism and the importance of parties to democracy. Parties were a popular topic of study at the University of Minnesota. Ivan Hinderaker, later an expert on party politics at UCLA, wrote about changes in the Minnesota Republican party. Naftalin’s dissertation was on the Farmer-Labor party. Robert Morlan’s dissertation was on the Nonpartisan League, which was not a party but temporarily flourished in the two-party system.30 Kirkpatrick’s students were particularly interested in Harold Laski, the English pluralist and socialist whose work on parliamentary processes and party systems supported his larger effort to legislate a socialist program into being, a “revolution by consent,” as he called it.31 This suggests another reason for political scientists’ interest in parties. To the extent that many political scientists were also liberal reformers, they alleviated anxiety about the similarities between top-down administrative government and the new totalitarian dictatorships by seeking to enact their programs through the same institutions and processes that other “pressure groups” used, not from the top down, nor really from the bottom


up, but rather horizontally. The liberal preoccupation with politics and the political process had led to confusion between liberal political maneuvering and liberal principles. Detractors often accused liberals of endorsing civil rights, for instance, for “political reasons,” or for the votes rather than principle. This was a moot point because the liberal principle was about solidifying a social-service state democratically, through the party system. Influenced by Laski’s work on England’s disciplined parties, Humphrey, Kirkpatrick, Naftalin, and Kampelman saw the party system not only as a way to connect citizens to government but also, potentially, as a way to democratically translate issues into policy. Evidence for this claim lies less in their writings, although it is a theme of Naftalin’s dissertation, than in their efforts to change the Democratic party into an “issues-based” party. The person most closely associated with the idea of “responsible party government” was Schattschneider. In 1942 Schattschneider published his influential Party Government, which was later characterized as a manifesto “celebrating party government and popular rule.”32 Schattschneider’s insistence that parties could counter the power of private interest groups and that they defined the public interest distinguishes him from those who became pluralists. Indeed, the pluralists criticized his idealism.33 But that difference should not obscure the ways in which the rhetoric of his ideas—its self-conscious pragmatism, its tough-guy pretence of understanding parties as they actually operate, not as we would like them to be—foreshadowed a pluralist discourse of politics. His vision was built on the necessary destruction of such oppositional traditions as anti-party movements, third parties, and nonpartisanship. Because his ideas were reflected in Humphrey’s reformation of the DFL, they are worth considering in some detail. Arguing against traditional views that partisanship corrupted the democratic process, Schattschneider explained that the two-party system in fact distilled and organized the vast array of competing economic and political interests in American society. It created order out of confusion. It formed majorities out of minorities. It presented the voter with two clear-cut choices. And, thus, it helped modern government, which had “grown great by meeting the demands placed on it,” identify those pressures and demands that represented the public interest.34 Like almost every political observer at the time, Schattschneider marveled at the multitude of associations and organizations Americans formed (20,


25–26). For Schattschneider the right to join and organize such groups, which he called the right of “free association,” was a defining factor of modern democracy for it involved not only the right to join groups of one’s own choosing but also the right to organize. As he noted, “People do not usually become formidable to governments until they are organized” (28). Moreover, these “voluntary organizations of [the citizen’s] own creation” provided a link between the individual citizen and his (or her) government (28). Defined against totalitarian dictatorships, Schattschneider’s concept of “free association” transformed the much-maligned interest or pressure group from a selfish frustrator of the peoples’ will into a “voluntary group” that translated that will into government. Schattschneider was wary of pressure groups without the restraining girdle of centralized parties, but his acknowledgment of them as one of the “raw materials of politics” legitimated their presence in American politics at a time when the concept was still being resisted by old FarmerLaborites in Minnesota. Parties and pressure groups countered totalitarian tendencies by creating what social scientists called “cross-pressures.” Social scientists attributed the rise of totalitarianism in Europe to alienated, disaffected mass populations who sought security and order in the all-encompassing ideologies of a Hitler or a Stalin. In explaining why Americans had not fallen prey to totalizing movements, they pointed to the remarkable number of organizations in which Americans participated, an observation first made by Tocqueville. Americans were joiners, they said, joining churches, unions, PTAs, mutual aid societies, professional organizations, lodges, and baseball teams. The significant feature of these diverse groups was the shared, overlapping memberships between them. Americans had not succumbed to any one ideology because they belonged simultaneously to a wide array of different groups and were thus constantly exposed to various points of view and different kinds of people.35 Schattschneider argued that the two-party system encouraged the “cross-pressure” function in politics. The purpose of parties was to build coalitions. That process required people with different, perhaps even conflicting, interests to cooperate and compromise with each other. What Schattschneider called the “cruel necessities of compromise” were a good thing because they prevented any one group from capturing control of the government (62). Revisiting Madison’s observations in the context of twentieth-century totalitarianism, Schattschneider reminded


readers that the diversity and large numbers of groups in America insured that no one group could ever constitute a majority by itself.36 Schattschneider tore down the shibboleths of Progressive-era reformers. Mocking the idea that “the people” had somehow wrested the right to vote from a recalcitrant government, Schattschneider argued that the competition between power-hungry parties had extended suffrage.37 Whereas reformers saw parties as associations in which citizens were supposed to have a controlling role, he saw them more as sports teams that one supported but did not wish to control (59). He proposed a model “such as that of the ‘good will’ relation of merchant and his customers” (60). In this model, earlier reforms that had used the state to protect members’ rights to control the party—such as direct primary legislation—were obsolete. In language that reflected the new importance of consumer-oriented thinking, as well as the attraction of self-regulating models, Schattschneider likened the party system to the free market system: “The parties do not need laws to make them sensitive to the wishes of the voters any more than we need laws compelling merchants to please their customers” (60). He dismissed third parties. They were not real parties but merely “educational movements” (68). He defined real parties as “an organized bid for power,” and power as “control of the government” (35). Thus, unless a party was in control of government, or had created a general belief that it would take control of government, it was not a real party. What passed for third parties had failed in America because of the dominance of the two-party system, which in turn was the result of a winner-take-all election system, single-member districts (one district for each representative in Congress), and the electoral college. The upshot of this election system was that, unlike in England for instance, there was no proportional representation of the popular vote, either in congressional elections or in the increasingly important presidential elections. To win elections—a seat in Congress, the presidency—a party needed only the slimmest margin of victory; hence the system exaggerated the victory of the strongest party while discriminating against lesser ones. Those so-called third parties that had seen some modicum of success were thus always sectional. Their regionally concentrated voting strength could secure seats in Congress but could not control government. The sectional nature of these lesser parties insured that they would never win the presidency, an office that had become more powerful under


Roosevelt’s tenure and was now seen as the main link between the people and government.38 The idea that third parties embodied grassroots hopes for change, that they were a channel for democratic action, had no place in Schattschneider’s analysis. Nonetheless, he cared about democracy and peoples’ wishes being justly represented in government, and he offered something just as idealistic in the place of third-party activism: centralized parties. For Schattschneider, centralized parties led by informed, responsible leaders were the most efficient, democratic way to translate the will of the majority into policy and to curb the power of pressure groups. While pressure groups represented the interests of different groups of citizens to their government, the process was only democratic if those interests were properly distilled and organized into majorities by parties. If not, if pressure groups influenced individual congressmen, then the will of a minority controlled policy. “Government by interest groups who have never dealt successfully with the majority and never submitted themselves to an election,” Schattschneider wrote, “is undemocratic and dangerous” (193). Pressure groups had only their own narrow interests in mind. That was to be expected, hence the need for strong parties. Strong, centralized parties not only formed majorities out of blocs of minorities but also had the authority to insure that their politicians did not succumb to pressure groups. It is on this point that Schattschneider differs with pluralists, who were content to let the competition of interest groups cancel each other out. Schattschneider adds the mediating force of parties, which considered the problems of government broadly, submitted their fate to an election, and were responsible to the public (193). Although Schattschneider defined a party as “an organized attempt to get power,” parties in America had never actually controlled government as they were supposed to (36). Party lines rarely held on important votes: “a straight party vote, aligning one party against the other is the exception rather than the rule” (130). National party leaders had no authority in their parties. Local bosses could maintain party discipline, but they knew little and cared less about public policy or the broad national issues involved in national government. The bosses’ power, frittered away on patronage and favors, retarded party centralization. Schattschneider blamed localism, which he held to be “a synthetic product manufactured by the local political machines for purposes of their own” (142).


Despite the fact that party centralization did not describe the actual working of the American party system, Schattschneider thought it was possible, and for the same historical reason that it was necessary: the growth of presidential authority under the New Deal. Only strong parties in Congress could effectively counter the growth in presidential authority. The increase in presidential authority also showed Americans’ willingness to forsake traditions. The very conditions that had given rise to the New Deal boded well for party government. The New Deal’s recognition of the interests of labor unions and its use of the state to respond to citizens’ needs heralded a transition from a politics based on ethnic allegiance or section to what political scientists termed “class politics,” meaning that voters were starting to vote on the basis of their economic interests.39 Political scientists identified the change as the New Deal realignment, and anticipated a party system organized around the rational economic interests of organized groups. Schattschneider’s ideas were important to the liberals at the University of Minnesota. Kirkpatrick served on the American Political Science Association’s Committee on Parties (1946–50), which was chaired by Schattschneider and which produced “Toward a More Responsible TwoParty System.” Published in 1950, this report recommended disciplined, centralized, issues-based parties to counteract the increasing power of the presidency and interest groups.40 By then a senator, Humphrey invited Schattschneider to discuss the report with labor leaders, party leaders, and government officials.41 Reflecting on his first year in the Senate, and particularly his struggles against the southern Democrats, Humphrey called for more disciplined parties.42 Schattschneider’s analysis of the pitfalls of nonpartisanship informed Naftalin’s assessment of the FarmerLabor party in the Minnesota legislature as well as his efforts to reinstate party labels in the state’s nonpartisan legislature.43 Together, these ideas about government, the economy, and politics informed the liberals at the University of Minnesota, who were increasingly disenchanted with the ideological radicalism of the left wing and the old Farmer-Labor party. The pluralist ideas about the group-based nature of society and activist government allowed them to adapt the noble parts of Minnesota’s third-party impulse to a new narrative about the democratic nature of the two-party system. While critical of third parties in general, these political scientists did not condemn the fondly


remembered Farmer-Labor past. Rather they reinterpreted it to fit their conception of the two-party system. A good example of this reinterpretation is Naftalin’s dissertation, “A History of the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota,” which presented a model for understanding third parties as catalysts within the two-party system and illustrates how these soon-tobe politicians adapted Minnesota’s third-party tradition to a new twoparty present. Naftalin saw the Farmer-Labor party as a success but not for the same reasons that old Farmer-Laborites did. Old Farmer-Laborites saw their party as the triumph of “the people” against “the interests.” For Naftalin, the Farmer-Labor party’s success represented the triumph of the twoparty system. In his theory of political change Naftalin posited that when the two major parties became moribund and neglected the interests and needs of ordinary citizens, then these citizens organized a movement, often in the form of a third party, in order to put their interests and needs back into the political arena. As the movement or third party gained voters and influence, one of the two major parties would embrace and adapt the hitherto neglected demands of the movement in order to effectively compete against the other party.44 In this way the two-party system was flexible and able to effectively accommodate change. Naftalin criticized the Farmer-Labor party’s misguided belief in class solidarity as an organizational category. The labor organizers who helped organize the Farmer-Labor party in the 1920s tried to overcome the deep ethnic antagonisms between Irish and German Catholics and Scandinavian Lutherans by bringing together farmers, workers, and other people on the basis of a class solidarity defined against the railroads, mills, and Republican party. Naftalin emphasized the difficulty labor leaders had in sustaining class solidarity between workers and farmers. The organizations that were supposed to bring the two groups together often ended up exacerbating the divisions between them by pitting the two groups against each other in intraparty battles over the direction of organization and strategies.45 The unlikely hero of Naftalin’s dissertation was A. C. Townley, founder of the successful farmers’ organization the Nonpartisan League, the forerunner of the Farmer-Labor party. For many, Townley epitomized the messianic shirtsleeves orator of a bygone era, part buffoon, part demagogue, and all salesman.46 For Naftalin, however, Townley was an unro-


mantic pragmatist, who recognized that the farmers in the Nonpartisan League were not a movement but an interest group. Naftalin praised Townley’s efficient, centralized methods of organizing North Dakota farmers as an independent “mobile voting bloc,” which worked within the existing two-party system.47 Naftalin attributed the Nonpartisan League’s remarkable success to Townley’s decision not to form a separate third party. Instead, Townley had created a tightly controlled, independent organization of dues-paying members, which would deliver members’ votes to the candidates and parties who supported their program. Echoing Schattschneider’s analysis of pressure groups and parties, Naftalin praised Townley’s understanding that to be effective, the Nonpartisan League had to remain independent from any one political party.48 Naftalin’s interpretation of Townley and the Nonpartisan League not only validated the two-party system, it located the idea of the interest group within the framework of an indigenous American protest movement. Providing a usable past for the much maligned interest group was essential as the political scientists sought to rebuild a two-party system in this three-party state. Political Science in Action These ideas about nonideological politics, interest groups, and parties informed the political scientists’ attempts to build a noncommunist, “issues-based” liberal Democratic party in Minnesota. As mayor of Minneapolis (1945–49) and DFL Senate candidate (1948), Humphrey selfconsciously cultivated a demeanor of ideological flexibility modeled on Franklin Roosevelt’s celebrated pragmatism. Humphrey excelled at crossclass cooperation and principled compromise. It is what he chose to publicize about himself, and what political observers noticed about him. His publicist for his 1948 senatorial campaign wrote: He is the damndest paradox in politics I have ever seen. Although called a labor candidate, he gets ten times as many invitations to speak before business groups as he does labor groups. Also unusual in a politician, he seems determined to take a point of view opposite that of his audience.49

A New Republic article on the up-and-coming mayor likewise gushed about him as “a surging political paradox whom liberals elected but conservatives like.”50 Here then was a politician who practiced the flexibility,


the pursuit of consensus, the fair-minded juggling of competing interests that political scientists deemed necessary to the democratic processes of the new social-service state. The centrality of Schattschneider’s ideas in Humphrey’s political universe can also be seen in liberals’ constant attention to the merits of the two-party system. In part this was due to the Left’s attempt to align the DFL with Henry Wallace’s Progressive party in 1948, a situation to which I will return in later chapters. But it also helped make two-party Democratic liberalism stick in this state that had always channeled its reformist zeal into third-party movements. Humphrey and DFL party organizers were lecturing about the limitations of third parties in 1946, before Wallace announced the formation of the Progressive party, and into the 1950s, long after the defeat of Wallace’s third party.51 Early DFL campaign materials showed an unusual concern with justifying the two-party system and clarifying the separate role of independent pressure groups. Naftalin’s 1944 speech for DFL gubernatorial candidate Barney Allen, which began this chapter, for instance, was a nineteen-point summation of his dissertation, reiterating the reasons a two-party system was preferable to either a multiparty or one-party system.52 Likewise, Humphrey’s speeches explained how the two-party system was the best political route to insuring the gains citizens had made through the FarmerLabor party. In speeches Humphrey claimed that the national New Deal state was the realization of Farmer-Labor efforts and hopes. He explained to voters that a third party had been necessary in the 1930s, but now that the interests of the Farmer-Labor party’s old constituencies— farmers, workers, and the lower-middle classes—were being addressed within the framework of the two-party system, a third party was no long necessary.53 A desire to legitimate the party system also informed liberals’ campaign to reinstate party labels in the Minnesota legislature. Reformers had banned party labels in the legislature during the Progressive era.54 The new liberals, however, felt the nonpartisan system undermined party prestige and responsibility. Echoing Schattschneider, they argued that without a centralized authority that organized various pressure groups into a coherent coalition, the individual legislator became a “sort of freelance artist.”55 Without the dependable support of other party members, an individual legislator succumbed to local or regional pressures that forced him or her to change positions, and thus confused the voter.


Naftalin argued that the nonpartisan system helped conservatives maintain their power, and cited it as the major factor in the Farmer-Labor party’s failure to get its main reforms through the Minnesota legislature.56 Resistance from the Left The conflict between the left wing and Humphrey is remembered as being about Truman’s anti-Soviet foreign policy and anticommunism. And it was. But fundamental disagreements about political organization existed even before the cold war became an issue. Reflecting the tough, no-nonsense pragmatism of the postwar years, the political scientists frankly endorsed the idea that parties were about interests. They scoffed at the notion that parties embodied ideals. As they lectured to citizens’ groups across the state, “ideals” were merely a rationalization, a mask, for the interests that parties represented.57 Elmer Benson and the Left, on the other hand, believed a true party, an effective party, embodied a set of ideals that inspired loyalty and dedication. They had deplored the sacrifice of Farmer-Labor principles in the pursuit of votes. They had opposed the “All-Party Political Committees” that swept Floyd B. Olson into office in the 1930s.58 Especially for the old Farmer-Labor Left, a party was not so much a political organization as a mission. As Susie Stageberg described it, “We felt that in the Farmer-Labor party we were at the very grass roots of human endeavor and aspirations and that through our medium the humblest might voice his needs.”59 Farm leader John Bosch saw the Farmer-Labor party as “a crusading force, rather than just a political organization or political aspirance.”60 They believed in a Jeffersonian, localized way of organizing politics that was somehow connected to geography, even as they endorsed vaguely socialistic ideas about a large state. The disagreement about the purpose and scope of a party can be seen in the different interpretations of the 1944 merger. Humphrey and his liberal allies understood the merger between the Democratic and FarmerLabor parties as part of the New Deal political realignment, which ended the sectionalism of the nineteenth-century party system and made the Democrats a national party.61 For Humphrey, and political scientists and historians after him, the programmatic approach embodied by the New Deal represented a new kind of politics based on people’s economic interests, not their class or sectional loyalties. Through state-centered economic policies and programs, the New Deal could represent the


interests of several different groups of people, farmers, workers, smallbusiness owners, African Americans, without actually having to unite them within a movement-oriented rubric of protest. Historical particularities in Minnesota had resulted in something called a DemocraticFarmer-Labor party, but the liberals who would define Democratic politics in Minnesota understood that the DFL party was really a revived Democratic party. Minnesota had shed its third-party anomalies and joined the rest of the northern states in a two-party, pluralist system based on programmatic interests rather than class, ethnicity, or section.62 Conversely, Benson and the old Farmer-Labor Left viewed the merger as a necessary sacrifice in the fight against fascism. They had assented to the merger in the name of wartime unity, but in their mind it was a temporary stopgap until a real third-party movement could be restored.63 Like the political scientists, they supported Roosevelt’s New Deal, even sacrificing their beloved party for it, but unlike the political scientists, they understood it as a first step to making the United States a true social democracy. They believed the New Deal was about helping the “havenots” in their historic battle against the rich and powerful in American society. Almost everything about Benson’s old Farmer-Labor party was an affront to the ideas of the political scientists. The failure to distinguish between labor leaders and party leaders embroiled the Farmer-Labor party in the labor movement’s messy factionalism.64 Benson’s ideological rigidity prevented the reconciliation of competing viewpoints in the party and drove away those voters and interest groups with whom he disagreed.65 This left the party weakened and dangerously, according to Schattschneider’s analysis, of one ideological perspective. Communist infiltration of the party under Benson’s leadership further alienated voters and groups who had once been loyal to it. For their part, the left-wing faction of the new DFL party resented Humphrey’s much vaunted ideological flexibility, which they saw as oldfashioned political opportunism. Benson despised this quality in Roosevelt as much as Humphrey admired it.66 Left-wingers denounced Mayor Humphrey’s consensus-building rhetoric and his efforts to reconcile corporate interests with workers’ needs.67 They believed that any reconciliation in which corporations retained control of the power and wealth was automatically against workers’ best interests. They opposed Hum-


phrey’s conflation of the DFL with the national Democratic party and reminded Minnesotans of the corruption of the two-party system in general and of the Democratic party in particular.68 They recoiled at the idea of the DFL party as a “mobilizer of majorities” and held on to the notion that their DFL party might yet lead the fight for real social democracy. Thus, even before the cold war and anticommunism forced the leftwing faction to organize behind Henry Wallace’s anti–cold war Progressive party, issues of political organization and philosophy divided the Left and the new liberals. When combined with third-party memories, the strength of the Left, while not great, was great enough to force Humphrey and his liberal allies to fight for their vision of politics. In doing so, they would be forced to more clearly articulate what was new about postwar liberalism. The Consequences and Possibilities of Two-Party Liberal Pluralism Humphrey’s vision of a strong central state held in check by the democratic competition of interest groups in the two-party political arena was eventually realized in Minnesota. Originating in the pages of academic treatises, it was strengthened and honed as Humphrey and his liberal allies defended it against the conservative Right and the radical Left, justified it within the memory of a third-party tradition, and exercised it in the political arena. Humphrey’s style of liberal politics was thus a heightened, more intense version of the Democratic political order that David Plotke describes in his book. Humphrey’s style of liberal interestgroup politics would be labeled, variously, “egghead,” “programmatic,” or “issues-oriented.” The term programmatic was usually deployed to distinguish it from traditional machine politics. In 1959 journalist William S. White identified programmatic politics as people voting on national issues and national platforms, and saw it as a midwestern phenomenon, “developed by the Humphrey people in Minnesota.”69 Political scientist John Fenton classified states’ political traditions as either patronage-based or “issues-oriented.” By “issues-oriented,” Fenton meant that there existed an informed electorate that was able to relate governmental programs to specific candidates and parties, and vote according to a set of issues that affected their lives. Fenton noted that the idea that the competition of interest groups and responsive government created an informed


citizenry was a happy ideal, seldom fulfilled, except in Minnesota and Wisconsin.70 Fenton does not mention it, but those were both states with strong third-party traditions. Since the 1960s, interest-group pluralism and the managerial “socialservice” state have come under attack. Most famously, Theodore Lowi attacked liberals for their moral failure to clearly define the state itself. Lowi argued that while postwar liberals justified the need for an activist state, they purposefully and necessarily left the final form of the state to be decided by the competition of private interest groups. This led to a crisis in public authority during the 1960s. The state and the so-called public sector had expanded, but with no clear sense of what they stood for and hence with no clear sense of legitimacy. The government itself was ultimately reduced to little more than another interest group.71 Grant McConnell likewise criticized the dominant role of interest groups in American politics as the illegitimate interposition of unaccountable private power in ostensibly public institutions.72 The liberal pluralist understanding of politics also led to the increased power of the presidency at the expense of Congress and the parties. Historically Congress and the parties had been representational institutions that, however incompletely, connected citizens to the democratic process of government and stood as a check against presidential power. Arguing that administrators and managers in the presidential office could more effectively meet the organized needs of individual citizens, Roosevelt and his administration successfully restructured and empowered the executive branch of government, thus neutralizing Congress and the parties. Many political scientists now point to the decline in the importance of parties as a major reason for citizen apathy about politics.73 Indeed, an elitist, top-down, consensus-oriented postwar liberalism, propagated by liberal ideologues who were blind to their own ideologies, has been blamed for much that has gone wrong in America since the 1960s. The undemocratic consequences of liberal pluralism have diverted historians’ attention from the possibilities interest-group pluralism held for civil rights activists and those Americans interested in combating racism and group prejudices. Although Democratic interest-group theorists never developed theories for understanding racism and civil rights in American society, their ideas about the state and the group-based nature of society overlapped and interacted with the ideas, rhetoric, and political context of civil rights activists and antiracism educators.


Civil rights activists looked to an activist federal government for antilynching and fair employment legislation. They tried to organize African Americans around economic interests, namely fair employment, in the same way farmers organized around parity, and unions around opposition to the Taft-Hartley Act. They pinned their hopes for political recognition on the winner-take-all two-party electoral system in which black Americans voting together in a couple of key northern states could decide the presidential election. Moreover, antiracist educators found Humphrey’s pluralist ideas about politics similar to their own ideas about “intergroup relations.” Like the liberal discourse on politics, the rhetoric of “intergroup relations” sought to bridge differences and resolve conflicts between different groups in American society. Like the liberals, intergroup educators looked to the federal government to help ameliorate conflicts between groups through redistributive economic policies that would restore harmony and equilibrium among the groups. The relationship between civil rights, pluralism, and the postwar Democratic party is a complicated one, which for our purposes begins during World War II, when Minnesotans suddenly and inexplicably became interested in intergroup relations and antiracism.

CHAPTER THREE Antiracism and the Politics of Unity

In the years surrounding World War II a wave of tolerance and understanding swept over Minnesota’s civic consciousness. The Republican Governor Edward Thye created an interracial commission to educate Minnesotans about the perils of racism and religious prejudice. Civic and religious groups encouraged citizens to take a “Pledge of Unity,” to never judge a whole group on the delinquent actions of a few, and to treat all people according to their individual worth. Even farm journals decried racism.1 Civic officials attributed the sudden urgency about race relations to a combination of Scandinavian moral acuity and farsighted efforts to prevent racial violence of the sort occurring in Los Angeles and Detroit. But Scandinavians were no more moral than other Americans about this issue, and Minnesota was hardly the racial powder keg they imagined. Unlike other northern cities, neither Minneapolis nor St. Paul saw large increases in their black population during the 1940s. In 1940 there were 9,928 Negroes in the state. By 1950 that number had risen to 14,022, still about one-half of 1 percent of the state population.2 Detroit’s African American population, on the other hand, increased from 150,000 in 1940 to 220,000 in 1950.3 In addition to the 9,928 Negroes, the Governor’s Interracial Commission included as populations of concern 12,528 Indians, 550 Chinese, and 1,447 Japanese Americans, who had been relocated to Minnesota by the War Relocation Authority after Pearl Harbor.4 Despite widespread discrimination and prejudice, there had been no reported incidents of violence involving any of these groups during the war. Nonetheless there 40

Antiracism and the Politics of Unity 41

was a tremendous amount of interest in these tiny groups of newly identified “racial” minorities that was distinct from earlier concerns about “national” or “religious” minorities in a state where as late as 1930 more than 50 percent of the population was foreign-born or of foreign-born parentage, and where the most common forms of discrimination were anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism.5 Antiracism education reconfigured concepts of “race,” “color,” and “ethnicity.” In Minnesota, where ethnic, religious, and class tensions had defined politics, this reconfiguration had the effect of softening these old tensions. Although ultimately shallow, attention to “the Negro” formed an oasis of cooperation between once quarreling groups of Minnesotans, bringing together Catholics and Lutherans, Jews and Christians, Yankees and eastern Europeans, and labor and management. This cooperation on interracial panels and antiracist workshops did not completely erase differences between these groups, nor was it the only factor in diminishing once implacable divisions. Nonetheless, it did contribute to transforming Minnesota’s political landscape in ways that comported with Humphrey’s vision of liberal, group-based politics. Antiracism Education in Wartime America Wartime concerns about domestic unrest and violence and the need to unify a diverse population sparked a vigorous government-directed public awareness campaign against racial and religious bigotry. Historian Daniel Kryder has argued that this official interest in racism did not arise from a genuine desire for racial justice but rather was motivated by the need to mobilize industrial production and preserve party power.6 Nonetheless, social scientists in the emergent field of “intergroup relations” were delighted by the government’s unprecedented recognition of the dangers of racial and religious prejudice.7 The army consulted the NAACP about training American troops to respect the cultures in the areas of the world where they would be stationed. The Office of War Information gave Hollywood directors strict guidelines about avoiding racial and religious stereotyping in their films, and offered suggestions about how to incorporate racial and ethnic minorities into scenes.8 Organizations like the Bureau of Inter-Cultural Education in New York distributed pamphlets, filmstrips, and “how-to” instructions for intergroup workshops to schools, churches, civic organizations, and libraries throughout the country.9

42 Antiracism and the Politics of Unity

These educational materials reprinted themes from two widely distributed books by anthropologists, Ruth Benedict’s Race: Science and Politics (1940) and Ashley Montagu’s Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (1942). Gunnar Myrdal’s landmark An American Dilemma (1944) was also a much cited text in the field of intergroup relations, although its weighty sociological data and 1,483 pages kept it from being read by a popular audience, as the other two books were.10 Echoing the Myrdal thesis, educators and activists argued that racism and religious bigotry contradicted the “Judeo-Christian” and democratic principles that guided American life. Thus, the deleterious effects of racism were borne not only by its victims but also by the moral foundations of the nation.11 In addition to moral damage, racism and bigotry also threatened national security. Japanese and German propaganda exploited American racial tensions in their broadcasts to colonial peoples in Asia and Africa. Such propaganda could as well be used to arouse resentment and anger in America’s own racial minorities. Racism also contradicted the government’s war aims as stated in the Atlantic Charter, and thus undermined the credibility of American leadership in the postwar world.12 Racial categories in America were already in upheaval when wartime antiracist educators set out to expose the racist fallacies that had legitimated eugenics experiments, immigration restrictions, and other discriminatory legislation. As Matthew Frye Jacobson has shown, whereas once there had been many “races” in the United States, defined as Celts, Hebrews, Slavs, Teutons, Anglo-Saxons, Mediterranean, and other now antiquated categories, during the first half of the twentieth century these once racially distinct categories were gradually collapsed into a larger race called “Caucasian.” There they became “white,” as opposed to Celt or Hebrew, and an “ethnicity,” as opposed to a “race.”13 This was a gradual process, begun by anthropologists like Franz Boas as early as 1900 in response to the grossly racist pseudoscientific theories about fixed racial hierarchies. Scientific racism held that something called race, manifested in physical characteristics, determined human beings’ moral character and mental capacity and could be scientifically ranked according to worth. Boas attacked these theories by proving that there were no biological differences between these so-called races. Rather, what differences existed were the result of different cultural practices and environments. There were physical differences among human beings, such as skin color or hair texture, which could be classified in terms of “race,” but there


were only five or even as few as three main divisions that could be recognized as “races.” Moreover, these divisions denoted physical difference and had nothing to do with the moral, intellectual, or psychological traits of individual people, nor, given the history of migration in the world, were they pure or fixed. By the 1930s, anthropologists and sociologists were arguing that so-called racial categories were fluid, mutable, and socially determined by things like antimiscegenation laws and economic imperatives.14 Ruth Benedict and wartime antiracist educators favored a model of humanity that featured just “three great races”: Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoloid. As Jacobson notes, this slimmed-down model of the human races contributed to the collapse of formerly distinct biological “races” into culturally determined ethnicities, as well as the creation of one great physically defined white race.15 The unintended consequence of this for American race relations was to draw even more rigidly the biological and categorical divide between “white” and “black,” even as it was argued that biological differences such as skin color were meaningless. Although wartime antiracism educators retained a concept of race as denoting physical traits, they did not believe that physical differences were important in understanding race and racism in American life. Rather, they believed that political and economic interests dictated race relations. As Benedict pointed out, racial persecution was not about race, it was about persecution.16 In order to stem racial conflict one had to understand conflict, not race. Conflict between groups was rooted in national rivalries, defense of the status quo by the rich, poverty, unemployment, and war (Benedict, Race, 237–38). Conflict occurred whenever one group of people—defined according to race, class, or religion—was forged into a class by discrimination practiced against it. Discrimination kept minority groups outside the mainstream, scapegoated as “an out-group,” isolated and exploited. Such scapegoating resulted in an economically exploitable group of people but also created a hatred that distracted other exploited groups from the real source of their problems, and thus upheld the status quo (Benedict, Race, 245). Montagu concurred: “All over the world under conditions of economic stress ‘race’ prejudice has become a powerful weapon with which minority groups have been beaten.”17 The solution to American racial tension, then, was to “minimize conditions that lead to persecution” (Benedict, Race, 244). Wartime antiracist


educators explicitly did not focus on race but, rather, like their counterparts in political science, on fixing and ameliorating the economic conditions, the imbalances, that led to conflict: While we raise Negro standards of living, of health, and of education in the South, therefore, it is necessary also to raise the standards of the Southern poor whites. Until we have “made democracy work” so that the nation’s full manpower is drafted for its common benefit, racist persecution will continue in America. Until housing and conditions of labor are raised above the needlessly low standards which prevail in many sections of the country, scapegoats of some sort will be sacrificed to poverty. Until the regulation of industry has enforced the practice of social responsibility, there will be exploitation of the most helpless racial groups, and this will be justified by racist denunciations. (Benedict, Race, 247)

Like the political scientists, Benedict and others looked to the state, to the national government, to propose programs that would fix these conditions: It is hard to see how this responsibility for the whole can be taken today except by the national government, and in the past decade state regulation has increased, national treasuries all over the Western World have been opened for the relief of the unemployed, and compulsory old-age insurance is in operation in many nations. These and other national undertakings can be used to minimize economic discrimination. (Benedict, Race, 247–48)

Thus, even though antiracist ideas underscored the physical differences between white and black, their overall purpose was to emphasize the underlying economic bases of inequity and discrimination in American society and to call upon the state to fix that situation. While faulting antiracist educators for reifying a biological concept of race, historians have largely ignored the more important economic analyses that undergirded their theories about race and racism. The economic analysis of racism and the recognition of the state in fixing economic conditions supported the black struggle for fair employment. In 1941, in response to African American labor leader A. Philip Randolph’s threatened “March on Washington,” President Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to enforce a temporary ban on discrimination in employment in governmentcontracted industries.18 Virulent opposition to the committee mobi-


lized civil rights activists, who not only struggled to insure the effectiveness of the temporary wartime FEPC but also anticipated the postwar need for a permanent committee banning employment discrimination in all industries.19 The argument for a permanent FEPC blended political scientists’ understanding of a responsive state and antiracist educators’ arguments about the economic basis of racial conflict. FEPC proponents warned that American GIs would be returning and seeking reemployment at the precise moment when the war jobs that had lifted America out of the depression were to be curtailed. The result would be unemployment. Since black workers, as the last hired, were likely to be the first fired, there would also likely be racial tension. Newly mobilized African Americans who had put their resentments on the back burner while they fought for democracy abroad were not going to passively accept its abrogation at home. Drawing from the Keynesian model of demand economics, FEPC proponents argued that the solution was for the state to insure black Americans continued access to jobs, which would in turn create a new group of consumers whose “purchasing power” would contribute to the economic growth necessary to avoid economic depression, and hence racial and economic conflict. Testifying in favor of a permanent FEPC law, Beulah Whitby argued, “If full employment were granted to Negroes alone, their buying power and practices would create a revenue greater than all the revenue from our exports, which is one of our most substantial sources of national income.”20 Or as Benedict offered, “National prosperity, however thin you cut it, has two surfaces: ability to sell, means ability to buy; employment means production.”21 By making consumers out of economically deprived groups, the government could maintain productivity and at the same time alleviate dangerous, disruptive racial tensions.22 Wartime antiracism activism and the civil rights fight for fair employment, then, overlapped with the political scientists’ understanding of purchasing power, productivity, and a responsive, democratic state that balanced society’s competing interests for the good of the whole. Indeed, Montagu’s challenge to Americans to fulfill the promise of American democracy reveals a specifically pluralist understanding of democracy: “It is a fundamental tenet of democracy that it must balance the interests of all its component groups and citizens.”23 Additionally, the reconceptualization of what were once considered finite racial groups


into fluid, culturally shaped, white, ethnic groups corresponded to political scientists’ view that ethnic allegiances had become less important in understanding American politics since the “New Deal Revolution” had reorganized national politics around economic issues.24 Race and Ethnicity in Minnesota Even before World War II, liberal-minded and religious Minnesotans had been concerned with intergroup tension and religious bigotry. Ethnic and religious divisions had always informed life in Minnesota, with its large foreign-born population. In 1900 there were 261,026 foreign-born males of voting age, as opposed to 245,768 native-born voters. In 1920 65 percent of Minnesota’s population was foreign-born or of mixed native and foreign-born parentage. In 1930, after a decade of immigration restrictions, over 50 percent of Minnesotans were still of foreign-born or native and foreign-born parentage.25 Minnesota’s population consisted mainly of Germans, Swedes, and Norwegians, with significant enclaves of Danes, and then a diverse mix of Finns, eastern European Jews, Irish, Croatians, Slovenians, Poles, and Italians, who arrived after 1900.26 The antagonisms between the different groups were sometimes violent, as in the smashing of German-language presses during World War I, as well as the deportation of antiwar, socialist Finns, Italians, and Slavs.27 But their main effect was on state politics. The conflict between the Scandinavian Lutherans in the powerful Republican party and the minority Irish Catholics in the ineffectual Democratic party dictated the character of Minnesota politics. Ethnoreligious divisions were solidified in the all-consuming battle over Prohibition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as Irish Catholics fulfilled stereotypes held of them and defended their right to drink against moralistic Scandinavian prohibitionists.28 Even within the otherwise progressive Farmer-Labor party, anti-Catholicism was rampant because of the perceived conservatism and hierarchical character of Catholicism, what one publication called “the clerical-fascist element in the hierarchy of the Roman-Catholic church,” and because of Farmer-Laborites’ own zealous, dry Protestantism.29 Perhaps the most virulent form of prejudice was anti-Semitism, which was especially common in Minneapolis, the state’s largest city and financial center. Minneapolis Jews were barred from country clubs, restaurants, and neighborhoods. Civic organizations like the Rotary, the Kiwanis, the Lions Club, and the Minneapolis Automobile Club refused to


accept Jews. Crosses were burned on the lawns of Jews who moved into certain restricted neighborhoods. The Jewish population was concentrated in the slums of north Minneapolis in neighborhoods adjoining the black areas. Jews were involved in state politics, particularly the FarmerLabor party, and this led to the overt use of anti-Jewish tactics in the Farmer-Labor primary and the general election in 1938. In a 1946 article, left-wing activist and journalist Carey McWilliams called Minneapolis “the capital of anti-Semitism in the United States.”30 Anti-black violence was rare, due to the small, isolated black population. As elsewhere, however, it took the form of mobs and lynching. It demanded official intervention. But in the decades leading up to World War II, only two major incidents occurred, which I will discuss in the following chapter. Anti-black violence, then, while horrific, did not consume civic energies or inform daily life in the way that anti-Catholicism or anti-Semitism did. Many different groups were involved in what were variously and interchangeably seen as “racial,” “ethnic,” “religious,” “nationality,” or “social” tensions. Organizations founded to help the foreign born and alleviate tensions between immigrants and the native born often referred to these problems as “racial.” The Edward F. Waite Publication Fund for Works on Race and Race Relations, for instance, published a book about St. Paul’s “Festival of Nations,” the introduction to which described St. Paul as a “laboratory for racial adjustment.”31 The book’s publicist hailed its “importance to about two-hundred agencies in the United States which are working to bring about better race relations.”32 St. Paul had only a tiny population of what we might now consider “racial” minority groups— about 4,000 blacks and 300 Asian Americans—but it did have a thriving and diverse population of first- and second-generation immigrants. Similarly, a section in the WPA’s Minnesota: A State Guide titled “Racial Groups” opens with a discussion of the Scandinavians, then goes on to the Danish, the German, and the rest.33 Writing in The Nation, Sinclair Lewis detailed the “racial misconceptions” held of the Swedes by their employers.34 A similar ambiguity marked definitions of “white.” People on the Iron Range, for instance, referred to the town of Virginia as a “white” town to distinguish it from other towns on the Range with large southern European populations, which, apparently, were not considered “white.”35 Although the author of a 1937 study of the Twin Cities uses the U.S. census categories of “nativity,” rather than race, to describe


“foreign-born whites,” his repeated use of the phrase “non-white racial groups” suggests the lingering semantic possibility of white racial groups.36 In a state where the so-called racial or cultural problems had to do with immigrant groups and religious tensions, the place of African Americans was uncertain. The St. Paul International Institute’s Festival of Nations illustrates the confusion over how American-born African Americans fit into a nationality-oriented model of cultural diversity. Black Minnesotans first participated in the Festival of Nations in 1934.37 They were grouped with the Indians as part of the “American” peoples, as opposed to the European-born participants, which suggested that African Americans were somehow indigenous to America. The Indians re-created the first Thanksgiving, while the African Americans sang Negro spirituals. In 1936, African Americans were represented by a procession featuring Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, James Weldon Johnson, Marion Anderson, and a group of young tap dancers, still as indigenous Americans. There was no mention of black Americans’ African roots. On the eve of war in 1939 the European immigrant groups argued that they too were Americans and, in a counterintuitive move, voted to do away with the separate “American” designation for Indians and Negroes. Thus it was that the black participants moved into the International Village permanently, next to the Swedes. But they still retained the idea that they originally came from the American South. The Negro exhibit re-created an old southern mansion surrounded by artificial magnolia trees, which were draped with live moss shipped up from Louisiana. They served southern fried chicken and corn pone, which, insisted organizer Alice Sickels, were as foreign to the American palate as Russian Houtzi and “fattigman’s kakir.”38 Sickels’s discussion of the institute’s “Negro friends” in her memoir about the Festival of Nations reveals further the unarticulated confusion between African Americans and the European immigrant groups. She recalls how the institute had chartered a boat for their annual dance, only to discover that the boat barred Negroes. They refused to hire such a boat. Notes Sickels, “it was as though we had been told we must leave our Scottish friends at home.”39 But it was highly unlikely that any boat would have in fact barred Scots. That kind of discrimination happened only to blacks and Jews in Minnesota in the 1930s. Sickels’s incorporation of the Negro group into her narrative about nationality groups allowed her to illustrate how genuinely committed her organization was


to the principles of diversity. Defending and befriending the small but overtly discriminated-against population of Negroes enacted the stated principles of diversity. It had the additional effect of clarifying the African Americans’ position as a race, something distinct from the European nationality groups. Blackness and the Problem of Race Over the course of the war the words race and racial came to refer to Negroes and “the colored races,” which also included Asian Americans and American Indians. The foreign-born population was shrinking, its children assimilating and transforming mainstream society, a process helped along by the war’s rhetoric of unity. The 1950 census did not cross-classify according to nativity as had earlier censuses, citing the declining importance of the foreign-born population.40 The process of assimilation was guided by antiracist redefinitions of racial groups to just three main divisions of black, white, and yellow. This model reclassified the foreign born as “white.” But “white” was not really perceived as a race, because discrimination and prejudice were not practiced against whites. Wartime discussions of race and race relations were aimed at fixing problems like discrimination and prejudice, and thus, as Benedict said explicitly, “race” came to be redefined in terms of social disadvantage. At the point when the new biological racial category of “Caucasian” enveloped formerly racialized categories like “Hebrew” and “Celt,” then, the category of “race” was redefined to mean only the persecuted colored races. Since whiteness was not seen as problematic in the same way, it became a de-raced, naturalized state of being.41 Of the so-called colored races, the African American group became most closely associated with the terms race and racial issues. This was because antiracism measures correctly identified that the most disruptive and egregious incidents of racial violence and discrimination involved African Americans. The weakest link in the chain of wartime unity was that between blacks and non-blacks, and thus more energy was expended on this problem. In Minnesota, where anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism were rampant, African Americans were the only group that employers explicitly refused to hire and that unions barred from membership. Employers’ main explanation for their refusal to hire blacks was that their white employees would object. White workers, in fact, did protest when employers tried to introduce black workers, while


apparently willing to work with other racial groups. Employers who hired Japanese Americans during the war noted that their employees “draw the line on Negroes.”42 The Urban League reported an incident where a vocational school hired a Negro youth under the impression that he was an Indian. When the school realized its mistake, it withheld employment from the youth, fearing the reaction of its employees. Apparently neither employers nor employees would have had a problem with an Indian.43 Antiracist organizations in Minnesota thus emphasized the urgency of the race problem in terms of the Negro situation. The Governor’s Interracial Commission, created in 1943 to study racial trends in the state and identify potential unrest, and consisting of Catholic, Jewish, Protestant and black leaders, explicitly identified the status of the Negro as the most urgent topic of study.44 At the suggestion of antiracist activist Father Francis Gilligan and Urban League Secretary S. Vincent Owens, the first order of business for the new commission was a survey of the employment situation for Negroes in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth.45 The commission’s first two studies were The Negro Worker and The Negro and His Home. These were followed by The Mexican and The Indian. Father Gilligan explained that the commission focused on the Negro group because they had suffered most from economic discrimination and thus merited extra attention.46 Focusing on African Americans as the most urgent component of the race problem had the effect of de-problematizing, de-racializing, the category “nationality group.” Thus, immigrant groups became “white” during the war, not only as the result of assimilation and wartime unity but also because to the extent that “race” was a problem, to the extent that it demanded attention, it was with regard to the continued mistreatment of African Americans. By joining together to address the “race problem,” once problematic groups, such as Irish Catholics and Jews, for instance, defined themselves as outside the problem, not a group needing to be helped, hence not a racial group at all. This was most overtly true of Jews, who had long straddled the religious and racial categories. In its first years the Governor’s Interracial Commission entertained the idea of doing a pamphlet titled The Jew in Minnesota, to follow the successful Negro Worker in Minnesota and The Negro and His Home. The


commission appointed a committee to study the issue, and in October 1945 the committee presented their proposal for the pamphlet on Jews. At this meeting Rabbi Aronson said that members of the Jewish group objected to developing the pamphlet at this time. Their stated reasons concerned the scope and cost of such a project. They recommended instead that the commission just make a formal statement about the evil of anti-Semitism. As a result, the recommendations for the pamphlet were tabled, to be discussed later.47 Over the next three years, the commission periodically returned to the issue of the Jewish group; each time the discussion was put off. Finally in February 1948, after work on The Mexican and The Indian was under way, the commission decided to skip the Jewish project altogether, stating in its minutes: The question of a study of the Jewish group in Minnesota will not be undertaken because of members of that faith objecting to the study being made by an interracial group. There was some talk that other religious groups should be studied if such action was for the Jewish faith.48

This was not an isolated incident. Whether or not Jews were best seen as a religious minority, like the Catholics, or a racial minority was a topic of debate among Jews and the members of the new interracial groups. Labor leader Rubin Latz, for instance, sent Mayor Humphrey an article that he felt showed, contrary to the position taken by others on Humphrey’s staff, that Jewish people “do have racial problems different from Catholics.”49 His contention was supported by the many reports of overt anti-Semitism that equated Jews with blacks. Salesmen for the Minneapolis Auto Club apparently advertised to potential customers that they excluded “Jews and Niggers.” Graffiti likewise often conflated the two groups.50 Nonetheless, in thwarting a study of the “Jew in Minnesota,” the Jewish group backed out of the problematic racial category, in governmental circles anyway, leaving it to the persecuted colored races, the Negro, the Mexican, and the Indian. Note, however, that while neither discrimination against the small numbers of Negroes and Mexicans nor discrimination against the federally governed Indian tribes had affected Minnesota politics, anti-Semitism had. Anti-Semitism had been used repeatedly against the Farmer-Labor party, communists, and other radicals in the political arena. Although black people in Minnesota suffered


qualitatively worse forms of economic discrimination, the issue of antiblack discrimination had no historical impact in Minnesota politics in the ways that ethnic and religious tension had. When antiracist activists identified discrimination against blacks as the most serious problem and defined cultural tolerance programs around blackness, they ended up drawing a sharp line between race and something that was now seen as ethnicity, where it had always been ambiguous and inconsistent before. Thus, for instance, projects that started out being about intergroup unity, where blacks were just one group among others, ended up with blacks being singled out to illustrate the importance of that unity. Cultural tolerance activities often worked by uniting and mobilizing an ethnically and racially diverse population around a single project. The end result, the exhibit or festival, was less important than the process of putting it together. In November 1945, for instance, fourteen organizations pooled resources to sponsor the “Races of Mankind” exhibit at the Walker Art Center. Based on the Ruth Benedict pamphlet of the same title, the exhibit endorsed the idea that there were just three races, white, black, and yellow, that they were essentially, scientifically, all the same, and that nationalities and Jews were not races.51 About 3,500 people attended the exhibit, but the organizers maintained that the real value lay in how the project had brought people of different backgrounds together. They emphasized that over one hundred people, “Japanese-Americans, Negroes, Jews, Norwegians, Swedes, and AngloSaxons,” worked for over ten days to get the exhibit in shape, proving that people of all different racial, ethnic, nationality, and religious groups could cooperate.52 Given Minnesota’s history of anti-Semitism and Yankee social dominance, such cooperation between Jews, Norwegians, Anglo-Saxons, and Catholics was noteworthy. But the accompanying radio program, titled “Minorities and Community Living,” focused on the black communities. The radio show featured Cecil Newman, the editor of Minneapolis’s most activist Negro newspaper, The Minneapolis Spokesman. Newman’s mission was to make the black presence felt in the Twin Cities. He stated that programs like “The Races of Mankind” showed that whites had finally started to pay attention to the problems of blacks in the Twin Cities. This comment brought forth hearty assents from the white moderators of the radio show. While Newman’s point was correct, it also recast the interracial program in terms of black and white,


thereby reinforcing the consolidation of previously antagonistic ethnic groups into whiteness. The Governor’s Interracial Commission likewise illustrates how the overdue focus on African Americans brought together once quarreling ethnic and religious groups. Headed by Father Francis J. Gilligan, it included a rabbi, a bishop, two other reverends, two representatives from the Urban League, a doctor, a businessman, and two Protestant women from the settlement house movement. The commission created a public space for representatives of previously hostile groups to work together to address a community problem, which came to be specifically identified as racial. Unlike interracial groups in the 1960s, which stressed communication between white officials and black leaders, these early panels focused on preventative measures from above, and the communication was between different kinds of whites. As Lutherans, Irish Catholics, Jews, and Yankee Protestants discussed the plight of the Negro, old ethnic and religious tensions, once the focus of social concern, began to recede. The “Negro problem” became the new focus of social concern and political positioning. Fair Employment and the Eclipse of Class Hostility In addition to interracial educational organizations and programs, many Minnesotans embraced the movement for some kind of permanent Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC), preferably at the federal level, but in lieu of that, at the state or municipal level. Like the antiracism educational efforts, the movement for fair employment laws brought together Lutherans, Catholics, Jews, and Yankee Protestants, as well as whites and blacks, but it also brought together people of different ideological concerns, specifically representatives of the business community, the humanitarian antiracist community, and the labor movement. Business leaders, charitable institutions, and union leaders cooperated over the issue of fair employment for blacks in a way that helped destroy the neat class dynamic that had previously shaped Minnesota politics. Antiracist activists had been introduced to fair employment and labor issues partly through their involvement in resettling Japanese American internees in Minnesota. In the spring of 1942 the War Relocation Authority (WRA), which was in charge of interning seventy thousand Japanese Americans in barbed-wired “relocation centers,” began a campaign to


resettle the interned Nisei in “normal communities” in that citadel of normalcy, the Midwest. In St. Paul the WRA approached the International Institute; in Minneapolis it met with a committee of people from the YWCA, the YMCA, the Civilian Defense Council, and various welfare agencies, which eventually formed the Minneapolis War Relocation Committee.53 The task for these committees was to find employment for a scapegoated racial group, while at the same time making sure “that the presence of the new settlers will cause no disturbance in the community to which they will go.”54 Following the lead of Benedict and Montagu, resettlement organizers stressed the connection between economic competition and racial prejudice. They required the Nisei to be paid the same rate as white workers. They wanted to avoid creating resentment among white workers against the Japanese Americans for undercutting wages. The fair wage also prevented the Nisei themselves from feeling exploited. Just as important for resettlement organizers was explaining to the community at large their efforts to prevent economic rivalry. Genevieve Steefel, the head of the Minneapolis War Relocation Committee and later a prominent civil rights activist in Minneapolis, explained the committee’s educative agenda in a report on the experiences of the Japanese Americans in Minneapolis. Steefel told of a woman who called the Employment Service looking for a “Jap” maid. A WRA-trained volunteer took the call, and, as Steefel intoned, “the process of re-education began at once.” The volunteer corrected the offensive slur (“Yes, we place Japanese Americans.”) and proceeded to classify the job the caller want to fill “in its proper wage bracket based on the payment being offered to Caucasians for work of equal skill and responsibility.” When the caller expressed outrage at the higher-than-expected wage, the volunteer explained that the city could not permit the Japanese Americans to undercut the wages of local workers, since that would breed resentment both against the new settlers and among them. Steefel concluded that despite the disappointment of the caller, “the equal pay for equal work standard was maintained, and thus one of the foundations for good race relations was laid.”55 There followed a series of similar anecdotes about misguided citizens ready to exploit Japanese American labor, unwittingly exacerbating racial tensions, until the trained committee volunteer explained the principles of good race relations. Steefel proudly noted the untroubled


relationship between the Nisei and whites in Minnesota, despite the sudden influx of fourteen hundred Japanese Americans into the state and the almost constant anti-Japanese propaganda in the press and on the radio.56 Resettlement volunteers had gotten involved with the project through their churches, community organizations, or local civilian defense organizations, but their experiences awakened them to the problem of employment discrimination and economic injustice. Many joined the postwar fight for a permanent federal FEPC, where they in turn became involved with the labor movement. The Minnesota Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the various sympathizers surrounding the Communist party had long recognized the importance of integrated unions and black civil rights. During the 1930s the Farmer-Labor party had touted the importance of integrated unions in building a strong labor movement, and even sent a representative to the National Negro Council in 1936.57 Farmer-Laborites had helped organize the first integrated union in the state in 1935, the International Hotel and Restaurant Workers Miscellaneous Workers, AFL Local 665. Most unions in the state still barred blacks from membership in the 1940s. When the Governor’s Interracial Commission sent out questionnaires inquiring about unions’ membership practices, only 109 out of 450 responded.58 Nonetheless, those unions most interested in the FEPC and an integrated labor movement were also the most active in state politics. The Minneapolis Central Labor Union (AFL), for instance, which funded a large part of Humphrey’s mayoral campaign and helped reorganize the DFL party, created the Committee on Human Relations. With an annual budget of $11,200 in 1946–47, it was larger than the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations, as well as the Minneapolis FEPC (to be discussed in chapter 6). The Central Labor Union also gathered data about discrimination in unions and helped form the Joint Committee for Fair Employment Opportunity, which worked to get local retail stores to hire black clerks.59 While most rankand-file unionists were unlikely to support the FEPC, union leaders did, and worked hard to change their members’ racial attitudes. The FEPC provided a concrete, practical goal for citizens and activists of many different motivations and backgrounds. It was part of the labor movement’s vision of a social welfare state. It conformed to liberals’ ar-


guments that securely employed Americans would create a new consumer base that would ensure productivity. It thus also conformed to the business community’s desires for productivity and social peace. Thus, its proponents emphasized, fair employment had a wide base of support from all segments of society—businesses, religious groups, civic organizations, and unions. This widespread, albeit shallow, support for fair employment legislation proved that it was not another of the labor movement’s radical, utopian, class-dividing causes but rather sound economic policy, which would insure racial peace and thus benefit all classes of society. Emphasizing the social and economic benefits of FEPC and racial tolerance was a favorite strategy of antiracist activists during the war. Intergroup educators, New Deal liberals, unionists, young moderate Republicans, Jewish organizations, and various church groups all emphasized that eradicating racism was, as one pamphlet put it, “one issue on which all agree.”60 The real unity that would emerge out of this activism, however, was not so much interracial, which remained elusive, but rather ideological and social. The Governor’s Interracial Commission’s study of Negro workers in Minnesota highlighted instances where normally competing forces in society came together successfully to stymie racism. In one case, the Urban League approached a laundry about hiring a black woman. The socially responsible owner of the laundry agreed to, but the white women who worked there refused to work with the new employee. Together the employer and the Urban League held at least two meetings in which they brought in a cross section of society to dissuade the white women of their racism: “a clergyman pleaded with them on the basis of religion, a federal official on the basis of patriotism; a union official on the basis of fairness.” Ultimately the women agreed to return to work. The authors of the study noted that such scenes had happened more than once.61 Educating a racist rank and file brought a sense of cooperation to one of the most enduring and violent antagonisms in Minnesota, that between management and labor. The Republican-created Governor’s Interracial Commission took a positive view of labor unions. The commission believed that the union’s organization, elected leaders, philosophy, and conditions of membership made it a valuable vehicle for both “educating white workers and disciplining them if they refuse to work


with Negroes.”62 Likewise, businessmen, who had rarely shared audiences with left-leaning labor leaders in the 1930s, were suddenly turning up at lectures and forums alongside CIO leaders. A 1943 University of Minnesota seminar on racial and cultural democracy, for instance, invited both the president of the state CIO and Republican munitions manufacturer Charles Lilley Horn to speak about minorities in the workplace.63 Appearing on race-relations panels together was beneficial to both unions and management. An interest in race relations highlighted each group’s commitment to the public good. For unions, business support of the FEPC affirmed the nonradical nature of governmental intervention in the economy, while for businessmen, this common ground with unions showed their interest in working together to maintain social peace. In this game, however, unions had more to lose. The success of the labor movement and the Farmer-Labor party in the 1930s had lain, in part, in the ruthlessness of Republican capitalists, who put profits before the welfare of workers’ families. The labor movement flourished when conservative Republicans were amoral and greedy. But when a munitions manufacturer like Charles Lilley Horn embraced the cause of race relations, he humanized the Republican businessman. President of the Federal Cartridge Corporation, Horn had gone beyond the recommendations of the wartime FEPC when he hired a thousand black workers at the new federally contracted Twin Cities Ordnance Plant in New Brighton, thereby making himself a hero in the field of race relations.64 Horn’s flesh-bound face, his rotund, vested torso, and his freshcut boutonniere made him the very essence of a fat-cat capitalist. But after speaking out against racism, he joined union leaders at podiums across the city. President Roosevelt even appointed him to the wartime FEPC. It is hard to judge Horn’s sincerity or motivation with regard to his FEPC activities. His company journal indicates that he was an old-fashioned Ford-style paternalist, who saw his employees as “family.” His rants against federal taxation and “big government” and his monitoring of radicals in the labor movement suggest his conservatism. In one instance, Horn wrote to a prominent citizen in the small town of Askov, saying that while reviewing a list of individuals who had signed a petition in support of the Revolutionary Workers Party, he had discovered that 45 people in Askov, a town of 312, had signed it.65 An ammunition


manufacturer, Horn opposed early attempts to register firearms (except in the case of aliens, in which case such a law might be justified).66 He was a lifelong wildlife conservationist. He saw himself as an “individualistic industrialist,” in complete and personal control of his workforce, as opposed to the new corporate executives, who did not actually own their corporations, merely worked for them.67 Despite his antiradicalism, he was sometimes sympathetic to the needs of labor. As an arbitrator in a building services employees wage dispute in 1947, he awarded the employees a slightly higher increase than the public fact-finding commission had recommended.68 In addition to his service with the federal FEPC, Horn was a member of the Urban League, and a friend of black editor Cecil Newman. According to left-wing African American activist Nellie Stone Johnson, Horn tried to get her a job at the federal court, and also cleared away her communist past with the FBI and the CIA.69 On the other hand, however, his company journal contained racially offensive jokes and offered only one statement about “fair play,” which avoided mentioning African Americans.70 He declined to contribute to Humphrey’s Council on Human Relations.71 He did not publicize his work on behalf of blacks among white people. And none of the eulogies upon his retirement mentioned his prominent role in wartime race relations. Although his own motivations are ultimately unclear, the beneficial effects of his racial polices on his old-fashioned “individualistic industrialist” ethos are clear enough. Horn’s hiring of black workers allowed him to publicly reassert the power and authority of the businessman. Speaking before a seminar on racial and cultural democracy, he said that a single powerful businessman could do more to stop racial discrimination than any movement. As a factory owner, he could hire a thousand Negroes and promote them into skilled jobs. When white workers refused to work when he moved blacks into skilled positions, Horn went out to the plant, stuck his head in the door and said, “Anybody who wants to walk can get the hell out of here.” He never had any trouble after that, he said.72 The statement is as much about Horn’s power over his workers as it is about his interest in black welfare. And yet he was feted by a new generation of militant black leaders, as well as by labor leaders. At the war’s end, the Twin Cities Ordnance Plant at New Brighton was closed, and as workers were being laid off there, including the thousand black workers he had hired during the war, Horn saw fit to restate


the employment policy of the Federal Cartridge Corporation, his main plant in Anoka: The company for many years, has followed a consistent policy of employing Anoka residents in the Anoka plant. . . . This policy will be continued, believing that it is the best policy to keep our own residents busy. There is no intention of bringing in others from the outside.73

Neither Cecil Newman nor the FEPC organizations mentioned what might have happened to those black workers who were presumably laid off. It is safe to say that few, if any, lived in Anoka. Horn was the most idiosyncratic businessman who endorsed the FEPC, but he was not the only one. Of the businessmen who became involved in the struggle for the FEPC, most were not business owners as Horn was but rather executives of major corporations. The vice president and general counsel of Pillsbury Mills Corporation, Bradshaw Mintener, was on the executive board of the Minnesota Council for Fair Employment Practice, as well as the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations, alongside representatives from the CIO and the AFL. Businessmen who testified on behalf of a statewide FEPC included Mintener; Alfred Wilson, vice president of Honeywell Corporation; York Langton, extension manager of Coast to Coast Stores; Stuart Leck, president of James Leck Construction; George Jensen of Kelvinator Corporation; and others.74 They supported the FEPC in the name of social peace and economic prosperity. The majority of Minnesota businessmen, however, opposed the FEPC. The Minnesota Employers Association organized opposition to local FEPC efforts. They argued that an FEPC brought unwarranted “government control” and “police machinery” into businesses. They argued that it would bring Negroes into Minnesota and thus cause unrest where none existed now. They also argued that some jobs required discrimination: “Discrimination is simply American freedom to do business free of governmental control.”75 This kind of opposition, however, was focused around issues of governmental control of businessmen and thus served to affirm older ideological divisions. Although successful in preventing a statewide bill until 1955, opposition to the FEPC ultimately emphasized the virtue and social responsibility of those businessmen like Horn and Mintener, who acted in the spirit of social cooperation and helped destroy the neat class division on which the state’s FarmerLabor party and labor movement had rested.


Conclusion The activism around antiracism education and the FEPC in Minnesota was widespread, in that it encompassed different kinds of groups, but it was shallow, in that it was never a major issue for any except a few of these groups. It made Minnesota a more tolerant place perhaps, but more significantly it helped reconfigure the old ethnic and class lines that had hitherto defined the state’s political alliances. The New Deal, assimilation, and wartime mobility had already lessened the importance of ethnic and class identity in Minnesota politics and set the stage for new political concerns. The antiracism programs furthered that process by bringing together in councils and workshops groups that had previously been antagonistic. Ethnic and class tensions did not disappear. Indeed, politicians would continue to consider ethnic and class loyalties in campaign strategies simply because the past persists in people’s lives. But as categories for organizing politics, ethnicity and class solidarity were less relevant than they had once been, and this allowed a new generation of liberals to overcome old political divisions that had once separated, for instance, Irish Catholic Democrats from Lutheran FarmerLaborites, rural from urban, and workers from management. Antiracist theorists, the war, and FEPC activists helped to change conceptions of ethnicity, class, and politics. So too, however, did black activism itself. As we have seen in two separate cases, the reason that interracial organizations began to focus on the African American situation was at the behest of Cecil Newman, a new militant kind of black leader, quite unlike anyone the rather staid black communities of the Twin Cities had ever seen before. The same tumult that led white antiracists to redefine the nature of “race” also created an opening for black activists with connections to the labor movement and a strong sense of political independence and economic justice to organize black citizens to fight for an expansive, democratic, welfare state of the sort the political scientists were celebrating in their classrooms at the university.

CHAPTER FOUR The Black Communities in Minnesota

Hubert Humphrey’s programmatic politics and wartime antiracism presented an opportunity for black Minnesotans. After the war, a new generation of black leaders, with roots in the labor movement and New Deal arguments about federal responsibility and economic inclusiveness, attached their hopes to Humphrey. They were attracted not only to Humphrey’s interest in civil rights but also to his ideas about state-centered reform, economic growth, and national interest groups, which supported their own efforts to guide Minnesota’s tiny black communities from isolation to participation. Black Life before the New Deal The most important fact about Minnesota’s African American population was its small size. Between 1910 and 1940, the black population rose from 7,084 to 9,928, on the average hovering just below one half of 1 percent of the state population.1 In 1940, 4,646 African Americans lived in Minneapolis, .9 percent of the city’s population. In St. Paul there were 4139, 1.5 percent of the city’s population.2 Between 1940 and 1950, the population rose to 14,022, a 41 percent increase, but still only one half of 1 percent of the total state population. These small numbers can be attributed primarily to the lack of available jobs, a shortage due to the absence of a major industrial base in the state and discriminatory hiring policies. The small population meant that the black communities had very little presence in or impact on local life and politics. As elsewhere, black Minnesotans faced discrimination and racial harassment. Despite antidiscrimination laws, restaurants and clubs refused 61

62 The Black Communities in Minnesota

to serve them, swimming pools were segregated, and restrictive covenants barred them from neighborhoods.3 The main form of racial discrimination in Minnesota was economic. Employers simply refused to hire black workers, outside a few circumscribed areas. The few jobs open to black Minnesotans in the first half of the twentieth century were in the service industries and on the railroads. In 1926, 80 percent of African American men in Minneapolis worked as porters, janitors, and night watchmen. In 1930, two-thirds of African American workers in Minneapolis were employed in three hotels as waiters, maids, or housemen.4 At the same time, however, racism was not necessarily the defining feature of black life in Minnesota, especially in the countryside. Era Bell Thompson and Nellie Stone Johnson both grew up in rural Minnesota, where their families were the only African Americans around, and they recall that they were treated like everyone else in Minnesota’s polyglot countryside.5 Racial violence was rare compared to elsewhere in the United States, but when it occurred it was just as vicious. In 1920, a large mob abducted three black circus workers from a Duluth jail. They had been arrested for allegedly assaulting a local girl. The crowd held a mock trial in the street and hung them from the light posts. The governor dispatched troops immediately to restore order, and an investigation was begun. Of the eighteen members of the mob indicted for murder and rioting, only two were convicted, and only for rioting. The case resulted in much soul-searching and the passage of Minnesota’s antilynching law the following year.6 An attempted lynching in Anoka in September 1931 was foiled when officials moved the black suspect to a Minneapolis jail.7 In July 1931 a black World War I veteran moved into an all-white neighborhood, and a mob of four thousand besieged and stoned his house for four days. The situation was eventually diffused by civic leaders, who convinced the man to sell the house, although apparently he stayed in the neighborhood.8 African Americans fought discrimination and violence. Attorney Frank Wheaton won election to the state house in 1898 and authored a law banning discrimination in bars. In 1917 African American lawyer J. Louis Ervin won an acquittal for a black man accused of murdering a white man.9 NAACP chapters were founded in St. Paul (1913), Minneapolis (1914), and Duluth (1920), and successfully fought racial identification in crime reporting and the screening of D. W. Griffith’s inflammatory Birth of a Nation.10

The Black Communities in Minnesota 63

Several organizations helped blacks deal with employment discrimination. Before World War I, African American churches, particularly Pilgrim Baptist and St. James AME in St. Paul, and two St. Paul barbers, S. E. Hall and his brother O. C. Hall, acted as employment agencies. The Hall brothers cultivated relationships with their industrialist clients in order to secure jobs for black workers.11 By 1923, however, neither the churches nor the barber brothers could meet the demands of incoming, unemployed migrants. O. C. Hall turned to the Community Chest for relief, but was told he needed an organized social agency staffed by professionals to qualify for Community Chest funds.12 Hall approached the National Urban League. The Chamber of Commerce objected to the organization, fearing that it would attract even more black migrants, and refused to let the Community Chest fund it. After several months of negotiation, and promises on the part of black leaders to curb the further influx of southern migrants, they finally got the St. Paul Urban League off the ground in 1923.13 The Urban League was an interracial organization, consisting of white philanthropists and industrialists and a small group of Twin Cities black professionals. It was fully staffed, busy, and funded, and became the state’s most active organization for black welfare. While most job seekers continued to use the Hall brothers’ barbershops, the Urban League sought to convince Twin Cities employers to adopt hiring and upgrading policies for blacks. In the late 1920s, St. Paul’s Ford Plant agreed to hire blacks in proportion to their population (after reemploying the original workforce that had been laid off), which they apparently did, maintaining and upgrading ten blacks in the paint and glass division.14 Several other companies maintained ten black workers, suggesting that the Urban League had convinced them to adopt a similar hiring policy. Minneapolis Moline Company (manufacturers of farm equipment), Northland Greyhound Lines, and an unspecified mail-order house all employed ten black workers. The American Radiator Company employed two hundred blacks as machine moulders.15 Only at Moline, however, which hired black machinists, was there any indication that these positions were skilled. The League also sponsored population surveys, research on race relations, and a wide array of educational services, including job interview and health improvement classes.16 Two settlement houses, the Phyllis Wheatley House in north Minneapolis and the Hallie Q. Brown House in St. Paul, also helped relieve


the problem of discrimination. Whereas the Urban League had been the product of concerned black businessmen, the settlement houses were the fruit of white Christian women. The idea for a Phyllis Wheatley House was first suggested by the Women’s Cooperative Alliance, an umbrella organization of women’s groups grappling with the problem of juvenile delinquency. The Alliance requested the Women’s Christian Association (not to be confused with the YWCA) to undertake the building of a settlement house for Negro youth. The Community Fund supported the house, while a board of white Christian women governed it. The Hallie Q. Brown House had a similar history. Named after the black educator and founder of the National Association of Colored Women, the Hallie Q. Brown House was founded by the St. Paul YWCA and the St. Paul Urban League, who wanted a “non-sectarian” meeting place for Negro girls. The St. Paul YWCA was strictly segregated at this time, but the Christian women in charge agreed with the Urban League that something had to be done about the potential delinquency of working and single Negro girls.17 Both houses advertised themselves as places of “wholesome supervised recreation” for Negro youth, particularly girls, but both gradually began to offer more services and facilities. In addition to the music lessons, hygiene seminars, and health and dental clinics, the houses provided full-day day care for working mothers, an employment bureau, job training programs, and a place for different associations and groups to gather, including the NAACP, the Federation of Colored Women’s clubs, and the Industrial Girls Council. Despite organizations that tied them to larger national institutions, the black communities in the Twin Cities were relatively isolated. The NAACP branches in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth had few resources and few members, and were constantly in the process of reviving.18 Renowned African American men and women who once lived in Minnesota departed early in their careers to cultivate their talents elsewhere.19 Indeed, the black communities were like the rest of Minnesota in the first half of the twentieth century, largely parochial, bound together through a network of social clubs, fraternities, and church groups, with their artistic and ambitious citizens fleeing to find fame and fortune in the East. Sinclair Lewis’s biting observations of life in Gopher Prairie could apply as well to the small, insular black communities in the state. Black life in St. Paul was dominated by a few prominent families who lived on “oatmeal hill,” the bluff around the western part of the downtown area: the


Neals, the Halls, the Hickmans, families that “came up in ’63.”20 Newspapers swelled with their guest lists, their vacations, and their Rotary Club activities. Editorials castigated the inhabitants of the Rondo area whose raucous behavior and loud dance halls reflected ill on the race. On the one hand, the middle-class preoccupation with respectability and their networks of fraternal organizations were strategies for surviving in a racist society. Black leaders aimed to preserve black peoples’ good reputation in order to curb reaction against them.21 On the other hand, however, these institutions created a way of life from which a younger generation yearned to escape. Era Bell Thompson, a black woman from North Dakota, remembered anticipating the big city life of St. Paul and being disappointed at the “stuffiness” and narrow world views of the St. Paul blacks she met. She had to move to Chicago to find the vibrant African American life she had read about in The Defender.22 The Depression, the New Deal, and the Labor Movement The depression and the New Deal changed this world of segregated provinciality. In a familiar story, the depression overwhelmed the resources of charitable organizations that funded Twin Cities black organizations. St. Paul’s Community Chest welfare program, for instance, was designed to serve forty-eight hundred needy families, but by 1932 fourteen thousand families in Ramsey County (St. Paul) needed some form of relief. The Community Chest slashed its funding to the Urban League, from $3,953 in 1930 to a low of $2,267 in 1934. Between 1931 and 1937, the average grant to the Urban League was $2,700, even though the average amount raised by the Community Chest remained stable at $806,000. While the Community Chest continued to fund the Hallie Q. Brown House at a steady rate of around $4,500, it was an inadequate amount for dealing with the disproportionate increase in black unemployment.23 A 1936 study of relief rolls in St. Paul found that 62 percent of the black population was on relief, compared to 23 percent of the white population.24 Another study showed that fully 90 percent of all black families in Ramsey County needed relief.25 New Deal programs to relieve unemployment widened the activities of the black settlement houses, integrating them within a growing network of federal social services. Programs like the Civil Works Administration (CWA), 1933–34, and later, after 1935, the Public Works Administration, the National Youth Administration, and the Work Projects


Administration provided funds for day cares, libraries, and educational programs at the houses. These programs found jobs for unemployed African Americans, in many cases jobs that were formerly denied to black workers. They served as a jolt from Washington to disrupt longstanding “traditions” that circumscribed which racial and ethnic groups could work in which jobs. Among the seventy-two positions secured for black workers through the CWA in 1934, for example, were the first black nurse, hospital file clerk, and bookbinder.26 CWA projects hired blacks as skating instructors, librarians, housing surveyors, and, later, WPA projects hired semiskilled construction workers. The Head Resident’s report indicated that settlement house workers were counting on these New Deal programs to open up previously closed employment areas, and hence to “go a long way in conquering prejudice.”27 Instances of racial prejudice in New Deal programs brought immediate protest and organization.28 During these years, the settlement house adopted a broader and more politically relevant educational program. Moving beyond instructions for washing babies, the Phyllis Wheatley House sponsored a weekly forum devoted to world events and national political and economic issues. Organized in part by Selma Seestrom, a left-wing Farmer-Laborite, the Forum, as it was called, sponsored debates about the Negro and Communism, the Negro and the labor movement, Pan-Africanism, the Spanish Civil War, Ethiopia, and race relations in America. Participants recall that the Forum was a place where individuals from different parts of the black community came together to discuss and debate racial problems in the city.29 Like the New Deal, the labor movement also brought African Americans into mainstream civic and political life. Unions in Minnesota had long barred black workers, and few African Americans wanted to organize segregated auxiliary unions. By the late 1930s, however, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) recognized that racial division impeded organizing, and began to integrate their unions. The Minneapolis Central Labor Union (AFL) likewise began to educate their members about the ways in which racism kept workers divided and wages low.30 The first integrated union in the state was the Miscellaneous Workers, Local 665 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees International Union (AFL), formed in 1935. The local was started at a picnic sponsored by either the Bulgarian-Macedonian Workers’ Club or the Swedish Workers’


Club.31 Reflecting the assimilatory possibilities of union building, the union’s principal organizers included George Naumoff, a Croatian émigré from Macedonia and elevator operator at the Minneapolis Athletic Club; Swan Assarson, a Swedish-born Socialist; Bob Kelly, a local communist and bellhop at the Curtis Hotel; Anthony Brutus Cassius, waiter and head of the all-black waiters union at the Curtis Hotel; and Ray Wright, a Finnish activist. They were leaders of existing unions who wanted to organize the miscellaneous hotel workers—the elevator operators, maids, and receptionists, many of whom were black, most of whom were women—in order to strengthen their own bargaining power against the hotels’ management. Cassius’s waiters’ union was, at the time, suing the Curtis Hotel for wages equal to those of white waiters at other hotels, and trying to threaten the Curtis with a complete shutdown. To carry out that threat, they needed to organize the vast body of unorganized, miscellaneous workers. After the picnic, Naumoff enlisted Nellie Stone Johnson, a service elevator operator at the Athletic Club, and Albert Allen, the athletic coordinator at the Athletic Club, to recruit black members for the new union. Cassius, Allen, and Johnson differed from the established black leadership in Minnesota. Whereas black leaders in the Urban League had worked with white businessmen to secure jobs for black workers, these unionists would work with the labor movement for economic security and jobs for all workers. What the labor movement gave them that the Urban League could not was, oddly, a sense of individuality. It integrated them into local politics as actors, not wards or pawns. Together, Cassius, Allen, and Johnson illustrate the broad diversity of motivations and ideologies that informed black involvement in the labor movement. A waiter at the Curtis Hotel in Minneapolis, Cassius got involved in organizing unions after discovering that white waiters at other hotels made about fifty dollars a month more than the black waiters at the Curtis. After being rebuffed by the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union, which did not accept black workers, Cassius organized the Hotel and Restaurant Waiters’ Union, local 614, an all-black local, which the Hotel and Restaurant Employees International (AFL) chartered in 1930. As head of local 614, Cassius sued the Curtis Hotel, demanding not only equal pay with white waiters at other hotels but back wages as well. The hotel scoffed at the idea of the black union finding support among white unions to strike, but Cassius cultivated the support of the Teamsters, the


most powerful union in the city after 1934, and secured as attorneys for the suit two activists of the left wing of the labor movement, Ralph Helstein and Douglas Hall.32 Helstein and Hall publicized the plight of the tiny black union and introduced Cassius to members of other unions to garner support for a possible strike on the part of the black waiters. They eventually won their case against the Curtis in 1940 without striking. The waiters attained a thirteen-thousand-dollar wage increase on par with white workers’ wages, and thirty-five hundred dollars in back wages.33 During the years that 614’s suit was fought out, Cassius became involved in the labor movement and local politics. He manned soup kitchens during the Teamsters’ 1934 truckers strike, served as a delegate to the 1936 Farmer-Labor convention, hung out at the Bulgarian-Macedonian Workers Club on Third Avenue, and registered black voters. He met daily for coffee with organizer Bob Kelly at a nearby Greek sweetshop to discuss how to organize the ethnically and racially diverse domestic and miscellaneous workers in the hotel industry. For Cassius, the idea of organizing into unions represented progress and educated thinking, a way to crawl out of the confines of menial labor and fulfill one’s individual potential. For him, the labor movement provided opportunity for educated black men to be leaders, not peons. As a waiter, Cassius was just another subservient black man, but as a union leader, he was a powerful individual who took on the executives at the Curtis Hotel and won. His scraps with the management of the Curtis repeatedly cost him his job and even brought the FBI down on him, but this harassment only strengthened his identity as a successful union leader. (The Central Labor Union always got him his job back.) As he proudly notes, just about everyone in the labor movement was interrogated by the FBI. In his recollections of his organizing days, he highlights his central role in events by contrasting himself with the lumpen, reluctant-to-organize black waiters: I thought “This can’t be right, we working here ’cause our faces are black for seventeen dollars a month.” So I attempted to organize, which was very difficult because black people were afraid of organizations. The only organizations that they knew anything about was the churches and a few lodges, and it was awful hard to sell it to them. But through persistence and effort and having a few blacks in the Curtis Hotel who had finished high school [I] was able to talk to them and get some kind of understanding.34


As part of the labor movement, he was a mover of history, defying the passive destiny to which, he felt, his racial identity bound him. In relating his story, Cassius inserts himself personally into labor history. He shared a room with the Reuthers. He was in San Francisco when Harry Bridges was indicted. He heard Samuel Gompers speak. In a statement that conflates the labor movement’s success with his own, Cassius recalled his role in the labor movement: “I had the potential, if I’d stayed in the labor movement, of being a great man, a big man anyway.”35 When Cassius left the labor movement to open a nightclub, his connections to the labor movement proved key to his success as a businessman. Cassius fought a long, drawn-out battle against city hall for a liquor license. In this battle, his experiences in labor politics and his friends in the labor movement helped him negotiate the pitfalls of city politics.36 The fight against city hall depleted the money he had saved to buy the bar, so that when he eventually got the license, more than a year later, he had to find a bank to lend him money. Here again his experience in the labor movement helped him. He went to Midland Bank, which had lent black editor Cecil Newman some money, and told one of the vice presidents he needed to borrow ten thousand dollars. He recalls that they laughed at him, but after a few minutes alone with the bank’s president, Cassius was able to secure the loan. He recalls that the president of the bank told him, “I believe you’ll make it. Everybody else that’s in the labor movement’ll make it and I like your style.” Once again, Cassius set up the story so that his identity as a union leader was the key factor of his success. The bankers laughed at the idea of a black man getting a loan, but as a union leader he walked out of the bank with ten thousand dollars.37 Albert Allen, one of the principal organizers and president of local 665, shared Cassius’s desire to escape a strictly racial identity, and like Cassius, he found an identity as a labor leader. That Allen ended up as a union leader was ironic, since he regarded himself as “anti-union,” as a strict “individualist,” who believed fervently in starting out at the bottom and clambering to the top by sheer force of one’s own ability. Throughout his oral history remembrances, Allen draws a distinction between being “an individual” and being a Negro. A star tennis player in high school, Allen recalls that as an athlete he was treated as “an individual,” but off the tennis court he became “one of those, well there was a deroga-


tory term, but I would say here it was Negro.”38 When Allen went to work at the Minneapolis Athletic Club, he tried to recapture that individual, nonracialized identity. He worked his way up to a prominent position as the athletic coordinator at the Athletic Club, in which he arranged strategic tennis and handball matches between executives, potential clients, and buyers. It was a position that made him feel like an integral part of the wheelings and dealings of the high-powered business world. The other black employees looked up to him as someone who had leapt out of the confines of prescribed black work.39 It was as a labor leader that Allen became most empowered as an individual. Allen’s prominent place in the Athletic Club prompted Swan Assarson, a Swedish organizer, to approach him about helping to organize the miscellaneous hotel workers. Allen reluctantly attended an organizing meeting. He was discomfited by the dark room and “foreignborn” organizers, recalling that there was “no power here.” But because the organizers had identified him as the man to whom the other Negro workers looked for their cues, he agreed to help organize blacks at the Athletic Club on the condition that they “come in just as individuals” like everyone else. Allen remained ambivalent about the labor movement until the day a boss, upon hearing of Allen’s new role, remarked that he had always thought Allen was smarter than the foreign-born troublemakers.40 This remark galvanized him to finally accept the labor movement. His was no epiphany about solidarity but rather a desire to show his boss that he was a force to be reckoned with, that he was smarter than the other workers. Unlike Cassius, Allen remained in the labor movement, and subsequently organized and headed Clerical Workers Union, Local 3015 at the airport. He was president of the Minneapolis NAACP from 1946 to 1949, and a member of the Minneapolis Fair Employment Practices Committee in the 1950s. Like Cassius, he attributes his success in life to the labor movement, and the opportunity it gave him to be an individual. Unlike Cassius or Allen, who saw the labor movement in terms of their own success, Nellie Stone Johnson saw it as a collective struggle for economic and racial justice. For her, the problems of racism and sexism were systemic, to be met and overcome through a political program of economic independence and job security. Like Cassius and Allen, however, she reaped from the labor movement an alternative and more sat-


isfying career. Johnson loved organizing and the mechanics of local politics; she built her life around these activities and wants to be remembered for them.41 Johnson came to Minneapolis in 1925, found work as an elevator operator at the Athletic Club, and helped organize the union. The labor movement quickly became her life. She took advantage of the movement’s labor education programs, traveling to Chicago for seminars and workshops. She printed pamphlets and bulletins for other unions. She marched in rallies and strikes. The union paid for her classes at the University of Minnesota, where she became involved with the Communist party. As a unionist, Johnson became involved in the Farmer-Labor Association (FLA), the left-wing “educational” arm of the Farmer-Labor party, which endorsed, funded, and campaigned for Farmer-Labor candidates.42 Here Johnson discovered that politics was a real avenue for social and economic change. The Minneapolis labor movement controlled the Farmer-Labor party after 1938, largely through the Farmer-Labor Association, and so organized labor’s agenda of full employment, health insurance, job security, and affordable housing was on the state’s political agenda. As an involved member of her union and the FLA, Johnson would have seen the issues she was working on and the candidates she helped pick becoming part of the political mainstream. As black civil rights emerged as a social issue during the war, Johnson was one of the activists who tied it to full employment and thrust it into the political arena. Johnson entered politics herself by running successfully for a seat on the Minneapolis Library Board in 1945. Swan Assarson, Local 665’s business agent, wanted her to run for school board, but the Central Labor Union had already put together their slate for school board. So Johnson decided to go for the library board. She recalls that Hubert Humphrey, running for mayor that year, also encouraged her to run because she would speak about issues of labor and equality “from experience.”43 Indeed, according to Johnson, she campaigned alongside Humphrey, each benefiting the other.44 Most of her support came from the academic community, and Johnson regrets more rank and file did not support her. The Minneapolis Tribune’s list of city candidates significantly did not include a photograph of Johnson, as it did of most of the other candidates, although it did list her credentials as unionist and the fact


that she had the labor endorsement.45 She won the seat by a large margin and became the first elected black official in the city. She served for six years. Johnson transcended the ideological and factional struggles that were tearing the labor movement apart in the late 1940s. An AFL union member, she nonetheless ran off strike sheets for the CIO (“Oh if [AFL president] Bill Green had caught up to us at the time he’d have excommunicated us, gosh.”46). Despite her links to the Communist party, she adored the anticommunist Humphrey, personally and for his political agenda of a fully employed welfare state. In the 1948 election, while the Progressive party and the DFL party were tearing each other down, Johnson worked for both; she wanted Humphrey to win, but she wanted him and the Democratic party to incorporate the values and agenda of the Progressive party.47 She saw this as simple pragmatism, and she prided herself on this kind of pragmatism and political savvy. After the election, she quit the Progressive party and dedicated herself to working within the Democratic party. She later opened a small tailoring shop in Minneapolis but found her life’s meaning in trying to build a multiracial Democratic party. Despite their differences, Cassius, Allen, and Johnson saw the labor movement as an integrative force, something that pulled a closed and secluded black community into the political and social mainstream, both in the opportunities the movement presented for individual black organizers and in the agenda for which they fought. Nor were they alone. Other black unionists included Maceo Littlejohn, Hector Vassar, and Maceo Finney, who organized the Dining Car Employees Union, local 516, chartered by the Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union (AFL) in 1938,48 and Frank Alsup, who helped organize the South St. Paul packing plants for the CIO in the late 1930s. They took their experiences in the labor movement into the Urban League, the NAACP, churches, lodges, and settlement houses. Littlejohn held the first mass meeting of the Joint Labor Negro Council at the Phyllis Wheatley House in March 1940, at which the exalted leader of the Ames Lodge of Elks spoke about his difficulties in obtaining a job at the Speed-O-Lac Paint Company.49 Cassius worked evenings for the Urban League with no pay, after his shift was over, and lectured at the Phyllis Wheatley House about the importance of black workers joining unions. Frank Boyd’s union activities got him thrown off the deacon’s


board at Pilgrim Baptist church, but he continued as an active member of the church, which greatly enhanced his reputation as a unionist and as a Baptist.50 The Urban League and the settlement houses also recognized the labor movement as an important component of the struggle for racial justice in Minnesota. At the 1938 meeting of the National Federation of Settlements, social workers from the Phyllis Wheatley House heard the director of the Hull House affirm the role of the labor movement in the success of their own work: “Those of us who have advocated Social Security and other reforms must bow our heads in recognition that none of our proposals became law until organized labor backed them.” This particular speech was excerpted for Phyllis Wheatley workers, along with a four-point plan to work with the labor movement.51 The social workers invited black and white labor activists to speak at the settlement houses. Representatives from the Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union, the Trotskyite wing of the Teamsters, the CIO, the Minneapolis Central Labor Union, the Farmer-Labor party, and others spoke at the Hallie Q. Brown and Phyllis Wheatley Houses in the late 1930s. The publications of new organizations like the Minnesota Negro Council contained schedules of Farmer-Labor party events alongside poems by Richard Wright and editorials about racial pride.52 The labor movement’s influence in settlement houses and the Urban Leagues contributed to the idea that Negro citizens had to form their own organizations in order to gain participation in economic life. The labor movement illustrated what could be accomplished when apparently powerless individuals united to improve their situation. It is no coincidence that the black leaders most insistent on organizing as Negroes came out of the labor movement. Foremost among these was Cecil Newman, a Pullman porter-turnedunionist-turned-newspaper editor from Kansas City, who made a crusade out of organizing Twin Cities blacks into an effective political force. Newman began publishing the Minneapolis Spokesman out of a barbershop in southeast Minneapolis in 1935. Black newspapers in the Twin Cities had been floundering, but Newman quickly made his paper one of the main sources for news about the Twin Cities black community among both blacks and interested whites. While reporting the news of the black community, he also used the paper to promote black citizens’ full participation in industrial, civic, and political life.53 His editorials


echoed the views of people like Mary McCleod Bethune, Pittsburgh Courier editor Robert Vann, Walter White, Robert Weaver, W. E. B. Du Bois, and A. Philip Randolph. Like them, Newman understood that the New Deal’s legitimation of the federal government and the labor movement had changed the goals and machinery of political organization in a way that potentially benefited black Americans.54 Newman exhorted his black readers to organize in some way, any way. “Let’s Form a Club, Slogan of the Hour,” one headline declared, suggesting that the clubs then form a federation for getting employment from establishments that take Negro money.55 Another headline announced the ponderous slogan of the Minneapolis Council of Negro Organizations, “Every Minneapolis Negro in Some Organization in 1941.” Much of the paper’s main news concerned with new organizations, like the Cosmopolitan Club, the new and improved Minneapolis NAACP, and a variety of joint Negro–labor, interracial, civil rights committees. The paper reported diligently on the achievements of these organizations, urging Twin Cities Negroes to participate and scolding those who did not.56 The idea of organizing as Negroes was, in a way, a new wrapping for the longstanding quest for unity within black communities, which had over the years become mired in compromise, acquiescence, and conformity. The idea of organizing, on the other hand, suggested bold action, opportunity, and struggle. The new black leaders contrasted the idea of “organizing” with the complacency of wealth and parochialism. For Newman and the columnists in his paper, the isolation of being black in Minnesota, middle-class pretensions, and complacency were intertwined. While effectively organized blacks in Chicago, Detroit, and New York were taking advantage of the political and economic changes of the 1930s to fight for racial justice, the blacks in the Twin Cities seemed to be content with their lot. Newman blamed the old Negro elite, who had for too long legitimated their leadership by presenting themselves as the “thinking” or the “better element of Negroes.” It was the older, comfortable families, with their ice cream socials and silver tea sets, who refused to participate in the larger movement for racial equality that was elsewhere sweeping the nation. In their comfortable complacency, they supported segregation because they profited from it. Spokesman columnist Nell Dodson Russell contrasted the elite’s obsessions with small-town respectability with active Negroes’ pursuit of racial justice and economic independence. She was particularly sarcastic about


the older black community’s genteel pretensions: “We believe that the porter in the Fourth National Bank who sends in an item about his sister visiting him from Lynch Creek, Georgia has just as much right on the social page as Mrs. Sylvester K. Podunk, who is a pain in the neck anyway.”57 Newman characterized the kind of Negro organizations he advocated as different from traditional, middle-class organizations. The new Negro organizations would cut across class lines, bringing together old families with new migrants. Negroes would “stick together, the professionals rubbing elbows with the workers.” They would be boldly integrationist, seeking white allies, not benefactors. Several editorials declared that the time was ripe for a movement of interracial brotherhood in the Twin Cities. They would be less stodgy and more confrontational. Newman celebrated in particular Negro organizations which de-emphasized the social and fraternal aspects of clubs, and stressed rather political activism, such as the Cosmopolitan Club, a new multiracial club at the University of Minnesota. Readers affirmed that the historical moment for cross-class organization among Negroes was at hand. One reader urged an “All Negro Day,” where Twin Cities Negroes of all classes would stop fighting and work together.58 Were the Twin Cities’ Negro elite as complacent as the younger generation of black leaders painted them? After all, older members of the elite, like the Hall brothers and the Hickmans, participated in these new organizations. The Twin Cities Observer, edited by Republican Milton G. Williams, targeted an older, more genteel readership and seems at first glance to affirm Newman’s assumptions. It was preoccupied with guest lists and church news. It periodically called for purges of “men and women of ill-repute and total disregard for the future of the race.”59 On the other hand, the Observer reported on national and international political events, and proudly boasted that it had the northwest’s only Negro correspondent in Russia. It reported on events in Africa and other colonized areas, a feature absent from the Spokesman. Like the Spokesman, the Observer followed and encouraged the formation of new Negro organizations, with the noticeable difference being that the Observer paid more attention to the organization of all-black cooperatives and all-black organizations than the Spokesman, which celebrated interracial organizations. Politically, the Observer followed Republican party politics, while the Spokesman tended toward the New Deal wing of the


Democratic party, but both editors recognized that Negro interests transcended party affiliation. The readership of the two papers overlapped; many readers wrote to both. Thus, the members of the older generation of Negro elite were not nearly so complacent or parochial as Newman and the younger generation of black leaders drew them, but their continued concern with morality and respectability made them easy foils for a younger generation of blacks worried about their own provinciality. Newman was sensitive about the parochial insularity of Minnesota’s black communities. When New Yorker George Schuyler compared the complacency of Twin Cities Negroes with that in other like-sized communities, Newman complained that visitors were always telling Twin Cities Negroes that they were not doing enough, concluding, “It is our belief that Twin Cities Negroes are superior in many respects to those of other communities.”60 Newman nonetheless worried about the connection between local organizing and national life. On a 1945 radio show he lamented that the best black Twin Citians left the state, that there was nothing to keep them here.61 By 1948, however, Newman believed that the New Deal state made Washington the political center of the nation, and this gave African Americans in Minnesota some political relevance: Life on a community level, while it never receives the publicity or attention that national activities get, is very important. Those communities which are the most advanced send the best men to Washington, and because of their higher development contribute most to our national culture.62

Newman thought the Twin Cities were an important incubator of national talent. By 1946, St. Paul natives Anna Arnold Hedgeman and Roy Wilkins were in New York on the front lines of the civil rights movement. Clarence Mitchell Jr., who had come to St. Paul in 1939 to head the St. Paul Urban League, had gone to Washington to work for the wartime FEPC. Whitney Young, who had begun work with the St. Paul Urban League in 1946, would move east shortly. World War II intensified black Minnesotans’ identification with a national civil rights movement. During the war, black newspapers in the Twin Cities placed their stories and reporting in a national context. Editors and writers saw the increasing activities of Twin Cities blacks as part of a national struggle for civil rights. No longer were black Minnesotans just supportive observers of a struggle going on in New York


and Chicago. Black papers in the Twin Cities buzzed with local and national stories of FEPC cases, local black soldiers abroad, the activities of blacks across the nation fighting for a double victory, and American wartime propaganda about interracial unity. Whereas earlier black newspapers reprinted articles from the Defender, the Crisis, and the Courier, soon articles from the Minneapolis Spokesman were being reprinted in the Crisis.63 Newman himself was writing for Opportunity and Negro Digest.64 Black Minnesotans were participating as delegates in national organizations, like the Democratic and Republican parties, the CIO, and Washington’s new bureaucracies. Clarence Mitchell resigned from the St. Paul Urban League to take a position with the Office of Production Management. Frank Boyd and Nellie Stone Johnson were on the committee that merged the Farmer-Labor and Democratic parties in 1944.65 Negro organizations in the Twin Cities participated in A. Philip Randolph’s March on Washington Movement, demanding equal access to wartime jobs and the desegregation of the armed forces. Readers wrote to urge the Spokesman’s readers to write to their congressmen to support the antilynching legislation, arguing that “the bill concerns us even if we in Minnesota are removed.”66 Local protests against discrimination occurred more regularly. The Minnesota Negro Defense Committee, headed by two black unionists, fought for the desegregation of the Minnesota National Guard and protested discrimination in the defense industries. Black organizations protested the Mun Hing Restaurant for oversalting black patrons’ food. A Reverend Nelson from St. Paul traveling through Texas refused to move into a Jim Crow car, citing to Texas authorities the recent Supreme Court decision on interstate travel. The Spokesman reported instances of racial discrimination as unpatriotic.67 Newman played a role in the hiring of a thousand Negro workers at the Federal Cartridge plant in Minneapolis. In an article for Opportunity, titled “An Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” Newman described how Charles Lilley Horn, the president of the Federal Cartridge Corporation and the first paid subscriber to the Spokesman, willingly complied with the president’s order barring discrimination. Horn contacted Newman about finding appropriate, reliable Negro workers. Newman, in turn, suggested that they use the Urban League, which was set up for exactly this kind of placement.68


On one level, Newman’s mediating efforts resemble the barber O. C. Hall’s solicitations of Louis J. Hill for jobs for new migrants. Newman differentiated his ties to Horn from past practices, arguing that the federal government stood behind his mediation. Furthermore, Horn was not engaged in any “maudlin sympathy of the Negro,” but hired them on the premise that “Negro workers are citizens and thereby entitled to all of the rights and privileges of taxpayers—which include the right to work and earn a living.”69 Newman’s contempt for “maudlin sympathy” was calculated to separate his generation of politically savvy activists from an earlier, more conservative generation of black leaders who kowtowed to white industrialists. Thus, while Newman flattered and extolled his friend Horn, a conservative Republican, he also urged blacks to look to Washington rather than to industrialists for economic change. Wartime changes in Minnesota’s black communities are strikingly encapsulated by a comparison of the Minneapolis Spokesman before and after the war. Before the war, a staff of three people ran a six-page paper. It was of a uniform print and carried a lot of local social news and baby pictures. The advertising was sedate, of small print, and sparse. By 1946, the paper had increased to ten pages, and the staff had increased to seven. Changes in the layout and font design gave it a more vibrant look, echoed in the urgency and excitement of the stories of local events, protests, and meetings that crowded its pages. There were more photographs and more regular columns. Fashion tips and record reviews reflected greater black participation in a consumer economy. Department stores now took out half- and quarter-page ads, instead of two-inch squares. Vivid illustrations of their merchandise and catchy slogans replaced what had previously been just a list of merchandise and prices. A more modern layout and fancier font mirrored the emergence of a more modern, cosmopolitan black readership. Newman looked forward to making the black political presence felt in Minnesota in the postwar years. Minnesota’s black communities had not grown much during the war, and Newman knew that he could not wield black votes in Minneapolis as black leaders could in places like Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. He understood, however, that the new emphasis on organized interest groups, the federal government, and the black vote in American politics nationally made even African Americans in Minnesota politically relevant.

CHAPTER FIVE An Independent Black Interest Group

Humphrey and his liberal allies elaborated their ideas about “issuesbased” politics and interest groups as an alternative to the politics of both the Farmer-Labor party and the Democratic machine. Their ideas about political organization resonated in Minnesota’s black communities, but for different reasons. For black activists like editor Cecil Newman, they provided a language for black integration into American political and economic life and a way for African Americans in Minnesota to participate in an increasingly active national black movement for civil rights based on fair employment. World War II, Migration, and the Black Vote World War II reinvigorated black activism. Memories of dashed promises and violence after the previous war spurred many African Americans to use this war to fight for a “double victory” abroad and at home.1 The NAACP’s membership rose from 50,560 in 1940 to slightly less than 450,000 in 1946.2 The new activism of World War II involved African Americans from all strata of society. At the start of the war, black organizations protested the defense industry’s refusal to hire black workers.3 In January 1941 labor leader A. Philip Randolph proposed that these various Negro organizations organize a march on Washington to prompt government action on discrimination in defense employment and in the armed services. The resulting March on Washington Movement, or MOWM, was in the words of one historian, a “spontaneous involvement of large masses of Negroes in political protest,” a genuinely mass 79

80 An Independent Black Interest Group

movement.4 The threatened march prompted President Roosevelt to ban employment discrimination in government-contracted industries, just six days before the scheduled march. Executive order 8802 set up the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to enforce the ban on June 25, 1941. Randolph called off the march but kept the MOWM going. The victory enhanced the prestige of the movement. Its members brought instances of discrimination to the attention of the overworked FEPC and fought the administrative finagling over the FEPC, as southern congressmen tried to remove it from the executive branch.5 Randolph helped organize large rallies in support of the FEPC, most notably in Madison Square Garden, but also in cities across the nation, including St. Paul in 1942.6 In September 1943 Randolph organized a professional lobbying group called the National Council for a Permanent FEPC. Whereas the MOWM had been a mass movement, the National Council for a Permanent FEPC was a clearinghouse of information for over one hundred local councils across the United States, including two in the Twin Cities. The National Council instructed its branches how to make alliances with other organizations in their communities, how to write letters, what to do (“DO use the sports page . . .”), and what not to do (“DON’T write a threatening letter”).7 Veterans of the MOWM staffed the new organization. Some historians lament the shift from a mass, direct-action, all-black movement to the staid lobbying of the National Council for a Permanent FEPC.8 The shift was, however, part of an effort to take advantage of the geographic changes in the black population to organize a black voting bloc. Between 1940 and 1950, almost two million black Americans migrated out of the borders of the old Confederate states to find work in northern and western shipyards, munitions plants, and other parts of a booming wartime economy. An additional 400,000 southern black soldiers fought overseas.9 The black population in Illinois doubled between 1940 and 1950, from 387,000 to 646,000. California’s black population more than trebled, from 124,000 to 462,000. Ohio went from 339,000 black residents to 513,000; Michigan, from 208,000 to 442,000; and New York, from 571,000 to 918,000.10 These large numbers of black migrants meant new votes. Black leaders in the North had long sought to organize an effective national Negro voting bloc that would deliver votes to politicians according to the candidates’ stands on Negro, labor, and social-welfare issues.11 Blacks could

An Independent Black Interest Group 81

not vote in the South, but they could once they left and settled in the urban North and West. This changed national politics. As sociologist Henry Lee Moon explained it, black voters’ political influence in national elections lay not in their numbers, which were still comparatively small, but rather in their “strategic diffusion in the balance-of-power and marginal states” whose electoral votes were essential to the winning candidate.12 In the 1944 presidential election, there were twenty-eight states in which the margin of victory was within 5 percent of the popular vote. In twelve of these states, the potential Negro vote was greater than 5 percent. These states were Ohio, Indiana, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, and Kentucky, whose combined electoral total was 228. Furthermore, Moon continued, “an alert, well-organized Negro electorate” could be decisive in at least seventy-five congressional districts in eighteen states.13 The infusion of new black voters meant that both parties, and any third parties, would have to appeal to the “Negro vote.” For the Democrats in particular, the influx of voters meant that the urban northern vote with an electoral total of 228 was potentially more useful in a presidential election than the South’s 127 electoral votes. The transformation of black southerners into northern urban voters brought with it a corresponding expansion of Negro interests. Labor and social-welfare issues, such as price controls, full employment, public housing, and expanded social security programs, became as important to civil rights activists as antilynching measures and the poll tax.14 Lynching and the poll tax had galvanized national civil rights activism in the 1930s, and they remained significant issues, but with many more blacks now living in the North, the focus of civil rights activities expanded.15 The two most urgent issues were housing and employment. The lack of building materials combined with the increased migration to cities and restrictive covenants within these cities led to widespread housing shortages. In larger cities, like Chicago, Los Angles, and Detroit, minorities were crammed into slums, their attempts to move out met by violence.16 Even in smaller cities like Minneapolis the housing shortage focused attention on who got housing, and where it was.17 For the most part, the housing problem was dealt with as a local, community issue, case by case. Employment discrimination, on the other hand, emerged as a national issue with implications beyond the lives of disadvantaged blacks.


Although employment had always been an issue within minority communities, an expected decrease in production and an influx of available workers lent immediacy to the issue of fair employment after the war. Laying off black workers to hire returning white GIs could exacerbate already tense relations and lead to more rioting. The FEPC also complemented liberal ideas about state-centered reform. Activists saw it as part of a broad postwar program in which the federal government insured prosperity and economic health through interventions into the economy. National leaders feared that the economy would slip back into depression as the war industries contracted at the same time soldiers returned home looking for work. Economic planners looked to an economy based on consumer goods to stave off depression, but that required that people have jobs that paid them enough to purchase large-ticket consumer items like cars, washers, and refrigerators. As Secretary of Commerce Eric Johnston put it, “You can’t sell a refrigerator to a family that can’t afford electricity.”18 “Purchasing power” was the main idea behind a proposed full-employment bill, which would have required that the government take some action to maintain full employment.19 One of the original drafts of the 1946 full-employment bill guaranteed every American “the right to a useful and remunerative job.”20 The aims of the FEPC and full-employment activists thus overlapped. Both sought to foster postwar prosperity “by making customers out of low income groups,” regardless of race or ethnicity.21 By the end of the war, Democratic and Republican politicians were paying attention to these developments. New York’s Republican Governor Thomas Dewey adopted a statewide FEPC in 1945, which had relatively stringent penalties and a generous appropriation of $352,000 a year.22 The Republican party added a plank supporting a federal FEPC in its 1944 platform. In January 1946, Congress began hearings on a permanent federal FEPC. Moderate Republicans and liberals also renewed the fight against the poll tax and for a federal antilynching law. Cecil Newman and Black Politics in Minnesota Minnesota was not one of the “balance-of-power” states that Moon had identified as key to the election; its black population was simply too small. Nonetheless, the importance of racial issues and the FEPC in national politics spurred black political activity in the Twin Cities. A flurry


of activities enveloped the Twin Cities as a Fair Employment Practice bill made its way through Congress in early 1946. Radio stations broadcast shows about the FEPC bill.23 The Communist party sponsored an FEPC rally featuring William Patterson and local labor activists Robert Wishart and Nellie Stone Johnson. The Minnesota Council for a Permanent FEPC and local churches sponsored another rally, which featured A. Philip Randolph (although he cancelled at the last minute due to illness), Mayor Humphrey, and two former St. Paul residents, Anna Arnold Hedgeman and Clarence Mitchell Jr., both working for national civil rights organizations.24 As black Minnesotans in heretofore isolated black communities organized to fight for jobs, they became part of a national black community, in a way that they had not been when black civil rights were defined around issues of southern violence. Newspaper editor Cecil Newman articulated a strategy for how black Minnesotans could effectively participate in this revival of civil rights activism. Newman tied civil rights to the maintenance of New Deal state-centered reform and reinforced the idea that national politics, and politics in general, were relevant to the lives of black Minnesotans. In part, the idea of a strong central state was something around which he could mobilize black votes—votes that could then be promised to those candidates who supported black interests in a strong government. But Newman understood that the tiny black vote in Minnesota was not enticing enough to make this strategy successful. Cultivating a strong, public alliance with white liberals who were fighting for a New Deal welfare state, however, was a way to bring the once isolated black communities of Minnesota into the mainstream of American politics. As editor of two of the three black newspapers in the Twin Cities, the Minneapolis Spokesman and the St. Paul Recorder, Newman spoke with a self-conscious sense of authority.25 He hired an outspoken columnist named Nell Dodson Russell, who articulated even more clearly than Newman the agenda for what she termed an “independent” black politics. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Russell had gone to Baltimore and Chicago to establish her writing career, reviewing sports and theater for the Baltimore Afro-American in 1938–39, the Chicago Defender in 1939, and the People’s Voice from 1942 to 1944. She returned to Minneapolis in 1945 to write for the Minneapolis Spokesman.26 Like Walter White, Henry Lee Moon, Gunnar Myrdal, Robert Vann, Robert Weaver, and A. Philip


Randolph, Newman and Russell urged black citizens to take advantage of the new demographic realities resulting from black migration out of the South during the war. Like the people in the new Democratic-FarmerLabor party, they were intensely interested in political organization. In Humphrey’s vision of “independent” groups and positive, centralized government, Newman and Russell found a way out of the provincial ignominy of minority politics in Minnesota. Humphrey shared with black citizens an interest in stronger federal government.27 Humphrey’s arguments for a strong federal government tended to be directed against nineteenth-century individualism, while black activists’ arguments were aimed at the doctrine of states’ rights, which southerners used to protect segregation and suffrage restrictions.28 After the war, however, “individualism” and “states’ rights” became inseparable as southern Democrats and conservative Republicans cooperated in slashing New Deal programs and repealing wartime federal control over governmental agencies. Newman consistently articulated black citizens’ interest in a strong federal government. He monitored congressional attempts to dismantle federally controlled agencies, noting any transfer of power away from the executive branch of the government and to the southern-dominated Congress.29 “The only time when Negroes north or south get any real benefit from federal funds is when Uncle Sam administers such funds himself,” he wrote.30 He lambasted conservative Republicans who joined southern Democrats to prevent legislation that gave more power to the federal government, regularly criticizing the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. He followed the Republicans’ attempts to dismantle the Office of Price Administration (OPA). He condemned the antilabor Taft-Hartley Act throughout 1947.31 Newman’s antipathy towards the Republican party was not based on its civil rights record, which was stronger than the Democrats’, but rather on Republican opposition to a strong federal government. A white Taft supporter once wrote to Newman, explaining that he understood that Negroes would not support Senator Taft because of Taft’s lukewarm position on the FEPC. Newman replied that Taft’s position on the FEPC was the least of his offenses to the black citizen.32 What was objectionable about Taft was his contention that the transference of power from the states to the federal government was inefficient and arbitrary, and would end in totalitarianism.33


Humphrey’s vision of national pressure groups and independent political organization also offered an alternative to localized, moralistic racial politics based on white philanthropy. Newman was disgusted with the way that traditional black politics based on white goodness constantly reinscribed the color line. He saw the political emphasis on race as parochial and detrimental, and filled his paper with anecdotes illustrating the artificiality of race and blackness in America. A story about a white man who wanted to sit in the back of a southern bus with a black friend, for instance, has the white man explain to the bus driver that he looks white because his father was white. As he leaves the bus, he adds, “so was my mother,” revealing the irrationality of set racial categories. Another story told of a group of kids playing “race riot.” There were not enough black kids to make it even, so some of the white kids volunteered to be black. This was reported with a comment about how much more children know than adults.34 These were the usual kinds of stories interracial relations groups used to educate the public about the fictional nature of race. They underscored the idea that racial identity in and of itself was not a basis for political activism. Nell Russell was likewise critical of anyone claiming a right to anything on the basis of race. She attacked the way black citizens seemed to graciously accept the rhetorical bones tossed their way by white politicians: “All a candidate has to do is mutter something about 13,000,000 Negroes, Democracy, and getting us out of the kitchen, and he is proclaimed our hero.”35 She praised industrialist Charles Horn for “telling Negroes to stop letting whites carry them around on a platter and do something for themselves.”36 She criticized white liberals for constantly categorizing Negroes as “downtrodden.”37 What was Russell’s alternative to race-based identity politics? “We should organize ourselves into a solid unified voting bloc and pressure group that will have them all losing sleep.”38 There was a potential contradiction in the idea of organizing as blacks in order to de-race politics, but, in fact, being an effective pressure group symbolized integration if politics was defined around the competition of pressure groups. The idea of an interest group, a group of individual citizens organized around a common economic interest, legitimized black political organization and at the same time provided a basis for organization that was not necessarily racial. Organized around rational economic interests like, for instance, fair employment, black


citizens were no different from farmers, workers, or veterans; they were asking no special favors on the basis of their race, but like other economic groups, looking to the government only to protect their economic interests. In Humphrey’s analysis of parties, pressure groups were not the irrational, corrupting forces people had once denounced them as, but rather the basis of a rational self-regulating political system based on free association. This meant that the “black vote,” once condemned by white citizens as a source of political chicanery, was a legitimate pillar of the democratic process. The key to making black votes legitimate and effective was maintaining their “independence.” The black vote had to remain enticingly aloof from any one party to insure its bargaining power and to defuse accusations of corruption. Black leaders across the nation considered “independence” a sign of political “maturity.”39 No longer could black voters be bought for a turkey or a patronage post. Pittsburgh Courier editor Robert Vann very pointedly supported Wendell Willkie in the 1944 presidential elections to remind New Dealers that they could not count on the black vote.40 Newman likewise fostered the independence of the black vote. He reminded white and black readers alike that black votes could not be taken for granted. He covered equally the activities of the local Republican, Democratic, Communist, and Socialist parties. He explained that black voters were no longer affixed to the party of Lincoln, but neither were they Democrats. Black voters would support the New Deal inasmuch as it represented an expansion of federal government activity, but they felt no loyalty to the party of white supremacy.41 When Oscar Ewing of the Farm Security Administration told an Urban League meeting that any Negro who did not vote for Truman would be a “traitor to his race,” Newman was horrified, as were, he noted, Urban League officials, who had long pursued a policy of “independence.”42 Newman criticized the dissension in the NAACP, when executive secretary Walter White asked W. E. B. Du Bois to resign after Du Bois publicly endorsed Wallace and the Progressive party.43 Newman thought both White and Du Bois were out of line and dragging “politics” into an organization whose political independence was essential to effective black political organization. Newman’s preoccupation with political independence was part of a trend in American politics in the late 1940s, as new restrictions curtailed


the political activities of organized pressure groups, mainly labor unions. These restrictions came from outside organized groups—in a series of congressional acts, including the Hatch Act, the Corrupt Practices Act, and the Taft-Hartley Act—and inside, as nonpartisan groups adopted their own restrictions on political activities in order to prevent factionalism and conflict within the organization.44 This was especially true in Minnesota, where Humphrey and his allies were trying to extricate the DFL party from union control, and some union leaders themselves were trying to extricate their unions from DFL politics. The idea of political “independence” suffused the Minnesota political landscape. Rural papers, like the Midland Cooperator and the Farmers’ Union Herald, were adamant in their “independence,” and like Newman, covered fairly and equally different politicians’ stands on issues that affected their readers, in this case, co-ops and parity. The idea of political independence also affirmed the individuality of black voters. The idea of individuality was part of Newman’s and Russell’s agenda to free black voters from both a racially determined destiny and their historical ties to the Republican party. This seems contradictory: for the Negro bloc vote to be effective, after all, all black voters had to vote as a racially determined mass. Newman did not stress that angle, however. Rather he focused on the idea of free association and that black voters held a diversity of beliefs and could not be taken for granted: “Negroes come in all political stripes, and would even support the Ku Klux Klan if they were let in,” he wrote in a carefully situated article on a page featuring balanced representation of Republican and Democratic news.45 The basic idea of independent nonpartisan interest groups, as Humphrey learned at the university and as political scientists reiterated endlessly, was that the interest group supplied information on which individual citizens based their political choices. Interest groups did not dictate a “party line,” but rather informed their members, who then rationally assessed the candidates and the issues and voted accordingly. The scheme assumed free will and individuality. This appealed to Newman and Russell, who above all sought to live in a world where black people were, simply, individuals. Thus, Newman pointedly aired political divisions in his paper. They were a good measure of black individuality, as well as his own political “independence.”46 For instance, in 1948 Russell regularly attacked Henry Wallace’s politics in her column, but


these attacks were carefully balanced with letters from readers criticizing Russell’s views and her lack of “independence,” and editorials supportive of Wallace.47 Emphasizing black diversity in the name of his own independence also allowed Newman to transcend political differences within the black communities. Much like white liberals at the time, Newman saw himself as the pragmatic juggler of different viewpoints and strategies. What, then, were these other political strategies and viewpoints? There were at least two alternatives to the independent interest group strategy put forth by Newman and Russell: the trade union philosophy of Nellie Stone Johnson and the Republican partisanship of Milton G. Williams, the other black editor in the Twin Cities. Neither Johnson nor Williams, however, opposed Newman’s politics. Indeed Newman and Johnson were apparently close allies and friends. Nor did Newman stamp out either of these other viewpoints, rather he incorporated them, albeit Johnson’s to a greater extent than the Republicans’. Labor activist Johnson sought to secure civil rights legislation through the labor movement.48 She was less concerned about making a black presence felt in politics than with insuring the prominence of labor issues in Minneapolis politics, and honing black workers’ power in the labor movement. Unlike Newman, Johnson left no written evidence of her thinking at the time. In interviews since, however, she continually emphasizes that her work as an activist has always been geared to economic organization and based in the trade union movement.49 Her forays into politics and elected office (the Minneapolis library board) were to promote the labor movement and jobs. Johnson criticizes the black community for not being more invested in the labor movement, and claims that black leaders missed the “first round, which was the hardhitting economic things that came out of the thirties and into the forties,” adding that “the whole organization around economic issues has been going downhill ever since.”50 Johnson was part of the left wing in local politics. She was on the leftwing controlled Hennepin County DFL executive council, as well as the Farmer-Labor Association. Johnson’s white acquaintances were leftwingers: CIO lawyer Douglas Hall, Farmer-Laborite Susie Stageberg, Professor Theodore Brameld, socialist Swan Assarson, and unionist Rubin Latz. She joined Wallace’s Progressive party during the 1948 election. Despite her devotion to the labor movement and her roots in the left


wing, however, Johnson largely ignored the developing struggle between the left wing and Humphrey’s anticommunist liberals. While Johnson’s left-wing cohorts vigorously fought against Humphrey’s pluralist politics and the impending cold war, she remained committed to the FEPC, unions, and jobs. While critical of the cold war and anticommunism, she refused to allow them to detract from economic issues. Unlike her friends on the Left, she supported Humphrey, who was likewise committed to the FEPC and jobs. Indeed, she seems puzzled by the division in the DFL.51 Johnson saw herself as a pragmatist and would work with whomever was leaning her way. Ultimately this strategy ended up affirming Humphrey’s vision of politics, in which the labor movement was just one interest group of many. As the left wing was expunged, the only place left to work for economic justice and jobs was in the Democratic party, which Johnson admits was less than satisfactory. Newman and Johnson both focused on jobs and employment. The difference between the two was that while Newman saw the political arena as the key to jobs, for Johnson, the labor movement was the best avenue to better jobs. It was a small difference, and one of emphasis, since Newman also recognized the value of the labor movement, and Johnson the importance of politics. Although this same difference was the cause of the factional fight between the left and anticommunist wings of the DFL party, it did not divide the black communities and it did not divide Newman and Johnson, who had the same goals. Some black Twin Citians complained that Newman set himself up as a “dictator for Negro rights,” but few in the civil rights movement disagreed with his emphasis on jobs and fair employment.52 Newman’s main competition, ideologically and in terms of readers, came from the Republican Twin Cities Observer. The two papers fought over who had the higher circulation numbers, which was really about who had the better political strategy. More than anything else, Newman’s careful cultivation of “independence” was aimed at breaking black ties to the Republican party. For Newman, the Observer represented the old style of black politics, where black leaders delivered black votes to a machine in exchange for patronage appointments and favors. In 1948, for instance, the Observer endorsed ex-Minnesota governor Harold Stassen in the Republican presidential primary.53 This endorsement dumbfounded the writers at the Spokesman; it was a purely traditionbound, patronage-induced choice. Stassen had a lackluster civil rights


record and had accepted segregation in the Minnesota Home Defense Force during the war.54 There was something old-fashioned about the Observer. Like the Spokesman, it supported the FEPC and other civil rights measures, but it conveyed no sense of the new wartime opportunities. Dense with local matters, it reported the kind of society and church news that Russell sneered at in the pages of the Spokesman. In the summer the paper devoted a column to fishing and resort news, admonishing readers who vacationed up north not to act “too big city” in rural areas.55 It was not just society news that seemed local and unchanging but political issues as well. Whereas the Spokesman was consumed with the fate of federal wartime agencies and what remained of the New Deal, the Observer discussed local state issues, which had been issues since before the war. For instance, several vociferous editorials attacked the imbalance between urban and rural political power. Minnesota’s constitution gave greater proportional representation to rural areas, which meant that rural legislators dominated the state legislature out of proportion to the shrinking rural population they represented. The Observer was angry that urban taxes were spent on rural schools and roads instead of in the cities.56 The Observer did not frame issues in terms of federal government powers. Unlike the Spokesman, for instance, the Observer did not see the antilabor Taft-Hartley Act as an attack on black workers, and avoided writing about it, except for an occasional ambivalent editorial.57 Although the Observer supported many of the same issues as the Spokesman—the FEPC, minimum wages, fair housing, and the like—it did not frame them in terms of federal government responsibility. When Republican Senator Joseph Ball wrote to the Observer explaining his objection to minimum wages as unnecessary federal government intervention, Milton Williams responded that the issue was about inflation, not government jurisdiction.58 This was different from Newman’s encompassing defense of the minimum wage as part of a strong federal government. Newman would have agreed with Ball that it was precisely an issue of government jurisdiction. The deepest disagreement separating Newman and Williams was ultimately partisan. Black Republicans regarded the Democratic party as the party of white supremacy and states’ rights. Although Newman wielded the concept of political independence like a shield to deflect association with southern Democrats, both editors knew that at election time


there were only two parties to choose from: one contained southern white supremacists, the other did not. Newman rebutted that conservative Republicans were just as obsessed with states’ rights as southern Democrats.59 He conflated conservative Republicans like Taft with southern Democrats, showing how they both opposed the FEPC. The Observer, however, drew a distinction and asserted that ultraconservative Republicans were better than bigoted, reactionary southern Democrats.60 But Republican Williams was playing a game from the past. The whole idea behind independent interest groups was that if they became part of a coalition, they could influence party agendas. In this vision the parties were empty vessels whose programs and agendas were shaped by the competition and coalition building of the groups within them. In 1928 the northern, urban groups in the Democratic party challenged southern control of the party for the first time when they made Catholic Al Smith the Democratic presidential candidate.61 With the rise of the labor movement in northern cities during the 1930s, the urban ethnic vote shifted to what Humphrey and political scientists called a “class” basis, and labor became an influential part of the Democratic party.62 By the late 1940s northern labor and southern racists were locked in battle for control of the Democratic party. Newman saw black interests best served by the labor movement and hoped to build a coalition with labor within the Democratic party. Like Humphrey, then, Newman attacked traditional Democratic politics. These attacks not only affirmed his independence but also contributed to liberal northern efforts to change the Democratic party. Like black editors across the nation, he reminded readers of Truman’s allegiance to the South, noting his appointment of southerners to cabinet positions, such as South Carolinian James Byrnes to be secretary of state.63 Northern Democrats’ gestures to black voters were meaningless so long as southern Democrats controlled important committees in Congress. To emphasize this, Newman printed the following from Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi: “What can the Negro of the north get by voting for a Democratic President when the machinery and important chairmanships of committees are controlled by those of us who are pictured as fascists and southern reactionaries?”64 The prospect of having to rely on Negro votes for Democratic victories distressed southern Democrats, who told blacks that they should stay in the party of emancipation.65 Southern Democrats’ frank racism allowed Newman to maintain a


staunch nonpartisanship and educate his readership about the value of political independence, while at the same time trying to bring about the kind of political party that would meet black interests. Several factors gave life to Newman’s articulation of an “independent black pressure group.” These included black Minnesotans’ previous organization around jobs and employment, the emergence of the FEPC as a political issue, the new demographic importance of the “black vote,” and Humphrey’s vision of liberal interest-group, pluralist politics. The significance of an independent black interest group for Newman was not in the number of votes it could deliver, which was insignificant, but rather in the way that it connected Minnesota African Americans to a larger national black community, and in the alliances it could make with white liberals in Minnesota. The reason Newman was able to influence politics at all was because of the increasing visibility of the issue of civil rights in Minnesota politics. In Minnesota, black votes did not matter, but civil rights could. How civil rights became integrated into Minnesota politics is the subject of the next two chapters.

CHAPTER SIX Civil Rights in Local Politics

In 1945 Hubert Humphrey was elected mayor of Minneapolis, a city of 540,000. As mayor he formed a Council on Human Relations and set up a municipal FEPC, making Minneapolis one of a handful of places to enforce prohibitions on racial discrimination in employment.1 Humphrey’s biographers rightly celebrate his mayoral civil rights initiatives as part of a lifelong interest in civil rights, part of what made him a decent human being and moral politician. Many people at the time, however, were puzzled as to its meaning. One concerned citizen inquired of the Human Relations Council, “Does all this activity in the field of human relations constitute a pose? Does it have political involvements?”2 In fact it did, but not of the partisan sort. Humphrey’s forays into race relations, while sincere, also functioned to bolster his particular vision of politics. Flexibility and Its Discontents For the two-party system to function as a mechanism for democratic participation, citizens and politicians had to practice ideological flexibility, recognize the plural nature of society, and build toward a consensus between groups. Humphrey showed how well these ideas could work in the political arena when he became mayor of Minneapolis in 1945. His actual campaign for mayor seemed to violate the precept that politicians not be beholden to any one group, because it was funded, backed, and made possible by the Minneapolis labor movement. The Hennepin County CIO, the AFL’s Central Labor Union, and the independent rail93

94 Civil Rights in Local Politics

road brotherhoods formed the United Labor Committee, which provided Humphrey with the institutional apparatus, the campaign workers, the publicity, and the funding for his second mayoral campaign.3 This was because the new DFL party was not yet structurally equipped to provide any of those things in 1945. The work of creating a real, structurally viable party separate from its interest group clients lay ahead. In the meantime, Humphrey necessarily relied on the United Labor Committee. Headed by the Minneapolis Central Labor Union’s new president George Phillips, the committee spent fifteen thousand dollars on the ostensibly nonpartisan Minneapolis city elections, the great bulk of which went toward Humphrey’s campaign. Humphrey promised to resolve the housing shortage, fight crime, create jobs for returning vets, reform the police department, and improve the condition of the city’s hospital. He won the election by over thirty thousand votes. After becoming mayor, Humphrey distanced himself from the labor movement that had put him in office. This upheld the separation between politicians and the interest groups they were supposed to balance. But it was also good politics in 1940s Minneapolis. Despite, or perhaps because of, labor’s active role in Minneapolis’s politics, the city remained a Republican stronghold. Humphrey’s affable, bridge-building oratory, however, and his familiarity among Rotarians and church members won over many normally Republican voters. He cultivated friendships with the Republican businessmen who ran the city. He appointed Bradshaw Mintener, general counsel for Pillsbury Mills and a Republican, to several new municipal committees, including the Council on Human Relations. Two years later, Mintener campaigned for Humphrey’s second term, proclaiming that he never discussed politics with the mayor, and that they had agreed to work together on a nonpartisan basis.4 Humphrey consulted John Cowles, publisher of Minneapolis’s two papers, the Star-Journal and the Tribune. Cowles arranged for him to meet John Pillsbury of Pillsbury, grain merchant F. Peavey Hefflefinger, and Lucian Sprague, president of the St. Louis and Minneapolis Railroad. Humphrey assured Cowles that while he supported the unions’ programs and aims, he would not sell his soul to their leadership. “I am not, if elected, Labor’s mayor or their special representative,” he wrote to Cowles.5 As mayor, his decisions were often influenced by a need to prove he was not “Labor’s mayor.” When Humphrey reorganized the

Civil Rights in Local Politics 95

police department, for instance, he chose the businessmen’s favorite, Ed Ryan, a graduate of Hoover’s FBI school, over labor leaders’ favored candidate. It was a rebuff to labor, and Humphrey would refer to it repeatedly to show that he was not controlled by labor.6 Organized labor, however, was central to the DFL party. Humphrey could not write off the labor vote, nor did he want to. In the labor disputes that marked the postwar years of economic readjustment, Humphrey stood by the unions. Workers at Honeywell Regulator Company, steelworkers, telephone operators, meat packers, hospital workers, and teachers fought their employers during these years for wage increases to offset reduced working hours and to meet soaring postwar inflation.7 Humphrey believed firmly in labor’s right to strike and often found himself at odds with the Republican businessmen he was trying to cultivate. Many businessmen were upset when Humphrey allowed strikers to picket Northwestern telephone company in 1947, in flagrant disregard of the Stassen Labor Act, which prohibited mass picketing. As mayor, Humphrey should have called in the police to disband the picketing, but he did not. He explained that the telephone company needed to be taught a lesson about collective bargaining. When the Cowles-owned Minneapolis Star scolded him for not enforcing the law, Humphrey explained to Cowles that his reason for not calling in the police was to avert rioting.8 Under the mantle of “unity,” Humphrey reintegrated the labor movement and unions into city politics as just another group, just another constituency. In a Minneapolis Morning Tribune piece titled “City’s Progress Linked to Unity Among Citizens,” Humphrey lauded Minneapolis’s great future as government, industry, and labor worked together as a team.9 On the one hand, this legitimated labor’s interests in the political arena. It painted unions—once signifiers of violence, disruption, and foreign-born organizers—with the brush of respectability, which made Republicans and other citizens less resistant to them. On the other hand, however, painting the unions with the brush of respectability stripped them of their radical potential. Humphrey’s bold endorsement of former communist and CIO leader Robert Wishart for alderman, while brave, also erased the radical legacy of Wishart’s work. Calling Wishart a “well-known, capable, and efficient labor leader,” as if he were a nine-to-five man, Humphrey emphasized his work for the blood bank. Avoiding the word “union,” he noted that Wishart’s “organ-


ization of employees at the Honeywell plant” was generous in its civic contributions.10 This transparent effort to make a controversial labor leader palatable to the middle classes was a common tactic in American politics. And indeed Humphrey should be applauded for sticking with his friend even as members of his own DFL party were red-baiting the union leader. Nonetheless, the effect of such assimilatory, integrative tactics was to marginalize those who saw the labor movement as a force of progress, not another brick in the foundation of the status quo. Humphrey’s zeal for compromise and cross-class cooperation angered left-wingers, who correctly surmised that it undermined their own influence in the DFL party and Minnesota politics. In addition to Farmer-Labor veterans like Elmer Benson, Marion Le Sueur, and Susie Stageberg, the left wing consisted of unionists, a few academics, and a small, but—as the phrasing went—highly organized group of communists. Communists had been a key part of the labor movement since the 1930s and were well ensconced in the DFL party after the merger.11 Any liberal entering Minneapolis politics during the 1940s had to contend with both the communists and the established politics of anticommunism. Humphrey’s tangles with Minneapolis communists from 1945 to 1948 made him a lifelong anticommunist and help explain his long support of the Vietnam War. Initially, however, Humphrey hoped to avoid the communist issue altogether by using the same techniques of consensus and affability that he used with the businessmen. Secure in their power, businessmen could afford to flirt with Humphrey’s liberal consensus politics. The left wing, however, was increasingly insecure and defensive. Their hopes for real structural changes in American society were proving to be unfounded. Criticism of the Soviet Union was widespread. For Elmer Benson, who had supported U.S. intervention in the war only after it was clear that the United States would be fighting with the Soviet Union, the U.S.–Soviet wartime alliance had signified that the United States was at last outgrowing an irrational fear of socialistic governments. The Truman administration’s anti-Soviet stance beginning in 1946 signaled, for Benson, a revival of red scare tactics and militaristic bombast. Against this backdrop, Humphrey’s easy cooperation with corporate heads and monied Republicans became yet another indication of the increasingly constrictive political opportunities for the left wing.12 They could not afford to compromise anything.


Wary of Humphrey’s politics, the left wing began to organize against him in 1946. DFL chairman Elmer Kelm had announced his resignation in fall of 1945, which meant that a new chairman would be chosen at the 1946 DFL state convention in March. Humphrey assured the Democratic National Committee that a left-winger would not be elected new chairman.13 Soon after the outgoing chairman announced his resignation, however, John Jacobsen, a secret communist and regional director of the CIO’s Political Action Committee (PAC), warned his allies that “it would be disastrous to permit him [Humphrey] to be elected state DFL chairman.”14 Jacobsen, William Mauseth, communist head of United Electrical Workers local 1146 and the Minnesota CIO-PAC, Marian Le Sueur of the Hennepin Farmer-Labor Women’s Club, Selma Seestrom of the DFL Association, and Elmer Benson began organizing to take over the DFL party in precinct and county caucuses. Most caucuses were poorly attended, which allowed a well-organized group of concerned people to gain control. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, where DFL caucuses were well attended by unionists, there was as yet no organized opposition to left-wingers. Most DFLers were uninterested in or unconscious of whatever conflict existed between Humphrey and the left wing. Although debates raged over the United States’ relationship to the Soviet Union and the dismantling of wartime programs, most people had not yet drawn hard lines over these issues. At the convention the Left mobilized its supporters and, as Humphrey supporter Eugenie Anderson saw it, hijacked the party. A Red Wing housewife and later an ambassador to Denmark, Anderson recalled to interviewer Arthur Naftalin (who had also been present at the convention): “The methods they used, the way they marched up and down the aisle, and kept their eye on everybody, and the way they vilified Humphrey’s character, said the most outrageous things against him, against you, against me, against all of us. . . . It woke me up. It woke Humphrey up.”15 In the end Benson, Le Sueur, St. Paul lawyer Francis Smith, and Orville Olson, a secret communist and head of the Independent Voters of Minnesota, got themselves appointed to the DFL executive committee. No Humphrey supporters were selected for party offices. Dismayed, Humphrey consulted his friend Robert Wishart about getting at least one representative on the executive board. Wishart convinced the Left to accept one Humphrey man, and they made Orville Freeman state secretary.


The left wing’s coup at the 1946 convention prompted Humphrey to adopt an anticommunist position. Although Anderson and Naftalin had been urging Humphrey to take a stand against communists in the DFL for the past year, Humphrey had always demurred, believing that he could bring the interests of the left wing into the DFL party, as he might those of any other group. He wanted to avoid what he called an “ideological” struggle within the DFL, and as a party leader, he positioned himself above factional squabbling. This Rooseveltian posture became untenable after the 1946 convention. Around the same time, Anderson read liberal activist James Loeb Jr.’s famous New Republic letter, which called for liberals to condemn communist tactics in the “progressive movement” in light of tensions with the Soviet Union in Europe.16 Anderson invited Loeb to Minneapolis to discuss the situation in Minnesota. In August 1946 Loeb met with Evron Kirkpatrick, Naftalin, Anderson, and Humphrey in Minneapolis, and apparently convinced Humphrey to openly oppose the communists in the left wing.17 The same group traveled to Washington in January 1947 to participate in the founding of the liberal anticommunist group, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), with such people as Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Reinhold Niebuhr, and labor leaders Walter Reuther and David Dubinsky.18 Humphrey made his first remarks condemning communism abroad and in Minnesota at an AFL union conference shortly after Loeb’s visit in August 1946.19 He made a second speech against communism two days later before a group of UN supporters. Baffled by this apparent red-baiting from an otherwise liberal politician, DFL supporters wrote worried queries demanding an explanation.20 Humphrey replied that he was not red-baiting but rather trying to build an “honest, progressive party.”21 Humphrey’s openly anticommunist position intensified the struggle in the DFL party. Humphrey and his supporters became known as the “right-wing” faction, although they called themselves “labor-progressives.” There followed a two-year struggle for the hearts and minds of DFL voters, in which the leaders of both factions planted rumors, riled emotions, harassed opponents, and monitored the activities of their respective supporters. In this atmosphere of factionalism, surveillance, and worried recantations about communist pasts, Humphrey created the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations. About every three weeks, leftwing activists, liberal anticommunists, and the executives of Minneapo-


lis’s major corporations sat down to discuss interracial problems over lunch at the Hotel Dyckmann’s Normandy Room. The Mayor’s Council on Human Relations Humphrey created the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations in February 1946, shortly after assuming office. The intended purpose of the Council on Human Relations was to reduce social tensions caused by racial and religious discrimination. The council researched racial and religious discrimination in Minneapolis, educated the public about the ill effects of discrimination, monitored literature and movies for racist content, helped write the FEPC ordinance, and investigated a few individual cases of discrimination. Funded entirely through private contributions and staffed by unpaid volunteers, the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations hovered somewhere between government agency and philanthropic group. Humphrey preferred to see the council as a government agency. Minneapolis had a “weak-mayor” form of municipal government, the result of Progressive-era reforms.22 Humphrey tried to expand the powers of the mayor through a new city charter, which gave the mayor full executive power, restricted the role of city council to legislation, and abolished the independent administrative boards.23 Opposition to the new charter was strong, however, and it was not adopted while Humphrey was mayor.24 Instead, Humphrey increased his governing powers by appointing voluntary councils of concerned citizens, such as his Council on Human Relations. As his assistant described it: Humphrey often extended his influence where he had no power by asking the community itself to do a job that he had no authority to undertake himself. The creation of the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations was such a move.25

Humphrey saw the council as a model for government action. In seeking tax-exempt status for contributions to the council, he argued that the program in human relations would normally be “carried out and financed by the city itself,” were public funds available for the purpose.26 Most people assumed that it was a municipally funded agency.27 Humphrey’s positioning of the council as a government agency allowed him to illustrate the benefits of government to the public without actually having to wage a political fight to secure funding for the council. The


mayor’s name on the council and Humphrey’s insistence that it was government gave it the symbolic authority of an official government agency. The mayor received credit for the council’s accomplishments, which, in turn, solidified Humphrey’s vision of active government and enmeshed race in strategies for “positive government.” Like the Republican Governor’s Interracial Commission, the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations brought together a broad cross section of the public. Humphrey’s public, however, was more diverse than the Republicans’ rather stodgy committee of churchwomen, philanthropists, and Urban League officials. Humphrey appointed young unionists, activists, journalists, and educators, individuals of widely varying ideologies and concerns. Council member Douglas Hall, the general counsel for the Minnesota CIO, was not just a union representative but a left-wing activist, part of the opposing faction of the DFL. Genevieve Steefel, a wealthy civil rights activist, and Rubin Latz of the Central Labor Union were active in left-wing organizations that anticommunist liberals identified as “commie-front.” Editor and former unionist Cecil Newman, the only black member, was younger and more militant than the Urban League leaders who usually represented blacks on government committees. Humphrey also appointed Pillsbury executive Bradshaw Mintener, General Mills attorney Durwood Balch, and presidents of smaller manufacturing companies.28 The ideological diversity of the council eased several of the mayor’s political quandaries. Anchored by grain executives, the council indicated to all that he was not “labor’s mayor.” At the same time, it fulfilled two of the labor movement’s goals: fair employment and activist government. Through the Council on Human Relations, Humphrey could cultivate the Republican cronies who controlled the city without offending his main constituency in the labor movement. More significantly, the Council on Human Relations siphoned off the Left’s most energetic, noncommunist supporters to augment Humphrey’s own efforts in the civil rights field. Humphrey appointed Hall, Steefel, and Latz to the council because they were among the most active, militant civil rights leaders in Minneapolis. Their exclusion from the council would have called into question Humphrey’s sincerity about human relations. By including them, however, he won grudging respect from noncommunist left-wingers. This was not politicking for Humphrey; he believed that the incorporation of protest into one of the two major parties was the essence of the


democratic political process. Humphrey understood that civil rights activists like Latz and Steefel had joined so-called communist-front groups because those organizations fought most strenuously for minorities’ civil rights. The Independent Voters of Minnesota, a front group headed by communist Orville Olson, included some of the best-known civil rights activists in the state: Frank Boyd of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Genevieve Steefel, attorney Hyman Edelman, and others who would find their way onto the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations. Humphrey did not attack civil rights workers with communist connections but rather sought them out as allies in the struggle against racism.29 The calm professionalism and apparent cooperation among the ideologically diverse members of the council offered an alternative to the increasing rancor in the political arena. The records of the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations disclose no ideological hostility, no political discomfort, none of the bile-filled bickering that was prevalent within the DFL at the same time. To be sure, there were disagreements on the council, especially pertaining to the apportionment of resources. In a conciliatory memo to the members of the council Humphrey admitted that some of the council’s difficulties “may even involve partisan politics.”30 But this was not the same as the name-calling and vituperation that occurred in DFL caucuses and newspapers from 1946 to 1948. Council members’ involvement in messy political controversies impinged little on the work of the council itself. Douglas Hall, for instance, served faithfully on the Mayor’s council even as he clashed with the mayor over the issue of communism in the DFL. Hall was the CIO’s general counsel who had succeeded in procuring equal wages for black workers.31 He was a staunch left-wing activist who had joined the Communist party briefly in the 1930s, dropped out, but remained opposed to red-baiting in all of its forms. In 1946 Hall ran for Congress as the DFL candidate from Minneapolis’s fifth district. This presented a problem for Mayor Humphrey. As a prominent DFL leader, Humphrey was expected to endorse the DFL congressional candidate, especially in his own district. Humphrey, however, had just stated his opposition to communists and communist sympathizers in the DFL party. Hall was widely known to be a “communist sympathizer.” In a five-page memo concerning the “Doug Hall Problem,” Orville Freeman argued that were Humphrey to endorse Hall, it would confuse liberals looking for anticommunist


leadership and appear as though Humphrey had backed down under left-wing bullying: [W]e have been taking an anti commie stand, we are known for it. We have been fighting. Then suddenly we go along with one of their leaders. We have decided on a policy—we must follow it, too [sic] change when the attack starts is to be routed in confusion, to be a prey of indecision.32

Freeman concluded that if Humphrey were to decide to endorse Hall, then he should have Hall sign a statement reading, “I am not now and never have been a member of the Communist party,” and indicate support for the U.S. policy of armed forces in Europe.33 Humphrey agonized over the decision and finally decided not to endorse Hall. This brought forth a hail of condemnations from the left-wing, liberal activists, and regular supporters of the DFL, who accused the mayor of dividing the party and playing politics. Throughout the controversy, however, Hall participated as usual on the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations. His presence at the Normandy Room luncheon meetings and his activities on behalf of the mayor indicated that the unsavory politics of anticommunism would not disrupt city business. Similarly, Sam Davis, the Communist party candidate for governor in 1934 and editor of the left-wing Minnesota Labor, was nonetheless invited to participate in the council’s activities.34 The carefully crafted ideological diversity of the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations undermined the left-wing idea that there was a fundamental conflict between corporate interests and the people. Working together against racism diminished the animosity between ideological combatants, at least in the public eye. While left-wing activists argued that the interests of the people and those of corporate leaders were fundamentally irreconcilable, Humphrey used his Council on Human Relations to show that there were in fact areas of agreement between all sectors of society.35 Humphrey’s “Community Self-Survey” suggests just how central social cooperation was to his program of interracial relations. One of the main tasks of the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations was to collect data on racial discrimination and strife in Minneapolis, from which information they would develop solutions. Rather than using trained social scientists, however, Humphrey decided to employ a “community self-survey of human relations,” whereby community leaders and citizens would collect the data themselves, under guidelines de-


veloped at Fisk University. This system involved white citizens, usually removed from the ravages of racial prejudice, in a hands-on, eye-opening educational experience, which was supposed to be more effective in inspiring action than pamphlets and statistics. Chaired by Pillsbury executive Mintener, the self-survey committee consisted of a broad cross section of the community, bringing together civil rights activists, corporate executives, churchwomen, and unionists, thereby creating the crucial “cross-pressures” that held American society together. Minneapolis was known to have one of the most broadly representative sponsoring groups in the country and had recruited the largest number of people for the data-collecting phase of the project, over six hundred out of a community of half a million.36 This methodology, however, while useful in educating white participants, usually failed to yield objective facts on which sound public policy could be based. Sociologist Stuart Chapin urged Humphrey to do the project right and use trained social scientists, or at least have a tighter advisory committee.37 But as the publicity for the self-survey proclaimed, the project’s emphasis was on “the cooperative local inquiry,” rather than “results of the survey itself.”38 Humphrey and his publicists spoke about the success of the Council on Human Relations in terms of how it had brought together people of various opinions. They lauded the council’s concrete achievements, namely the FEPC, but they positively relished the idea that the council included Republicans and was, indeed, headed by the Republican governor’s brother.39 In an article about Humphrey’s civil rights achievements, his assistant noted exuberantly that “most of the [Human Relations] Housing Committee, including the chairman, were real estate men!” In a more subdued tone he observed that the council’s committee on employment “had a preponderance of employers and was chaired by a vice-president of Pillsbury Mills.”40 The real estate men had recommended passage of a prohibition to restrictive covenants, while the employers supported the FEPC. By emphasizing these points as the terms of success, Humphrey and his publicists were extolling a new kind of activism, which was based in cooperation and persuasion, not conflict and confrontation.41 Behind this consensus-building activism were the ideas about government-coordinated cooperation between competing sectors of society that Humphrey had celebrated in his thesis. Humphrey’s ideologically diverse Council on Human Relations reestablished his position of


Rooseveltian juggler—identified with no one faction but reconciling the interests of all—at a time when he was in fact heading his own faction in the DFL party. The FEPC The Minnesota Fair Employment Practice Council first proposed a municipal FEPC for Minneapolis in December 1945. Humphrey endorsed the proposal and urged the city council to pass it. At a well-attended public hearing on the bill, held on February 13, 1946, no one openly opposed the ordinance. When liberals on the city council moved to include private business as well as government offices and unions, however, conservatives tabled the bill, and the city council failed to act.42 Humphrey created the Council on Human Relations soon thereafter, combining the most experienced FEPC activists on the left with representatives of business. In July another proposal was brought before the city council, and the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations met regularly with members of the city council over concerns about the proposal.43 In January 1947, two proposals stood before the city council. One covered city government and contractors only, while the other, sponsored by the Council on Human Relations, covered businesses and unions and also proposed an FEP committee to screen complaints and recommend for prosecution. CIO leader Wishart and left-winger Hall fought vigorously for the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations’ version of the bill and eventually garnered enough support to pass the bill on January 31, 1947, by a vote of twenty-one to three.44 The ordinance prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, or ancestry in hiring, conditions of employment, compensation, promotion, and union membership on city premises. It created a Commission on Job Discrimination to investigate complaints and recommend violators for prosecution. The fine for violation was one hundred dollars or ninety days in jail. The justification for the bill was to protect the public welfare of the inhabitants of Minneapolis, since studies had linked job discrimination and unemployment to a wide variety of social evils ranging from juvenile delinquency to rioting.45 The Mayor’s Council worked hard to keep FEPC “above politics.” Proponents argued that the FEPC was good for all: postwar prosperity required full employment, which by definition meant fair employment, and society had to fix the conditions that led to social unrest.46 A more


popular argument was that banning discrimination was the moral, fair thing to do. Minneapolis Star reader Maryedith Kyle echoed many when she responded to a you-cannot-legislate-tolerance editorial with the observation that you cannot legislate honesty or virtue either.47 Both arguments emphasized that the FEPC was for the larger public good, as if this somehow put it outside of politics. When Republicans accused Hall of using the proposed FEPC ordinance as a “political issue” in the election, the Reverend Reuben Youngdahl, head of the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations (and brother of the Republican gubernatorial candidate Luther Youngdahl), met with anxious Republicans to assure them that “it was the purpose and desire of the Mayor’s Council to keep [the FEPC proposal] from becoming a political issue and to treat it as simply a matter of sound public policy.”48 Humphrey denied that there was anything political about the FEPC, pointing out the utter absence of a black vote in Minneapolis.49 He rhetorically diminished Minneapolis’s already miniscule black population to make the point that he acted out of principle, not “politics.” The FEPC was not the result of “Negro pressure,” he told one interviewer, since there were only 6,500 Negroes in a city of 525,000.50 That human relations could lift Humphrey above the political fray depended on its being a nonpolitical issue, one that benefited all of society and was not associated with one group. While Humphrey sought to disclaim black pressure, black activists in Minnesota, organized as an independent interest group according to Humphrey’s own ideas of proper political organization, were struggling to put civil rights into politics. Cecil Newman seized on the competition between Humphrey and the left wing to integrate black interests into politics. Newman reported on the crowd that thronged to the city council hearings in support of the ordinance, noting that a diverse set of groups were there in force: the NAACP, the Communist party, the American Legion, the AFL, and the CIO.51 Newman had long reported the political diversity among blacks, giving equal coverage to the Republican, Farmer-Labor, Communist, and, later, DFL parties. In the heated political climate of 1946, however, this kind of coverage took on additional meaning. Under the guise of maintaining the paper’s “political independence,” Newman pitted the various groups against each other in his coverage of their FEPC activities. As the left wing was preparing to take over the district caucuses, for instance, Newman covered the Communist party’s FEPC/Lenin Memorial rally, advertising it in feature


stories, interviewing its organizers, and reporting on its message.52 Whereas the diversity of groups supporting FEPC represented social unity for white politicians, for Newman, it provided the means by which to make blacks’ presence felt in the political arena.53 That white politicians could benefit from civil rights put black newspapers and black leaders in a position to confer legitimacy on politicians who were seeking to be sincere and “above politics.” Newman published requests for new subscriptions so that all of the readers, black and white, knew which prominent political figures were reading the paper.54 This fostered competition between white politicians for positive coverage in the paper, which in turn conveyed to black readers and white politicians alike the sense that black voters were part of the political game. What did white politicians get out of positive coverage in Newman’s paper? There were votes. Not a lot, of course, but in a local election on local issues, five thousand committed voters could only help. The Negro vote was not the only vote sought, however. A large number of white churchgoers and unionists had been made aware of the fair employment issue and were concerned about political “sincerity.” Newman’s paper offered politicians legitimacy and a certain moral sanctity that came from taking the risk of supporting the FEPC, which was, despite the support of enlightened executives, still largely opposed by powerful business forces.55 Assessing the FEPC The fight for the FEPC brought black actors into the political arena in ways that Newman had hoped. But the actual benefit of the FEPC for black Minneapolitans was less clear. When it was finally set up, the FEPC was haphazardly administered. The city council made no appropriations until December 1947, when they gave the FEPC $3,475 (before December, the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations funded it). Compared to the FEPC laws in New York State, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, the Minneapolis ordinance was weak, although it compared well to Chicago’s, which excluded labor unions.56 Of the twenty-one cases filed with the Minneapolis FEPC in its first year, only four were settled satisfactorily, with the company admitting wrong and promising to amend its policies; the rest were either tabled or still being processed.57 A survey of employers who had hired black employees for the first time showed that only 43 percent attributed their decision to the city FEPC, while an


overwhelming 86 percent credited the Urban League with convincing them to hire a black employee.58 The Minneapolis FEPC worked hard on its limited resources. Between June 1947 and May 1950, the FEPC handled 115 cases. According to the 1950 Report on Operations, approximately 40 percent of those were settled “satisfactorily,” which meant that the complainant had received the position or was satisfied with the company’s commitment to follow a policy of nondiscrimination in the future. About 25 percent of the cases were dismissed, the commission having determined that the complainant had been denied employment for a valid reason. Eight percent of the cases were dismissed because the commission lacked jurisdiction. In 21 percent of the cases, discrimination could be neither proven nor disproven, and they were deferred pending further evidence. Sixtysix percent of these cases were brought by African Americans, 20 percent by Jewish complainants, and 5 percent by American Indians. Three cases concerned discrimination against Catholics, while complainants in three additional cases claimed discrimination because they were not Lutheran, not Jewish, or not Catholic.59 These last scattered cases suggest the legacy of old religious divisions now superseded by the obvious racial division implied by the seventy-six black complainants. By 1953, 80 percent of the cases would be brought by African Americans. Headed by NAACP board member Wilfred Leland, the new commission included civic leaders, corporate executives, and lawyers who also sat on the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Minnesota Jewish Council, the NAACP, or the Urban League. Significantly, however, unlike either the Governors’ Interracial Commission or the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations, the roster of the FEPC listed no union leaders, even though labor had figured prominently in establishing the FEPC. Disenchanted labor leaders criticized the FEPC’s ineffectiveness. Local 1139 of the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers protested the inadequacy of the commission, noting that the Minneapolis school board employed only one Negro among its twenty-three hundred teachers. Minneapolis labor had fought hard for the FEPC and resented that its efforts had come to naught.60 Cecil Newman likewise criticized the premature and unwarranted celebration of the FEPC in an editorial in the Minneapolis Spokesman.61 The commission reminded critics of its scarce resources and the tremendous opposition to its existence. Despite those impediments,


however, it felt the statistics showed success. The NAACP and the Urban League defended the commission’s work. The unpaid commission members worked hard. They took each complaint seriously, discussed it thoroughly, and interviewed all parties concerned. The amount of time and energy put into the investigation of each case is astounding, even as it ultimately validates criticism that liberals saw racial problems in terms of incidental occurrences. One example will illustrate. On April 18, 1949, the commission met to discuss the case of Edwin Patten, who had initially been denied employment as a chef at the Curtis Hotel, had then secured the job with the help of the FEPC, but had then been fired after four days of work for stealing a customer’s case of watches. Patten admitted taking the case of watches from the guest, a watch salesman, but he claimed it had been a practical joke and that he had returned the watches. He believed his firing was related to the head chef ’s racial resentment. The commission interviewed the manager of the hotel, the head chef, the union head, Patten himself, the watch salesman, and the police and detectives who had investigated the stolen watches. One member said that if it were true about the practical joke, there were no grounds for discharge; another felt that the practical joke created a disturbance that was grounds for dismissal. The Curtis Hotel said they would hire another black chef; they just did not want Patten. After discussing the case, the commission decided to conduct more investigation, including interviewing six waiters who worked with Patten, checking Patten’s record at the University of Iowa, checking his police record in Des Moines, where he had been jailed for assault, checking reasons for his discharge from the Veterans Administration, and asking the Curtis Hotel to hold off on its dismissal until they could complete their investigation.62 While this case raises questions about privacy, it also indicates that commission members were fair-minded, generous, and committed to their work. FEPC members approached discrimination on a case-by-case basis, seeking evidence of an employer’s intent to discriminate. When they discovered wrongdoing, they insisted it stop, thus achieving resolution. Their critics, including some unions but not all, saw the problem more systemically. They pointed out that Negro workers were being squeezed out of wartime jobs, and that there were no Negro teachers at all in Minneapolis. Indicative of the case-by-case philosophy of the FEPC, Wilfred Leland responded that no one had brought a complaint against


the Minneapolis school board.63 This was an early skirmish in a new debate about whether discrimination was incidental or systemic, whether it was proven by employer intent or statistical imbalance, and whether it should be resolved through a color-blind standard or a color-specific remedy.64 The division in this debate did not correspond with earlier divisions between labor and management. Indeed, it occurred within unions, civil rights groups, and the new organizations charged with implementing antidiscrimination laws. Criticism of the FEPC and labor leaders’ absence from it would appear to contradict the idea that antiracism and civil rights activism displaced old ideological and class tensions as formerly contentious groups united to address the problem of racism. However, criticism of the FEPC was part of new, postwar debate, wherein the positions were staked out along new ideological lines, with new political alliances. Radical unions and enlightened management worked together for it. Moreover, although social unity was forgotten on the actual FEPC, it was crucial in establishing and publicizing it. As Louis Ruchames showed in his 1953 study of state FEPCs, the most successful activists were those who brought together the most segments of society. The FEPC’s promise of social unity, manifested in the diversity of groups supporting it, assuaged fears of its radicalism, while also stressing its benefit to all social groups.65 That labor was part of creating the FEPC, even though it was overlooked in the FEPC’s implementation, helped change Minnesota’s political landscape. Humphrey responded defensively to complaints about the council and the FEPC. 66 He regarded his human relations initiatives a success. For Humphrey, progress was indicated less by the actual resolution of specific minority problems than in the fact that human relations programs provided an arena for the peaceful resolution of potentially explosive racial troubles and that they raised public consciousness about racism. Consciousness-raising was the thrust of most “inter-racial relations” programs. The Minnesota Council of Churches’ Inter-racial Vacation Visits programs, for instance, eschewed the idea of a “fresh-air project,” connoting the rehabilitation of impoverished black youth, but insisted instead that these Negro children were “ambassadors of their race,” who would begin to erase the antidemocratic prejudices of rural Minnesotans.67 Since most activists agreed that the root of the racial problem was white ignorance, any organization that enlightened white


prejudices was by definition successful. Enlightening white individuals about prejudice had the added benefit of enlightening them about labor unions and liberalism, which would be important in rebuilding a liberal, noncommunist DFL party, especially in rural areas where antiunionism ran rampant. The civil rights activities of these years benefited Minneapolis blacks to the extent that they focused attention on the city’s hitherto ignored racial discrimination. This created momentum and hope for black activists who sought a political role in municipal life. But the cumbersome case-by-case strategy of an underfunded municipal agency barely dented the structural problems of black underemployment, and the overtly paternalistic forms of such agencies alienated the African American population. Well-intentioned civil rights legislation, which included a statewide FEPC in 1955, failed to strengthen the black communities’ political power in the state. When black interests stood in the way of white interests like urban renewal and freeway building, for instance, the black communities were unable to protect their interests. The depth of the Twin Cities’ racial problems would not be truly recognized until the racial riots so feared in the 1940s actually erupted in Minneapolis and St. Paul in the 1960s. Similarly, although white workers seemed to accept the FEPC in the abstract in the 1940s, in that Minneapolis experienced none of the resistance so prevalent in other cities that tried to integrate their workforces, this did not mean that they harbored no racism toward blacks. Their racial animosity was revealed in the 1960s, when the issue of black civil rights affected their jobs and neighborhoods. In the 1940s, however, civil rights was an issue that could help build consensus for Humphrey—so long as it remained mostly an abstract issue and so long as it was seen as outside of politics. Of course, as black leaders understood, civil rights was a political issue almost everywhere else in the country. It was connected to new black urban votes and the burgeoning cold war with the Soviet Union. And it was about to force the Democratic party wide open.

CHAPTER SEVEN Civil Rights in Party Politics

When Hubert Humphrey testified before a U.S. Senate committee about the FEPC, the Democratic senator from Louisiana told him that the Negro population in the Twin Cities was so small that it did not constitute an economic problem, as it did in the South. Humphrey admitted this was so but added, “I don’t have to say these things to be elected mayor.” The old senator replied, “Maybe you’re thinking of greener fields.”1 Humphrey denied this, claiming that all he wanted to be was mayor of Minneapolis. But the fact that he was in Washington, having this conversation with a southern Democrat suggests that he was already positioning himself in national politics. Civil rights became an increasingly important, albeit largely symbolic, issue in postwar party politics, not just in partisan positioning but also in defining divisions within the parties. New northern black votes exacerbated tensions between northern and southern Democrats. Democrats had managed to operate effectively despite potentially disruptive differences over civil rights by avoiding congressional debate about the issue.2 After the war, a new generation of liberals embraced the issue in part because they believed in it, but also because they hoped to make the Democratic party the party of activist, progressive government, which required an explicit, public stand against the southern Democrats. Such a stand indicated to new black voters that northern Democrats were serious about civil rights, and thus urban machine bosses interested in those new black voters supported liberals’ civil rights agenda. The civil rights issue also illuminated tensions within the Republican party. Republicans were divided between moderate internationalists and 111

112 Civil Rights in Party Politics

old-guard, midwestern isolationists. The cold war eventually marginalized the isolationists, but they did not give up their position easily. Even after Truman persuaded Michigan Republican Arthur Vandenburg of the need for an active, interventionist foreign policy, others, like Minnesota Senator Henrik Shipstead, had to be unseated.3 While supportive of socially progressive domestic policies and critical of the capitalist motives behind cold war internationalism, the old isolationists tended to be xenophobic in their attitudes toward the rest of the world. Internationalists used the wartime antiracist ideals of tolerance and understanding to paint the isolationists as provincial, backwards, and ignorant, while making their own appeals for global capitalism and free trade appealingly progressive. Wielding the pluralistic language of brotherhood, the internationalists also sought to win over the hearts, minds, and markets of developing nations.4 Their pluralistic rhetoric and concerns about cold-war economic competition translated into a vague rhetorical support of civil rights legislation. Up-and-coming politicians in Minnesota grasped the implications of civil rights in party politics. Humphrey, a Democrat, and Harold Stassen, a moderate, young Republican, both used the issue to solidify their own positions within their respective parties and to position their parties in national politics. As each tried to prove his own sincerity on the issue, often by impugning the other’s, civil rights became part of the political discourse of Minnesota. Enlightened Tolerance in the Republican Party A person reading the Minneapolis Tribune in 1947 would have thought that Republicans were at the fore of civil rights activities. Indeed, we cannot fully appreciate Minnesota’s changing political landscape without examining how civil rights emerged also as an issue for Republicans. Before Harold Stassen’s serial presidential campaigns made him a political curiosity, he was considered the most promising politician to come out of Minnesota since Floyd Olson. He was young, urbane, internationalist, and ambitious. He had single-handedly wrested control of the Minnesota Republican party away from the white-haired, isolationist old guard when he became Minnesota’s “boy-governor” in 1938 at the age of thirty-one.5 Co-opting the Farmer-Labor, New Deal program of social service government and promising to rid the state of corruption, he defeated Farmer-Labor governor Elmer Benson by one of the

Civil Rights in Party Politics 113

largest margins in state history. His internationalism and acceptance of the New Deal state made him seem enlightened and liberal, hardly a Republican at all. As governor, Stassen bypassed the old Republican party horses and picked administratively efficient moderates like himself to run for Republican offices. Like Humphrey, he cast himself as a fair arbiter of government, “above politics,” willing to cooperate with all, bringing order and consensus to politically mired government.6 But Stassen was no liberal. His 1939 Labor Relations Act required a ten-day waiting period before striking, and prohibited sympathy picketing.7 Although he eschewed the state Republican organization, he had ties to East Coast internationalist Republicans like the Rockefellers and Thomas Dewey (before he alienated them), and received support from New York millionaires John Hay Whitney and Alfred Vanderbilt. He opposed federally subsidized housing to alleviate the postwar housing crunch, which even conservative Republican Robert Taft supported. The Nation commented on Stassen, “He has managed to combine in remarkable degree liberalism in the abstract with conservatism in the concrete.”8 Stassen embraced antiracism and internationalism as an indication of his new brand of moderate, socially cooperative Republicanism. The virtuous area that floats above the corrupted swamp of party politics is a coveted place in American political discourse. As one columnist put it, without a trace of irony, “Non-Political Speeches Effective in Campaign.”9 In Minnesota that place had historically been the domain of the Farmer-Labor party and its broadly humanitarian goals of economic and social justice. Economic justice and social security had been “outside,” or “above,” politics because neither Republicans nor Democrats were addressing those issues before the 1930s. With the success of the New Deal, however, these issues became proper “political issues,” the focus of political competition. Antiracism, the United Nations, and interracial education were examples of new, vaguely humanitarian issues identified by Stassen as “outside politics,” and hence signifiers of social cooperation. Governor Edward Thye (whom Stassen chose to replace himself after he joined the Navy during the war) created the Governor’s Interracial Commission in 1943. He also sponsored Alice B. Sickels’s proposal for an International Park celebrating Minnesota’s racial diversity, declared statewide “interracial weeks,” and spoke on the importance of race relations to local groups.10 Thye’s successor, Luther Youngdahl (elected in 1946, after Stassen chose Thye to run for Senate), supported


a permanent federal FEPC and also a state FEPC for Minnesota. He desegregated the Minnesota National Guard in 1948. Youngdahl’s interest in better race relations came out of his Christian interest in humankind rather than Republican principle, but humanitarian politics had always been the hallmark of the Farmer-Labor party, not of the Republicans.11 While Thye and Youngdahl’s antiracism was sincere, if also politically useful, Stassen’s own interest in antiracism was more transparent, more frenzied, and somewhat belied by the anti-Semitism of the 1938 gubernatorial election.12 From the start, Stassen pursued the Republican presidential nomination, focusing his energy on two related, nationally relevant issues—the United Nations and interracial relations. They were new, moral, and, most importantly, national concerns, which allowed him to transcend both traditional party politics and Minnesota.13 A proponent of Wilsonian cooperation and international goodwill, Stassen positioned himself against the old guard of the Republican party, appealing to younger, concerned, even idealistic voters. As apparent facilitator of harmonious race relations, he positioned his party against the archaic prejudices of the Democratic party. Committed to American leadership in the postwar world, Stassen sought to destroy traditional isolationism. Devoted to Wendell Willkie’s “One World” vision of international cooperation, he participated in the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco in April 1945. In April 1947, he met with Joseph Stalin at the Kremlin to discuss, among other things, international control of atomic energy.14 Behind slogans of world peace and prosperity lay the same rationalizing order that Stassen had brought to his administration of Minnesota government. He wanted to transcend petty ethnic and national disputes, devious diplomacy, secret pacts, and the resulting economic disasters of rising tariffs and devalued currencies in order to create a stable economic environment by which living standards could be improved, profits made, and war avoided.15 After obligatory statements about universal human rights, the meat of this internationalist program was coordination and regulation of airports, seaports, banking, and trade, in short, creating a stable economic order in which the United States, as the only nation with a viable economic infrastructure after the war, would be the first to profit.16 The strongest resistance to this vision of international economic cooperation came from isolationists within Stassen’s own party in Minnesota. Senator Henrik Shipstead was one of only two senators who voted against


the ratification of the United Nations Charter in 1945; earlier he had opposed Roosevelt’s intervention in World War II. Shipstead had been the first Farmer-Labor senator in 1922. He remained in the Farmer-Labor party until that party’s support of Roosevelt’s interventionist policies forced him into the Republican party in 1940, where he headed the isolationist faction. Shipstead was a classic midwestern progressive Republican: to the left on domestic issues, antimonopoly, pro-union, an advocate of public-owned utilities and railroads, and xenophobic on international relations.17 In 1946 Stassen selected Thye to run against Shipstead in the Republican Senate primary, which became a referendum on midwestern isolationism. For Stassen, it was a chance to prove his leadership to the internationalist Republican party heads in New York. Already campaigning for the 1948 presidential nomination, he announced the upcoming primary battle between the isolationist Shipstead and internationalist Thye first to the New York Herald Tribune, and only later in Minnesota.18 Shipstead accepted the challenge and fought what would be the last serious campaign for traditional anti-imperialist isolationism in Minnesota. Denouncing the “Anglo-Russo-American alliance” for preserving “rival imperialisms” and forcing peacetime military training on the American people, Shipstead warned of “all such schemes which would transform our constitutional form of government into an international superstate dictatorship such as Mr. Stassen advocates.” He beseeched Minnesotans to stop “the power and money of the big Eastern internationalists” from dragging America into World War III.19 Shipstead’s words embodied not only traditional xenophobic fears of international involvement but also the old Farmer-Labor critique of eastern monopolists, big-moneyed lords, and Wall Street. It was, in fact, the same Farmer-Labor rhetoric that the left wing was deploying against Humphrey in their struggle within the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. Like Humphrey, Stassen used the cooperative language of interracial and international brotherhood to marginalize the traditional populist rhetoric of the old Farmer-Laborites. Like interracial cooperation, international cooperation promised peace, prosperity, and liberation from irrational prejudices. It trumped older economic critiques to which those who resisted the tide toward cold war internationalism appealed. In 1946 Stassen began his 1948 presidential nomination bid by heading the national coordination of American Brotherhood Week. “Stassen


Heads Drive for Racial Equality,” read the tag in the Minneapolis Tribune.20 This project received prominent coverage in the Tribune, while Humphrey’s efforts to pass a municipal FEPC were all but ignored in the Minneapolis papers.21 Stassen also traveled to Washington to speak before an emergency meeting of the National Council for a Permanent FEPC in January 1946.22 Editor Cecil Newman protested Stassen’s invitation to the meeting. Stassen had done nothing for blacks in Minnesota, Newman claimed, and his antilabor policies as governor actually hurt them. Newman allowed that some Republicans were sincere in their FEPC support. But Stassen was not one of them.23 Heading national brotherhood week and offering tacit support to the FEPC gave Stassen national attention, while also highlighting the Democrats’ inadequacies on this issue. Minnesota politicians often positioned themselves on racial issues through images of the Democratic South. The South appeared regularly in the Minneapolis dailies during the 1940s. From throwaway snippets about southern race obsessions to detailed reports on lynchings, the papers were fascinated by the strange land below the Mason-Dixon line.24 As portrayed in the pages of the Minneapolis Tribune and the Minneapolis Star-Journal, the South was a land of lawless demagoguery, characterized by “the brutality and barbarism of a type of crime which has been hideously identified with this country for years.”25 The Minneapolis papers reported racial problems as southern problems. They editorialized about the Scottsboro case and southern lynchings.26 Articles like “Southern States Are Cheating Negro Veterans of GI Benefits” affirmed the idea that racism was a southern peculiarity.27 But racial discrimination occurred frequently in Minneapolis. Black children were barred from Minneapolis summer camps, and black home buyers were limited by restrictive covenants.28 But these stories were reported as isolated incidents. For most Minnesotans, racism was a southern phenomenon. And the South was Democratic. Images of race and the benighted South had been part of Minnesota’s cultural and political discourse since the Civil War, but the emergence of race and civil rights as issues after World War II gave them new relevance. The Minneapolis Tribune and the Minneapolis Star-Journal were owned by Republican businessman John Cowles Sr.29 Cowles and executive editor Gideon Seymour supported the moderate internationalist Stassen faction of the Republican party in Minnesota, and the northeastern establishment of the party nationally.30 The Minneapolis papers


favored a bipartisan, increasingly anti-Soviet foreign policy and vigilantly covered “Labor’s Troubled Front” during the postwar strike wave. Their editorials frequently attacked “labor bossism.”31 The papers also covered issues of race, discrimination, and southern demagoguery. Despite left-wing criticism to the contrary, Cowles’s interest in racial discrimination seems genuine. As renowned journalist Carl T. Rowan recalled, Cowles led by example, hiring Rowan as a reporter for the Tribune in 1948 when no other major paper even looked at the young African American’s resume.32 Cowles treated Rowan as an equal, inviting him to social events when others at the paper refused. When Rowan proposed that he travel down South to research a series about being black in postwar America, the paper unexpectedly approved it. The series, “How Far from Slavery,” ran in 1951 to great acclaim. However sincere Cowles’s opposition to racism, his papers’ coverage of racial issues and the South nonetheless upheld a traditional partisan bias that tied Minnesota Democrats by virtue of party loyalty to ancient, irrational racial hatreds. Stories about southern racism exploited Democrats’ vulnerability (the South) and at the same time propagandized Republican enlightenment and moderation. In the pages of Minneapolis papers, southern racism and political corruption were inseparable, and both were connected to the Democratic party. Articles about the poll tax and southern blacks’ attempts to vote in the recently banned “white primaries” reminded readers that black people did not vote in the solidly Democratic South.33 The paper followed Democrats’ internal struggle over white supremacy, as southern Democrats “prepared to carry their battle for ‘white supremacy’ to the party’s national convention” in 1944.34 Stories of lynching trials revealed that southern Democrats accused northern Democrats of “meddling” and “interference” in the trials, charging that northerners were pandering to northern Negro votes by prosecuting southerners.35 This would appear to exculpate northern Democrats who were fighting for racial justice down South, but at the same time, the suggestion of political motivations had the effect of dragging northern Democrats into the mire of southern politics, reemphasizing that racism was a Democratic problem. The Tribune’s coverage of Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo contrasted Bilbo’s corrupt, racist demagoguery with the Republican party’s evenhanded moderation and dignity. Bilbo led efforts to expatriate black Americans to Africa. He wrote “Dear Dago” and “Dear Kike” letters to


correspondents who had written to him about the FEPC. He called for violence against blacks who tried to vote in the “white primary,” which was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1944.36 He received kickbacks from war contractors. As one editorial noted, Bilbo was good for the Republicans because he was “a continuing advertisement of the worst side of the Democratic party.”37 In January 1947 a bipartisan effort was made to unseat Bilbo on the basis of his intimidation of Negro voters and his illegal dealings with war contractors. The bipartisanship of the effort, however, was muted in the Star-Journal. For three days the paper headlined the Bilbo fight, beginning with “GOP Sets Battle to Stop Bilbo,” on January 2. On January 3, the large headline read, “Battle to Bar Bilbo Ties Up Senate,” while directly underneath was “Knutson [Republican congressman from Minnesota] Offers Tax Cut Plan; Benefits Worker, Earner, Aged,” implying that while Democrats were impeding congressional business, Republicans were staying on track with beneficial tax cuts for the aged.38 But Knutson’s tax cuts were a direct attack on the New Deal, and Knutson, moreover, was allied to southern Democrats in his opposition to a larger federal, or as he called it, “communistic,” government. On January 4 the headline read, “Bilbo Fight to Finish Voted by Republicans,” over a UP release that featured Republican Robert Taft as the calm upholder of congressional decorum and rectitude.39 Throughout the rest of the week the paper kept the Bilbo battle alive in numerous cartoons and editorial comments. The Minneapolis press, then, supplemented Republicans’ attempts to reap political gain from Democratic disrepute. Civil rights and racial issues were useful to the Republicans as long as they were cast in terms of southern corruption and Christian brotherhood, in other words, as long as they could be used against Democrats and isolationists. Humphrey and the Democratic Party Humphrey and the Minnesota liberals who formed Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) were part of a larger group of young, largely academic, northern liberals who sought to remake the Democratic party in what they saw as the tradition of the New Deal, a coalition of groups who “view their government as a partner.”40 As historian Sidney Milkis and others have shown, Roosevelt had begun the process of replacing the Democratic bosses with his own administrative agencies and social service networks during the New Deal.41 While the Roosevelt revolution


began the transformation, the inherent inertia in state organizations and party structures resisted it, so that old-style Democrats still held positions of power in the party (and, indeed, would continue to until party regulations were rewritten in 197242). As their declining status in the party became clearer, especially over issues like civil rights, old-style Democrats jealously guarded what remained of their power from liberal upstarts and especially labor unionists. The ADA saw the labor movement as perhaps the most important part of the new Democratic party. Even as Humphrey tried to marginalize the labor movement in Minneapolis politics, he was trying to make it a “full-fledged partner” in the national Democratic party. This was not a contradiction. Humphrey defined the labor movement’s role as a partner in, not a leader of, a party based on issues and government-fostered economic opportunity.43 This vision necessarily excluded the southern Democrats, who were hostile to labor unions and expanded government powers. While Republicans emphasized southern domination of the Democratic party, northern liberals like Humphrey used civil rights to show that the Democratic party was confronting its southern reactionaries. Humphrey built his national reputation as a liberal Democrat on his interest in “human relations.” He testified about the Minneapolis FEPC before the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare in June 1947.44 In one frenzied month in early 1948, he spoke before civil rights activists in Kansas City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Omaha, and New York City.45 He was the national chair of the National Committee for Fair Play in Bowling, an organization connected to the Detroit CIO that sought to instill tolerance among the rank-and-file working class. For all of these activities he sought national publicity. As Humphrey put it to columnist Frank Kingdon, “I have an unholy desire to communicate to eastern audiences.”46 All of the articles that were written about the dynamic, up-and-coming young mayor of Minneapolis stressed his work in “human relations.”47 This publicity helped Humphrey’s political career, but his career was inseparable from the existence of a liberal Democratic party. Humphrey traveled around the country speaking about civil rights not just to fulfill his own personal ambitions but to convince party leaders of the importance of “liberalizing” the Democratic party, which meant, specifically, standing up to the southern Democrats. As Humphrey saw it, the civil rights issue was but a means of identifying and isolating those elements that stood in the way of what he re-


ferred to as a “real, liberal Democratic party.”48 Humphrey’s call for civil rights made the South the new evil against which liberals waged battle. Instead of eastern banks and monopolists, the old evils of Farmer-Labor days, Humphrey rallied outrage against southern demagoguery. This displacement is captured in the phrase “civil rights over states’ rights,” a play on the old Farmer-Labor slogan “human rights over property rights.” For New Dealers like editor Cecil Newman and Humphrey, “states’ rights” and “property rights” were virtually interchangeable since both inhibited the expansion of federal power. Vilifying the South, then, tightened the association between postwar liberalism and a beneficent federal state, while at the same time nullifying Republican efforts to identify the Democratic party with white supremacy and ignorance. Southern white supremacists were not the only Democrats who stood in the way of a liberal Democratic party. Although the Democratic National Committee (DNC) understood the importance of new black voters to the Democratic party, they did not share liberals’ somewhat theoretical vision of an issue-oriented, liberal party, nor did they understand what was at stake in the left-liberal debate over communism. For anticommunist liberals, the most effective way to neutralize communist influence in progressive organizations was to co-opt the issues that attracted progressives to communists, such as civil rights. But that required a view of politics as being about issues. Traditional Democrats viewed politics in terms of power and patronage. The DNC, moreover, was staffed by an entrenched Democratic hierarchy. As late as December 1947, Humphrey had to remind the DNC to send materials to the key labor papers in Minnesota.49 Many Democrats identified the “disturbing signs of a transformation of the party along Socialist or class lines” with “radicals” like Humphrey.50 Moreover, the DNC constantly evaded Humphrey’s requests for money to fight the well-organized left wing in Minnesota. “We need organizers. We need money,” Humphrey pleaded in September 1947, painting the communist threat as starkly as possible.51 Humphrey tried everything to wring support from the DNC: he consulted public relations experts on how to deal with machine Democrats, he cajoled, he flattered, he threatened. Humphrey spent $4,500 of his own money to support the Democratic party in Minnesota.52 Still, the DNC largely ignored him. What bothered Humphrey most was that the DNC considered Minnesota, and more to the point, Humphrey himself, to be unimportant


and irrelevant in the upcoming 1948 election.53 Humphrey was trying to build a Democratic party in Minnesota that was aligned firmly and squarely with the national party, and yet that national party ignored him and the ideological threats to its own existence. Humphrey wrote to Howard McGrath and Gael Sullivan, the DNC chairman and executive secretary, about their rebuffs: “Am I, and are my people out here in Minnesota . . . to be disregarded by the National Committee and to be cast aside as rather unwanted personnel?”54 Local Democrats told Humphrey that the national party did not care about what was going on in Minnesota. If that was the case, Humphrey asked, why be loyal to the Democratic party at all? In a letter to Sullivan, Humphrey wrote: I have something to contribute in politics. . . . I believe that I have made sufficient contacts throughout the country so that my presence within the Democratic party is of some little importance.55

At once pandering and defiant, this statement sheds light on Humphrey’s participation in the civil rights fight at the Democratic convention in July 1948. The “contacts throughout the country” to which Humphrey referred were in large part connected to his civil rights activities. Humphrey’s national ties were with a small group of northern liberals and labor leaders whose growing power in the Democratic party potentially threatened the leadership of the DNC. Humphrey was trying to gain acceptance from the Democratic leaders while at the same time challenging their leadership. Aggravating these problems in Minnesota was the DNC’s method of dispensing patronage and money. Finances were funneled through a Democratic operative named Stephen Harrington and a group of St. Paul Democrats who resented Humphrey’s upstart attitude and liberal views and refused Humphrey’s requests for money. Ironically, Humphrey had originally supported the decision to set up the independent finance committee through the St. Paul bosses in 1946, since it removed Democratic money from the left wing, then in control of the DFL. Harrington, a veteran of Edward Crump’s Memphis machine, was no friendlier to Humphrey’s faction.56 Indeed, Harrington and the St. Paul Democrats were so put off by Humphrey and his allies that they apparently struck a financial deal with the left wing in January, following the left wing’s announcement that it would take the DFL party into Wallace’s new Progressive party. Baffled, Humphrey wrote to the head of the DNC,


“Now, get this Gael, this same Orville Olson [with whom Harrington had struck a deal] is campaign manager out here in Minnesota for the Wallace forces. What the hell is going on? Frankly I don’t understand this kind of politics and at the present moment I am sick and tired of it.”57 Humphrey railed against the deal-making politics and weird loyalties of the Democratic machines. Bad local machines, he wrote, stood “squarely in the road blocking the way to decent, liberal, national politics.”58 He knew this from personal experience as well as American political history. Humphrey and the ADA turned to unions and liberal organizations for funding, which further exacerbated their relationship with old Democrats in Minnesota. Minnesota Democrats worried that Humphrey’s reckless liberalism, especially on civil rights, strained the cohesion of the Democratic party. Loyal to their southern counterparts, they were perfect targets for the enlightened Republican press. In 1941 St. Paul Democrats invited Theodore Bilbo to speak at their annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner.59 In 1948 Mississippi Senator John Sparkman spoke at the dinner. In the name of partisan unity, Minnesota Democrats opposed bringing civil rights into the political arena. Shortly after Truman endorsed a broad program of civil rights reforms, including an antilynching law and a permanent FEPC, Democrat E. J. Larsen wrote to a friend: I think Mr. Truman is the most badly advised President since old Man Taft. Just why in Missouri he had to spring that Nigger business right now is fine proof of the amateur management of his advisers.60

Significantly, Larsen was an ardent New Deal Democrat. He felt, however, that civil rights had never been part of Roosevelt’s program, and that it threatened to destroy that program by sowing division in the party. In this he was correct. Truman’s bid for the black vote and his endorsement of federal enforcement of civil rights were new.61 Old Democrats were also wary of the idea of “good government,” or “issues-oriented politics,” which they rightly understood was an attack on patronage. Charles Munn, secretary to Democratic Congressman William Gallagher, identified himself as someone who “believes that political patronage is an American institution to maintain interest and concern in our democratic government by the rank and file of the electorate.” He was complaining to Stephen Harrington that the DNC no longer took seriously its duty to secure party loyalty at the grass roots through


patronage.62 Munn’s suspicions have since become the subject of many treatises on the transformation of the Democratic party, which transferred power from local party functionaries to academic experts and policymakers, and eventually led to the weakening of parties in American political life.63 Humphrey and his liberal allies saw the St. Paul bosses, like the southern Democrats, as accidents of historical contingency, holdovers from an earlier era when ethnicity and stubborn loyalties determined party affiliation. The leaders of the ADA saw themselves as the Democratic party. When a schoolboy wrote to Humphrey requesting information on the Democratic party, Humphrey sent him a copy of the ADA program, remarking that he did not have a copy of the Democratic platform handy, but that most Democrats followed the ADA.64 Unfortunately for ADA liberals, “most Democrats” were not thinking like them. But by exploiting new northern black votes and the balance-of-power strategy outlined by Henry Lee Moon, the ADA liberals hoped to transform the Democratic party from within. Civil Rights and the Democratic Party in the Countryside As in most midwestern states, Minnesota’s rural counties were traditionally rock-ribbed Republican. During its years of existence, the FarmerLabor party (1923–44) had disrupted rural Republican dominance. During those years rural voters, who represented over half of the state’s population, flitted between Republicans and Farmer-Laborites. By the 1940s, anticommunism, antilaborism, and prosperity had put farmers firmly in the Republican camp. The disappearance of the Farmer-Labor party in 1944 also contributed to the resurgence of the Republican party in rural areas, as those rural Farmer-Laborites reverted to the Republican party. Explaining his decision to run as a Republican in 1944, ninthdistrict Farmer-Labor Congressman Harold Hagen wrote, “I cannot win as a Democrat.”65 If the DFL was to become a viable party in Minnesota, it would have to address the historic absence of and prejudice against the Democratic party in rural areas. Though steadily decreasing, the rural population still represented half of the state’s population in the 1940s.66 DFL organizers hoped to revive and build on what remained of the old FarmerLabor organizations, as well as tap into the established network of farming cooperatives, then under attack from Republicans. As it turned out,


Truman and Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan’s liberal farm programs brought farmers into the Democratic party in the 1948 election. But DFL organizers could not have counted on that in 1946 when they began preparations for the election. What they did know was that there was tremendous antipathy to the labor movement and Humphrey’s “big-city” demeanor in the countryside, which was stoked and cultivated by Republicans. Republicans exploited recurrent tensions between farmers and the labor movement left over from the Farmer-Labor blowout of 1938 and given new life by the postwar strike wave. Railroad companies, mills, and business groups publicized what they saw as the selfish excesses of the labor movement in rural papers across the state. The Great Northern Railway Company ran full page ads in the Farmers’ Union Herald professing to be anxious to provide maximum boxcar requirements for the 1948 crop but warning that there might be a shortage of boxcars due to recent strikes.67 An American Iron and Steel Institute ad headed “More Headaches for the Farmer” showed the long-suffering farmer working overtime to clothe and feed the needy throughout the world, as well as the folks at home, while steelworkers wanted yet another wage increase, even though they were “already among the highest paid wage-earners in America.”68 DFL organizers and their union allies countered these conservative claims and attempted to deflate rural voters’ rancor toward the labor movement.69 In lecture series, conferences, and pamphlets, they emphasized the common economic interests of farmers and workers, summed up in the slogan: “Better wages for workers means better incomes for farmers.”70 Organized labor’s drive for higher wages and job security helped farmers. Labor, in turn, supported farm price supports, which kept farmers’ incomes high enough so that they and their families could buy the farm machinery and consumer goods that workers produced. In addition to arguments about purchasing power, DFL organizers found “intergroup relations” to be useful in rehabilitating labor’s tarnished image in the countryside. Beginning in 1946, the United Labor Committee for Human Rights sponsored filmstrips, movies, and lectures around the state to educate individuals about “the human error of racial and religious bigotry.” The head of the committee, Hubert Schon, believed that the activities helped the labor movement’s reputation among nonlabor groups, especially in rural areas, since people regarded them as


“an unselfish community enterprise” sponsored by organized labor.71 In November 1947, Schon reported on the committee’s rural activities: Rural audiences are very interested with a human rights program sponsored by organized labor. Without exception at the eight meetings I have held, people have raised the question, Why does labor sponsor a human rights program? and favorable responses have occurred.72

Schon took labor’s human rights program into nonpolitical sites, like churches, schools, PTAs, and civic clubs. The program’s leaders were talking not about labor’s interests, but rather about something of interest to all of society. Worried about Humphrey’s labor connections, one rural adviser suggested that the DFL adopt Republican Governor Luther Youngdahl’s successful tactics of choosing issues like human relations that showed he “is putting people ahead of politics.”73 Schon helped organize the Northwest Farmer and Workers Education Conference, an effort to reunite farmers and workers in anticipation of the election. Humphrey was the opening speaker, while James Patton, the president of the national Farmers’ Union provided the keynote. The conference included people from the cooperative movement and from both the left and right wings of the labor movement. Civil rights activists served on the planning committee and participated in the conference as resources. In addition to Schon, the planning committee included unionists Nellie Stone Johnson and Rubin Latz, Anna K. Schwarz of the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations, William Seabron of the Urban League, and Samuel Schiener of the Minnesota Jewish Council. Invited as resources were Cecil Newman, editor of the Minneapolis Spokesman; Albert Allen, union leader and head of the Minneapolis NAACP; the Urban League’s S. Vincent Owens; and Genevieve Steefel and Wilfred Leland from the Minneapolis Fair Employment Practices Committee.74 Of these, Johnson, Seabron, Newman, Allen, and Owens were black, a fact they would have said was not pertinent to anything. However, five black leaders at a farmers’ education conference suggests the importance of intergroup relations to reestablishing farmer-labor relations. Farm and cooperative papers paid attention to racial and religious issues. In early 1947 the Midland Cooperator reviewed the book Color Blind, a story about white and Negro hostesses at the Stagedoor Canteen, a dance hall that admitted servicemen of all races. The reviewer commented that prejudice was based in exploited labor, observing that the


cooperative movement “by its profession of equality of all men as consumers who serve themselves, is trying to get at the economic basis of wage serfdom and Jim Crow.”75 Other articles included a critique of the racial theories of fascist groups in the United States, and a story of a Negro vet in North Carolina who won a Cadillac in a Kiwanis Club lottery, which was never delivered after the Kiwanis learned the winner was black.76 The Farmers’ Union Herald attacked the South’s support of the Klan in an article in September 1948, and ran cartoons showing how racism subverted democracy.77 Their interest was not in black people per se but in facilitating a general attitude of tolerance and open-mindedness. The rural readers of these papers would probably never interact with the state’s black population, even as cooperators. There was no mention of a new black-owned cooperative store in St. Paul’s Rondo area, which black newspapers lauded.78 Organizers, however, wanted rural audiences to understand the principles of tolerance and healthy intergroup relations because these principles could be applied as well to the antilabor situation in the countryside. Rural Methodist minister Edward A. Day appreciated the connection between racism and antilabor prejudice when he wrote to thank the Central Labor Union for its human relations programs, and remarked that “one of the big problems any liberal minister in a rural community faces is how to get farmers and small business people to think in interdependent rather than in anti-labor (and often in anticoop and anti-racial) terms.”79 These efforts helped lay the groundwork for Humphrey’s 1948 Senate campaign. Humphrey’s staff worried constantly about his popularity in the countryside.80 One of the main problems was Humphrey’s connections to the labor movement. Wrote small-town judge Vincent Hollaren, “if I were you I would not let the impression get out into the rural areas that you were being run by the labor crowd. Let them endorse you and pass the word along among each other; but to shout it to the farmer that you were the choice of the Unions will do no good.”81 Humphrey’s advisors likewise worried that labor’s radio programs were being picked up in the country and damaging his campaign.82 The ideas in intergroup relations programs informed the way Humphrey and his supporters viewed and ultimately resolved the conflict between farmers and workers. For instance, they talked about the farmers’ rancor toward organized labor as immutable, eternal, and irrational.


“But remember, the farmer has a native suspicion of Labor Unions” reminded one writer.83 An activist from Indiana commented, “Most of our Indiana farmers have no love for labor, and neither they nor I can explain the reason for this except that there has never been a common basis on which they could reach a mutual understanding.”84 Such ingrained emotional prejudices prevented the two groups from coming together to protect their shared economic interests and made farmers vulnerable to conservative divide-and-rule strategies that pitted labor against rural interests. To eradicate these ancient antagonisms, Humphrey and the DFL organizers borrowed solutions from their own intergroup relations programs. Humphrey, for instance, identified one of the causes of the prejudice as the lack of interaction between the two groups: “The main problem is the isolation of the two groups. They rarely get a chance to see each other on a friendly basis. Isolated, they stand hostile or at least suspicious.”85 This was a popular explanation for any prejudice, particularly racial prejudice. The thrust of much civil rights activity was providing opportunities for the two races to mingle naturally, such as in the “Inter-Racial Vacation Visits,” sponsored by Twin Cities churches, which placed black children in farm homes for a couple weeks in the summer.86 Likewise, Humphrey’s suggestion was to try to get the trade unionist together with the farmer, where they could talk. As one writer noted, much of the prejudice could be dispelled in private conversation.87 Educational programs were another popular solution to overcoming prejudice and racism, and many advisers and organizers saw education as the key to freeing rural people of their antilabor prejudices.88 The point here is not that rural organizers or farmers were interested in a few thousand African Americans in the Twin Cities. They were not. Rather, DFL party-builders were interested in how the ideas of tolerance and understanding might bring farmers into a liberal Democratic party. Farmers and workers had tolerated each other when they were in the Farmer-Labor party. They had understood their common interests then. But they had understood their interests in terms of solidarity against the East and monopoly capitalism. As that rhetoric became irrelevant, DFL organizers brought the farmer and worker together through an educational campaign about tolerance, which emphasized common economic interests in a strong state, rather than a class-based movement. The language of human rights and the understanding of prejudice and tolerance provided an alternative, new way of thinking about a


farmer–labor alliance that was neither movement-based (as the old Farmer-Labor party had been), nor driven by ethnic prejudices (as the old Farmer-Labor party had been), but rather based on tolerance and fostered by education. In talking about the farmer–labor conflict in terms of prejudice, politics and the experiences of the Farmer-Labor party fell out of the picture, and farmers and workers were able to reforge a loose coalition on the basis of their interests in Washington, and not their identities as common folk. Thus, to the extent that activists like Schon saw antiracism as a way to decrease the farmers’ animus toward the labor movement, antiracism was a tool in efforts to reforge a farmer–labor coalition in the Democratic party. Democrat Humphrey and Republican Stassen were both rising stars in their respective parties in the 1940s. Unlike past Minnesota politicians, neither was identified with farming interests. Rather each tried to position himself in a relevant position with regard to his party’s future needs. Although both Humphrey and Stassen used civil rights to plot their futures in national politics, civil rights per se played very different roles in the futures each imagined. For Stassen and most Republicans, civil rights was useful to divide Democrats and defeat isolationism. It was useful only so long as it remained a moral issue about correct and civilized behavior, and only so long as the Democrats were identified with white supremacy. Republicans had no argument about how black civil rights fit into their political program, or how their party might address the problems of African Americans. For liberal blacks and northern New Deal Democrats, on the other hand, civil rights were connected to the debates raging around the shape and scope of the federal government, and inextricably bound to liberal northern Democrats attempts to subdue the South’s influence in the party. During the 1948 election, civil rights would also become enmeshed in the heated debates over Truman’s cold war policy and anticommunism, as Henry Wallace embraced civil rights to bolster his third-party campaign and his arguments against Truman’s anti-Soviet policies.

CHAPTER EIGHT The 1948 Election and the Triumph of the Democratic Political Order

Hubert Humphrey became Minnesota’s first Democratic senator in 1948 by reforging the old Farmer-Labor coalition of farmers, liberals, and workers in a new kind of Democratic party, which manifested political leverage in terms of organized votes, not control of party machinery or patronage. To reshape Minnesota’s Democratic party in this way, Humphrey had to eliminate both the left wing and the old Democrats from leadership in the DFL party. The civil rights issue helped him delegitimate their influence and realize his own vision of a liberal Democratic party based on economic issues and interest groups, not section, class, or ethnicity. The National Context: The Democrats’ “Northern Strategy” The central problem for Democrats in 1948 was how to insure that the “unhappy alliance” of southern white supremacists, northern city bosses, liberals, and workers would continue to function in the election year. The common assumption was that Roosevelt had held these disparate forces together through his enormous personality and political charm. With Roosevelt gone, and a Kansas City machine boss at the helm of the party, most observers expected the party to dissolve.1 In November 1947 Clark Clifford, President Truman’s political strategist, wrote a forty-three-page memo to the president, outlining an electoral strategy for the fragmented party. Clifford suggested that Truman move to the left on domestic issues to appeal to voters in key “pressure groups” as boldly as possible. The groups he singled out were farmers, 129

130 The 1948 Election

organized labor, liberals, Negroes, Jews, Catholics, and Italians.2 New on the list of targeted “pressure groups” were black voters. Although many African Americans had voted for Roosevelt and the New Deal, the Democratic party had never specifically courted the black vote.3 The 1948 election was different, however. As Clifford explained: Unless the Administration makes a determined campaign to help the Negro (and everybody else) on the problems of high prices and housing— and capitalizes politically on its efforts—the Negro vote is already lost. Unless there are new and real efforts (as distinguished from mere political gestures which are today thoroughly understood and strongly resented by sophisticated Negro leaders), the Negro bloc, which, certainly in Illinois and probably in New York and Ohio, does hold the balance of power, will go Republican.4

Clifford assured the president that “[a]s always, the South can be considered safely Democratic and in formulating national policy, it can be safely ignored.”5 Another reason Truman paid attention to civil rights was the thirdparty candidacy of Henry Wallace. Wallace’s decision to run against Truman in 1948 briefly revived the left wing and further exposed the fiction of Democratic “unity.” A solid New Dealer who had formerly been secretary of agriculture, vice president, and secretary of commerce, Wallace opposed Truman’s hostile position toward the Soviets.6 Like many progressives after World War II, Wallace had hoped the United States would take the lead in planning a peace that would carry economic prosperity to common people around the world—a kind of international New Deal. Attaching American international involvement to the common man’s revolutionary progress allowed progressives to embrace an American internationalism untainted by imperialism.7 But Truman’s “get tough” attitude toward the Soviet Union, begun with his withdrawal of American lend-lease aid to the Soviets in May 1945, dashed their hopes for a revolutionary century of the common man and turned many against Truman.8 Truman’s policies gradually won acceptance among liberals as the Western allies wrangled with the Soviets over Berlin and Greece, and as communists took over one eastern European nation after another. But liberals still opposed militaristic solutions to the conflict, such as the Truman Doctrine of April 1947. After Truman unveiled the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe in June 1947, many liberals endorsed his biparti-

The 1948 Election 131

san foreign policy. The humanitarian goals of the Marshall Plan and its explicit promise to fight “hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos” echoed wartime ideals of an international New Deal. Moreover, the Marshall Plan represented the activist and practical initiatives of a strong federal government. Among its main opponents were conservative Republicans who opposed the power such a plan gave to the federal government and the taxation needed to support it. For liberals like Hubert Humphrey who sought to legitimate federal power at home, the Marshall Plan played a key role in domestic as well as international politics.9 Despite the humanitarian promise of the Marshall Plan, Wallace and other progressives, including Elmer Benson and old Farmer-Laborites in Minnesota, continued to oppose Truman’s anti-Soviet policies. They believed that the common people of the world would reap no benefit from American capitalism unless it was tempered by cooperation with the Soviet Union. They believed that the Marshall Plan inflamed anticommunism, since it was justified as a means to prevent communism from taking root in Western Europe. For the Left, Truman’s anticommunist foreign and domestic policies went beyond betrayal of liberal wartime aspirations; they threatened civil liberties at home and world peace abroad. The bipartisan support for Truman’s foreign policy made a third party the only alternative. Wallace announced his decision to run as a third-party candidate in December 1947, and his supporters quickly organized the Progressive party, the national chairman of which was Elmer Benson. The Progressive party offered a remedy to what many viewed as the Democratic party’s increasing conservatism after Roosevelt’s death. It grew out of the Progressive Citizens of America (PCA). Founded in December 1946, the PCA combined the CIO-funded National Citizens for Political Action Committee (NCPAC) and the Independent Citizens Committee for Arts, Sciences, and Professions (ICCASP).10 Headed by New Dealer C. B. Baldwin, the group originally included CIO leaders Philip Murray and Jack Kroll, civil rights activists like Clark Foreman and Mary McCleod Bethune, and in Minnesota, Benson. Like Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the PCA sought an alternative to the Jim Crow, machine-dominated Democratic party. But unlike the ADA, they welcomed communists into their organizations and had strong organizational ties to southern civil rights organizations like the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW). The SCHW had organized Wallace’s


successful tour of the South in the fall of 1947, during which Wallace defied segregation, ate and traveled with blacks, and spoke before integrated audiences. While northern ADA liberals worried about incorporating civil rights in the Democratic program, Wallace was down South, in the dragon’s mouth, getting pelted with rotten eggs and tomatoes for his stand against white supremacy.11 Clark Clifford had anticipated that Wallace would run, and planned to squelch any threat he might pose by keeping the focus of the campaign on domestic issues, recasting Truman as a friend to labor and progressives, and dismissing Wallace as a communist dupe.12 The fact remained, however, that Wallace was free to take strong stands on civil rights, which underscored Truman’s inability to do so. Wallace’s defiance of Jim Crow endeared him to black citizens and spotlighted Truman’s subservience to southern Democrats. Unlike either Truman or Clifford, the anticommunist liberal–labor coalition in the ADA was obsessed with Wallace and the threat he posed to liberal politics.13 They saw civil rights as Wallace’s one legitimate issue, and knew that their own actions had to match his.14 They pressured Truman to support a strong civil rights proposal and made civil rights a test of his liberal sincerity. Thus, with an eye toward northern black votes, the potential threat of Wallace, and the pressure of northern liberals, and with assurances from Clifford that the South “had nowhere else to go,” Truman proceeded with what might, in hindsight, be called the “northern strategy.”15 On February 2, 1948, five months before the Democratic convention, Truman asked Congress to enact the recommendations of his Presidential Commission on Civil Rights. These included abolishing the poll tax, making lynching a federal crime, establishing a permanent federal FEPC, prohibiting segregation in interstate commerce, and establishing a civil rights division in the Justice Department. Southern Democrats reacted more violently than Clifford or Truman had expected. Mississippi Senator James Eastland held up the president’s proposal as proof that the government was now controlled by organized “mongrel minorities” out to “Harlemize” the nation.16 Representative Eugene Cox of Georgia sputtered that “Harlem is wielding more influence than the entire white south.”17 The Conference of Southern Governors cancelled about a half million dollars in contributions to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and demanded futilely that the


DNC condemn the president’s civil rights message.18 In March, the southern governors pledged to withhold their electors from any candidate supporting civil rights: “The southern states are aroused and the Democratic party will soon realize that the South is no longer in the bag.”19 Truman began to backpedal. Shortly after the southern Democrats announced their intentions to bolt the party if the presidential candidate supported a civil rights program, the ADA began to organize northern and western Democrats to fight for a strong civil rights plank in the Democratic platform at the convention.20 Minneapolis mayor, Senate candidate, and ADA vice chair Humphrey led the national effort. Humphrey stressed the “strategic,” that is, electoral, importance of standing up to the South, arguing that “this is one of those fortunate instances where the only realistic political alternative is also the best moral alternative.”21 ADA chair James Loeb agreed that it was essential that civil rights be defended at the national convention: “If any serious compromises are made on this issue, the position of the northern and western liberals would be impossible.”22 Loeb asked Humphrey to convince prominent Democrats to sign a petition supporting a Democratic civil rights plank, to be released to the press. He felt that Humphrey’s identity as a Democratic mayor of a northern city would create the impression that the wellspring for civil rights was coming from regular Democratic party members, not just the ADA. He insisted that the petition originate in Minneapolis, on Humphrey’s mayoral stationary (although he offered to pay the expense), and that they hold a press conference in Minneapolis.23 The DNC, while mindful of black votes, did not want to destroy the party over the issue.24 Its leaders proceeded to patch up the damage caused by Truman’s February civil rights proposals and worked out a compromise plank with southern Democrats in the name of party unity. They settled on a “harmony plan,” endorsing the vaguely worded 1944 Democratic plank that proclaimed the Democratic party’s support for “freedom and democracy” for all.25 They warned the ADA not to divide the party by making an issue of it. Initially Humphrey and other ADAers on the platform committee heeded the warning in the interest of party unity, but under pressure from labor, black delegates, and their own consciences, they decided to take the issue to the floor for a vote.26 The ADA’s Biemiller resolution endorsed Truman’s February civil rights


proposals. Southern delegates had their own “civil rights” plank, the Moody resolution, which prohibited the federal government from any action on civil rights that interfered with states’ rights. On the third night of the convention, Humphrey took the podium and urged Democrats to adopt the ADA’s strong civil rights plank: “the time has arrived in America for the Democratic party to get out of the shadows of states’ rights to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.” The crowd went wild, and northern and western delegates passed the ADA’s plank, 651½ to 582½.27 The Mississippi and half of the Alabama delegation walked out of the convention, accompanied by catcalls and cries of “good riddance.”28 The remaining southerners nominated Georgia Senator Richard Russell for president; later, many backed the States’ Rights (“Dixiecrat”) party and its presidential candidate, South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond. The dramatic hoopla around this series of events—the behind-the-scenes fight, the speech, the roll call, and finally the bolt by the Mississippians and Alabamans— revived what many had thought was a dead party. As one journalist put it, “The death of the Democratic party has been postponed due to circumstances beyond the control of its leaders.”29 The convention-floor fight and resulting liberal victory quelled whatever threat Wallace may have still posed to the Democrats. And while Clifford had not anticipated the desertion of the Dixiecrats, Humphrey’s speech insured that the African American vote in key northern industrial states made up for the loss of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina. The State Context: Reforming the DFL The liberal revival of the national Democratic party was essential to Humphrey’s plans for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party in Minnesota, as well as his own Senate campaign. For a majority of Minnesotans, the Democratic party still signified Catholics, southern Bourbons, and corruption. There had never been a Democratic senator elected in Minnesota. Democratic congressmen had been elected in those areas where the Irish and German Catholic minority had settled, but the Senate was a statewide election. When the national party, then, rallied around the civil rights plank in July 1948, finally standing up to the southerners, it went a long way to convincing Minnesotans that the Democratic party was finally turning a corner. Humphrey operatives reported favorable reaction to the speech: “in visiting some Republicans, the comment


was, ‘Well I’ve always been Republican, but when I heard Humphrey talk, I was proud I lived in Minnesota. . . . Anyone who takes a stand on that touchy issue is all right.’”30 The civil rights victory proved especially important in Humphrey’s ongoing struggle against the left wing. Humphrey and the Left The ADA waged an increasingly public anticommunist campaign against the left wing of the DFL party beginning in early 1947. In March 1947 Orville Freeman charged that the DFL Association was controlled by the Communist party, and clarified to the public that the association was not officially connected to the DFL party, which was in the process of purging communists from its ranks.31 At its first convention in June, the ADA announced that its chief purpose was to rid the DFL party of communists and their sympathizers, and make the DFL, as they would reiterate so often, “a clean, honest, progressive party.”32 At stake in the ADA’s efforts to oust the Left was not only Humphrey’s vision of an issues-oriented, liberal party in a two-party system, but also, more immediately, the power of organized labor in national politics. Since taking control of the House in 1946, Republicans had been trying to restrict labor’s power in politics. The Taft-Hartley Act, passed over Truman’s veto in June 1947, symbolized the resurgent antilabor politics. Labor leaders sought to defeat those who supported it. One of the bill’s coauthors, Republican Senator Joseph Ball, was seeking reelection in Minnesota, and most people believed that the popular Humphrey was the only person who could defeat him. CIO president Philip Murray and William Green of the AFL supported Humphrey’s bid for the Senate nomination.33 But the left wing in the DFL opposed Humphrey’s plans to run against Ball. The executive board of the DFL Association explained that they “sought leadership that understands this difference between the people and corporations,” and issued a statement against Humphrey concluding, “By your associations and your record you have ruined any chance of your being an acceptable progressive candidate in the 1948 election. We urge that . . . you retire from the scene as an aspirant to a higher office until you definitely and conclusively change your political friends and orientation.”34 Even before that point, however, Humphrey would have refused to run under the left wing’s auspices. Although the ADA’s intentions to defeat Ball were politically sound, its tactics were abrasive and off-putting. Throughout the latter half of


1947, ADA organizers compiled lists, recruited organizers, and engaged in a series of schemes to oust the Left. Organizers Arthur Naftalin and Max Kampelman were both writing dissertations about how the Communist party had taken over liberal organizations in America. For all the repulsion they felt for actual communists, Naftalin and Kampelman seemed fascinated and even envious of their organizational prowess, and they modeled their own takeover of the DFL on the tactics of the communists in the left wing.35 They justified their methods as the only defense against communists. One had to fight fire with fire. Like the Communist party, the ADA was a small hyperdisciplined group that sought control of party machinery. It made no pretense of being a mass movement. Its leaders consisted of the associates and friends of the core group that started the organization. They recruited with an eye toward organizational viability, seeking especially representatives from labor, farmers’ groups, and other “special interest groups.”36 The top of the organizational structure was composed of Humphrey’s close friends from the University of Minnesota, Arthur Naftalin, Orville Freeman, Max Kampelman, George Demetriou, Evron Kirkpatrick, and Eugenie Anderson, who had formed the ADA as Humphrey’s Senate campaign base.37 Other leaders included Dorothy Jacobsen, a professor at Macalester College; Eugene McCarthy, a professor at St. Thomas College in St. Paul; Jack Jorgenson, a Teamster leader from Minneapolis; Walter Lundberg, a researcher at Hormel Institute who organized in southern Minnesota; Gerald Heaney, a Duluth lawyer who organized the northern, Iron Range part of the state; and Curtiss Olson, a state legislator in the northwestern part of the state. Naftalin and Freeman kept this group as small and closed as possible, following the advice of the national ADA political committee that “extreme care must be taken in selection of officers, sponsors, and the controlling executive of any special campaign committee.”38 They worked closely with labor leaders in the AFL, CIO, and railroad brotherhoods, but they kept them at arms length, a mutually agreed on position due in part to new restrictions on political activities on the part of interest groups. In their larger recruitment efforts, ADA organizers relied on recommendations from friends and proven supporters, rather than on mass rallies.39 They labored over deciding who was “okay” and who was “commieline,” sifting through stationery headings and party listings for signs of an individual’s past support of left-wingers.40 They demanded public


statements from their supporters who had previously been involved in known front organizations.41 Freeman put his wife to work on an enormous project of cross-referencing the names of people on selected “front” organizations with the party officers of each county. The following memo excerpt illustrates the organizational zeal that consumed Freeman: I believe it is essential that a consolidation of the lists of people both good and bad, be made. It is my suggestion that such a list be prepared on a state-wide basis, to include a separate compartment for each county and separate cards for every known individual in said county. All possible information pertinent to the individual involved should be included on this card. It should be maintained up to date and continually supplemented. Enclosed you will find a list of people on the State Central Committee of the DFL party. Those marked “O.K.” or “B” (bad) in ink, are to the best of my knowledge definitely good or bad. The same markings in pencil indicate people tentatively good or bad. No markings indicate no knowledge regarding the individual concerned.42

The generational and class differences between the young ADAers and the state’s citizens made it difficult to determine who was “reliable” and who was not. They were most comfortable recruiting university students, whose young minds were bedazzled by their professors and untouched by old pre-war political battles. Walter Mondale was one such student who joined the ADA. Many of the Minnesota ADA organizers were graduate students or professors, like Eugene McCarthy, then a professor of sociology at St. Thomas College.43 The task of establishing loyalty was complicated by the fact that often no hard lines divided “Left” and “Right” supporters. Activists and voters traipsed between the two factions. Among the vast citizenry in the state, friends remained friends even though they opposed each other on the caucus floor.44 Citizens’ cavalier attitude toward the conflict exacerbated the anxieties of the leaders of both factions, who were fixated on a person’s associations and constantly demanding explanations thereof. ADA organizers worried that local politicos and citizens did not fully appreciate the dangers of communists and fellow travelers, that they would naively accept help from some infiltrator.45 ADA leaders often had strained relations with people who sympathized with, or were ambivalent about, the Left. Freeman’s relationship with his father-in-law, James Shields, a Wallace activist, was tense, with Freeman interrogating the man at family dinners about his political al-


legiances.46 Humphrey’s relationship with DFL Congressman John Blatnik was similarly fraught with tension. Many of Blatnik’s constituents in the left-wing stronghold of the Iron Range were Wallace supporters. Blatnik himself was reticent about Truman’s foreign policy and did not officially endorse the Marshall Plan. He privately claimed to support Humphrey, and Humphrey openly endorsed him, but his supporters were disparaging Humphrey, suggesting that Humphrey was working for Blatnik’s defeat.47 Nor did Blatnik endorse Humphrey in the DFL Senate primary. He hoped to avoid offending supporters of Humphrey’s left-wing opponent James Shields.48 Humphrey demanded “a clearcut statement” from Blatnik on where he stood with relation to himself. “I want Blatnik to come out for me a 100 percent,” he wrote to Gerald Heaney.49 The ADA adopted the communists’ logistical strategies for taking over organizations. Organizers agreed on an agenda before attending a caucus or convention, and then packed the caucuses with their own people, who were instructed beforehand to “follow their leaders.”50 ADA leaders tried to assuage doubts citizens had about the ethics of this kind of political maneuvering, which, after all, was what so many found abhorrent about the communists. They assured their members that it was customary for groups to organize on behalf of some previously determined program in advance of party conventions, that this was “part of everyday American politics and is entirely ethical.”51 Caucusing beforehand in this way did indeed have a long history in America, usually associated with backrooms and cigars. In an effort to dampen the ire of those who were unconvinced such tactics were ethical, the ADA tried to mute its presence in politics. This secretiveness made them resemble the communists even more, as their own description of their activities indicates: “the extensive activities of the so-called ‘right wing’ DFL movement . . . while in effect, ADA inspired and ADA-led, was presented to the public as simply the activities of various individuals.”52 The general public was discomfited by the ADA’s methods. Letters poured into the mayor’s office, castigating the ADA for dividing the party.53 The left-wing UE (Local 1139) Call (CIO) urged Humphrey to tell “his ADA friends” to cease and desist.54 ADA leaders like Heaney and Naftalin were seen as fanatical and rigid, excluding many who would be helpful to Humphrey’s campaign. One Humphrey supporter reported a rumor that Naftalin had appeared in Duluth with two armed guards.55


To overcome the consequences of ADA zealotry, Humphrey and the ADA operated a “good-cop, bad-cop” scenario, with Naftalin, Freeman, and their minions doing the aggressive organizational work, and Humphrey mopping up behind them, assuaging the hurt feelings and rebuilding consensus. It is testimony to Humphrey’s political charm that most people dissociated him from the local excesses of the ADA, even though he was the state director and national vice president of the organization. Humphrey’s aides cultivated this dissociation. In one instance, left-winger Walter Frank came to the mayor’s office to complain that the ADA was red-baiting him. Ignoring Frank’s arguments that Humphrey was responsible for the ADA’s actions since his office was used to organize ADA activities, the mayor’s assistant referred Frank back to the people who called him a communist, saying that he could not understand what this had to do with the mayor.56 People wrote to Humphrey divulging, as if he did not know, that his organizers were excluding people from meetings and bullying old FarmerLaborites. Humphrey professed shock over such occurrences, assuring outraged citizens that he “would do everything in my power not to permit any of my personal friends to in any way damage our political structure.”57 When Clara Watson wrote to Humphrey describing the “highhanded and undemocratic management” of the Rice County DFL convention, he acknowledged the seriousness of her charges, regretted that anything unsavory had happened, and stated his own firm belief in “free and open conventions.”58 He reminded her that “a political party is bigger than any one particular meeting. . . . I urge that you will maintain confidence in the party, and that above all, you stand by your progressive principles. We need people today who will fight for the liberal cause.”59 He responded thoughtfully to those who were angered by the resurgence of anticommunism, explaining how this was a different kind of anticommunism that worked in the name of liberalism rather than against it, that it continued Floyd B. Olson’s mission.60 He exchanged reading lists, did small favors, and responded thoughtfully to old friends and acquaintances who leaned to the left or supported Wallace.61 He saw them as important components of the liberal movement, and, potentially, on his side. Following Wallace’s December 1947 announcement that he would run for president in a third party, Elmer Benson attempted to align the DFL party with the Progressive party, essentially undoing the 1944 merger


and, if successful, forcing Truman (or the Democratic candidate) to run as an independent in Minnesota. This decision strained Wallace supporters’ loyalty.62 Wallace was one of the few progressives still popular among farmers and rural voters, as well as unionists and progressives. Many had hoped that he would challenge Truman for the Democratic nomination within the Democratic party. His decision to form a separate party, however, threatened to divide the liberal vote, allowing a Republican president to preside over a potentially Republican congress. Benson’s decision to align the DFL with a marginal third party was even more troubling, effectively removing the DFL from any real political power. The decision forced many Wallace supporters who were repulsed by Truman and the ADA’s anticommunist tactics, but who nonetheless feared a Republican victory, to forsake Wallace and work with the Humphrey camp. Humphrey welcomed them, dashing off sympathetic letters praising Wallace’s legacy.63 While Humphrey cultivated ties to former Wallace supporters, Naftalin and Freeman prepared a legal argument for barring Wallace supporters from party activities. Following the procedures and guidelines of the DFL constitution, they set up a steering committee made up of ADAers.64 This committee adopted a resolution prohibiting “third party adherents” from participating in the DFL party, on the basis of (1) the DFL constitution, which clearly, and legally, established the DFL’s affiliation with the national Democratic party; and (2) the announced intentions of the Wallace officials in Minnesota to “abrogate these provisions and substitute the national third party for the Democratic party.”65 Freeman sent the resolution out to all county chairmen, concluding, “If any difficulty is anticipated in your county in carrying out the terms of this resolution, please notify this office by wire.”66 In Hennepin County, the left wing’s main base of support, Freeman sent out his carefully coded lists of “Bad” people, called “squeeze-out lists” to the “okay” precinct chairmen and women.67 He assured hesitant supporters of their “moral obligation” to prevent the participation of openly declared third-party supporters in DFL activities, explaining that as these officials supported a “movement to divert our party from its constitutional course, there is no question of our right to protect our party.”68 Meanwhile, Wallace supporters were also churning out lists and pamphlets, and organizing their supporters to pack caucuses.69 The left wing focused on foreign policy and Truman’s militaristic policies. They con-


nected their cause to the long struggle against concentrated wealth and power fought by the Granger movement, the Greenback party, the Populists, the Nonpartisan League, and the Farmer-Labor party, and condemned Truman and Humphrey for betraying those legacies.70 The left wing reminded Minnesotans that the DFL party was “a coalition of 80% Farmer-Labor and 20% Democratic,” and asked whether the Democratic tail would wag the Farmer-Labor dog.71 They argued that the Wallace movement was heir to the glories of past democratic movements, while the Democratic party was, well, the Democratic party, which meant southern Bourbons, anticommunist Roman Catholics, and political chicanery. The left wing tried to tie Humphrey to the sort of anticommunism that had characterized the old Hjalmar Petersen faction of the FarmerLabor party. In the 1938 Farmer-Labor primary Petersen’s red-baiting against Elmer Benson had drawn on a tradition of anti-Semitism. Benson had pointed to these anti-Semitic tactics to persuade voters of Petersen’s illiberality. Benson associated Humphrey’s anticommunism with the same sort of illiberality, and started rumors in Duluth, alleging that Humphrey had made anti-Semitic remarks. Upon hearing of this, Humphrey wrote to Samuel Scheiner, director of the Minnesota Jewish Council and frequent correspondent with the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations, about the danger of these rumors. Scheiner in turn wrote to the man who reported the accusation, Jewish leaders in Duluth, and DFL leaders, attesting to the falseness of the rumor and describing Humphrey’s work against bigotry of all sorts.72 Scheiner had quelled rumors about the political use of anti-Semitism before, understanding the way anti-Semitism and accusations of anti-Semitism fanned hatred.73 Benson’s accusations against Humphrey, whether heartfelt or politically motivated, were part of an old way of doing politics, which liberal antiracists were trying to eliminate from political discourse. Both factions were duly prepared for the April 30 precinct caucuses, where the delegates to the county conventions would be selected. Both had “squeeze-out lists” and coached organizers to orchestrate their members. Pro-Humphrey unions, which by April included the railroad brotherhoods, the AFL, and all but the most resistant CIO unions, distributed the ADA’s sheets with the information about the caucuses.74 On April 30, ADA-advised precinct chairmen and women required participants to disclose whether they were supporting Wallace before they could enter


the caucus site. Some precinct chairs moved the caucus site, telling only their own supporters. Wallace supporters simply held their caucuses at their own sites. Thus there were two sets of delegates for the county conventions, each claiming a legal right to attend the conventions.75 Trouble erupted in several counties when Wallace supporters attempted to attend the county conventions in May. The most heated situation was in St. Louis County, which includes Duluth and the left-wing stronghold of the Iron Range. In this convention, the ADA “regulars,” as they called themselves, tried to ban Wallace delegates from the hall but were overcome; the Wallace people crowded into the room, shouting and “waving their arms,” as one shocked Democrat recalled.76 The crowd of Wallace supporters “threatened violence.” Others reported shouting matches, spitting, and name-calling. The Wallace supporters eventually held their own rump convention in the Pompaigne Room of Duluth’s Spalding Hotel.77 The result was that there were two DFL parties between the time of the conventions in May and when the left wing finally left the DFL party in June. Throughout May the two argued their legitimacy in the courts and in their papers. Both focused on the legal aspects of the situation, whether the DFL was in fact tied to the national Democratic party and whether the credentials of a certain county were in order. In June, the left wing departed the DFL and hastily pulled together a Progressive party in the state, but their marginality in the political process was exposed. Humphrey won the DFL primary against left-wing candidate James Shields, 200,850 to 26,295. Benson subsequently ran as the Progressive candidate for the Senate against Humphrey, but withdrew after Wallace publicly endorsed Humphrey.78 Although the ADA’s conspiratorial, ideologically driven tactics attracted many citizens to the political process, they were not the kind of politics Humphrey wanted to reinforce. The aura of conspiracy, potential violence, and ideological dedication were things that the liberal leaders of the ADA were trying to excise from American politics. They emphasized that the communist-backed left-wing threat justified their use of such tactics, that it was a one-time deal. Against this backdrop of disreputable political tactics, Humphrey turned to newly organized black voters, many of whom were Wallace supporters, to provide him with a kind of political redemption. That Humphrey was able to appeal to


black voters was due to the meaning Wallace held for Minnesota blacks, which was different than what Wallace meant to the left wing. Wallace in the Black Communities For white left-wingers, Wallace represented old dreams of grassroots, class-based politics. For black Minnesotans, Wallace represented a ticket into national, interest-group politics. The Twin Cities black press ignored the struggle within the DFL party. Although both the Republican Twin Cities Observer and Cecil Newman’s Minneapolis Spokesman closely followed Wallace’s campaign, neither paper was interested in the intraparty skirmish in the DFL party. Their discussions of Wallace and the Progressive party were in the context of national politics. They criticized Humphrey’s anticommunism and reported on blacks in Wallace’s Progressive party, but neither mentioned Benson or his attempt to align the DFL with the Progressive party. To read the pages of the Twin Cities black papers in 1948, one would have no idea of the ideological battle that consumed the souls and energies of Minnesota’s white liberals. Wallace, however, was a different story. While blacks in Minnesota had little use for the old Farmer-Laborite Benson, they held Wallace in high regard. Wallace had begun his campaign in the Deep South, where he openly flouted Jim Crow and where angry white southerners pelted him with rotten vegetables. Withstanding these attacks proved his political sincerity. Moreover, for savvy unionists like Nellie Stone Johnson and Frank Boyd, the Wallace candidacy was a way to pull the Democratic party leftward and northward.79 Like black editors around the nation, Newman took advantage of Wallace’s popularity to emphasize the new black vote in the North. Newman hired a young journalist from the University of Minnesota named Carl T. Rowan to track and report black Minnesotans’ opinions about the presidential race. Rowan began his straw poll of the black voters in Minnesota in January 1948, and from the start Wallace was the overwhelming favorite. On January 20, 1948, the Minneapolis Spokesman headlines announced boldly that “Wallace Leads Poll.” Of the first 85 voters who registered opinions, 48 supported Wallace, while Dewey was second with 17, and Truman third with 15. Ex-Governor Harold Stassen, who was seeking the Republican nomination, received 3. On February 13, Truman finally pulled ahead of Dewey, 55 to 53, but Wallace by then had 171. On February 27, Wallace


had 340 votes, and Truman was firmly second with 121. The final poll was taken in March (with a promise to resume the poll closer to election time) and indicated that Wallace continued to garner 55 percent of the final 1,044 votes, Truman 22 percent, and Dewey 19 percent, with the remaining undecided.80 Although the number of people polled was small, the results nonetheless trumpeted black support for Wallace. Black Wallace supporters admired Wallace’s “uncompromising stand on racial matters.”81 Others mentioned his interest in peace. They admitted that Wallace’s chances were futile, but as one voter put it, “If I throw my vote away it’s okay, that’s what it would amount to if I voted for anyone else.”82 The poll affirmed the idea of black political independence, indicating that 87 percent of black voters regarded themselves as “independent” and “voted for the man,” not the party. Closer to the election, the paper emphasized this further when noting that many black voters in the state would be supporting Republican Luther Youngdahl for governor, Progressive candidate Henry Wallace for president, and Democrat Hubert Humphrey for senator.83 (Newman persisted in calling DFL candidates, like Humphrey, “Democrats,” as opposed to DFLers, which is an indication of his focus on national politics.) This “independence” complicated the primary vote, since one had to vote either in the DFL or Republican primary. Newman editorialized about the problem, ignoring the fight in the DFL between Progressive Senate candidate Shields and Humphrey, and emphasizing that in the general election, voters could cross over.84 Newman appreciated the choice that Wallace’s candidacy gave black voters. He credited Wallace for his forthright stand for “democratic principles,” writing, “Wallace has never, to the knowledge of this paper, ever failed the Negro.” Newman consistently condemned the red-baiting attacks on Wallace, including those from Humphrey and ADA organizers, and sought to clarify Wallace’s attraction among black voters. In one editorial, Newman noted that eight thousand had recently turned out to hear Wallace on a cold, stormy night in Minneapolis. Assuming the communists could round up about two thousand, he posited, what explains the other six thousand?85 Another editorial declared that those Negroes who assured whites that they would not vote for Wallace represented a “new trend in Uncle Toms.” For Newman, Wallace’s attraction lay in his political sincerity. While “hacks” of both parties mouthed


principles of American democracy, Wallace was the only politician who had the conviction to stand by these principles.86 Newman’s dedication to the idea of black political independence was sometimes strained by his desire for a strong Democratic party based on northern constituencies. While giving full coverage to Wallace’s popularity among blacks, Newman questioned the value of a third party premised on foreign policy: “If Mr. Wallace feels the justification of a third party is based mainly on the need for a peace party, he first underestimates the importance of the domestic scene and secondly he unjustly criticizes the Truman Administration.”87 In another essay, Newman wrote more succinctly, “Why should a division over the merits of the Marshall plan overshadow such issues as price control, and adequate housing program, a revision of the Taft-Hartley Act? It should not!”88 He reminded readers that while they were indebted to Wallace for making civil rights so prominent in the election, this did not mean that they had to vote for him.89 Spokesman columnist Nell Dodson Russell had even more vehement reservations about Wallace. Russell thought Wallace was insincere, and that he used the moralism of civil rights to pander to white liberals and blacks. When Wallace came to Minneapolis in February, she had a heated exchange with him, in which she questioned his sincerity on the civil rights question.90 Russell was in the Minneapolis ADA, and although she balanced her anti-Wallace criticisms with an equally consistent criticism of Humphrey’s anticommunism, many readers criticized Russell for her anti-Wallace “propaganda.” Albert Allen, union leader and president of the Minneapolis NAACP, wrote a scathing letter condemning Russell’s partisanship, signing off with “yours for more independent political thinking.”91 Newman published all of these viewpoints, which, regardless of his personal political position, allowed him to show the thriving political debate that was the hallmark of political independence and, he hoped, relevancy. The question of whether black voters should vote for candidates just because they were black provided an opportunity for Newman to educate black voters on the workings of independent interest-group politics based on issues, not race or ethnicity. In New York and California, the Progressive party was running black candidates against liberal Democrats, like Helen Gahagen Douglas of California, who supported all the same important domestic issues as the Progressive candidates and


had a better chance of winning. Newman instructed readers to judge candidates according to their records and stands on the issues, not their race. He noted that Douglas had a better record on social welfare and labor issues that benefited black citizens than the blacks already in Congress, namely Oscar DePriest of Chicago and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of New York. Chicago’s black politicians represented an older style of machine politics, which offered little to blacks in places like Minnesota.92 To the extent that Wallace and the election touched on local politics, it was local black politics, between old black Republicans and new, selfstyled black “independents,” who were often Democrats. Just as Humphrey was trying to reeducate white Democrats and old Farmer-Laborites about using organized votes as political leverage, rather than control of party machinery and patronage, Newman was also reeducating black voters, trying to pull them away from traditional Republican allegiances and into a state of political independence, where they could be a swing vote. The Republican Twin Cities Observer also praised Wallace’s “friendliness to Negroes” but figured that Wallace was doomed to lose. Since the Democrats were, as ever, beholden to the South and divided, the paper forecast a Republican victory and endorsed an “outstanding citizen of our own state,” Harold Stassen, on the basis of his proven tolerance and United Nations work.93 The Observer’s endorsement of Stassen flabbergasted the writers at the Spokesman, who saw it as an example of stubborn machine loyalties. If black voters were going to go Republican, they should at least endorse New York Governor Thomas Dewey, who had enacted a statewide FEPC. The Spokesman’s poll indicated that black support for Stassen in the Twin Cities was almost nonexistent, and that the majority of black Wallace support came from normally Republican voters, a fact Newman pointedly emphasized to show that Republican strength among blacks was waning.94 For Newman, the important thing about Wallace was that he forced Truman to stand up to the South, which in turn won black Republicans to Truman’s side. The minute the Dixiecrats began to throw rocks at Truman, Newman noted, his stock began to rise among Negroes, who left Dewey, not Wallace.95 Rowan likewise recalled that Truman’s standing up to the southerners indicated to black voters a real commitment to racial justice. Truman risked more politically than Wallace.96 This change in voter opinion represented, in Newman’s words, “the growing


political maturity of the masses of Negroes, the rank and file who look to independent political action as the hope of the group.”97 Humphrey and his ADA organizers recognized that Wallace’s popularity among blacks was quite a different phenomenon from white, leftwing support of Wallace. Black support for Wallace, and Newman’s careful structuring of it in his newspaper, worked in conjunction with Humphrey’s style and understanding of politics. Blacks, after all, did not seek control over a party but rather sought to influence the party with their votes at a national level. By responding to organized black pressure and supporting black civil rights, Humphrey showed black voters and liberal activists alike the potency of interest-group politics. While fighting the anticommunist, behind-the-scenes battle against white Wallace supporters, Humphrey reached out to black Wallace supporters. He did not need their votes as much as the liberal legitimacy their support conferred on him and the Democratic party, especially among Wallace supporters. Newman played up this angle, and Humphrey responded in kind. In April Newman ran a column addressed to Minnesota Democrats about Republican Governor Luther Youngdahl’s attempts to desegregate the National Guard, and the runaround the Democratic administration in Washington was giving him. Youngdahl had written to Democratic Secretary of Defense James Forrestal asking if federal funds would be withheld upon his desegregation of the Minnesota National Guard, but he had received no reply to his “courteous letter.”98 The article emphasized that Youngdahl approached the issue “on the broad premise of human rights,” but that Minnesota blacks, who had overwhelmingly supported Roosevelt in the past three elections, would see it as a partisan issue if the Democratic administration did not answer Youngdahl promptly. Humphrey immediately sprang into action on behalf of the kind of Democratic party he wanted to see. Humphrey wrote a long letter to Forrestal urging him to “comply with Governor Youngdahl’s request,” and also to end segregation in the U.S. armed forces in order to give some substance to the administration’s professed interest in human rights.99 He also telegrammed his help to Youngdahl, releasing the telegram to the “minority group papers,” radio stations, and the dailies.100 Humphrey and his staff tracked Wallace’s popularity among blacks. His office collected clippings on states’ rights, Wallace, and the Demo-


cratic party from black newspapers across the country.101 They arranged for black speakers and organizers to help galvanize the black communities behind Humphrey’s program.102 They kept black editors apprised of their efforts on behalf of human rights. In February, Humphrey sent Newman a “letter” (more like a press release) stating his endorsement of Truman’s ten-point program on human rights, which Newman published.103 The mayor also wrote a long, more personal letter to Newman, detailing his recent activities in the “field of human relations.”104 These ranged from helping the mayors of Philadelphia, Kansas City, and Omaha set up FEPC legislation to his chairmanship of the National Committee for Fair Play in Bowling, an organization connected to the CIO. He referred to their “mutual friends,” concluding, “I just offer these notes to you, Cecil, because from time to time I hear some idle rumor or gossip that I am letting down on my enthusiasm for such programs.” Crossed out on the draft was another conclusion, which read, “Maybe you can see fit to prepare a little article on this sometime.” In March Humphrey wrote to Lester Granger for information about Wallace’s inattention to black problems.105 In April, George Demetriou, Humphrey’s secretary and ADA organizer, sent Newman Granger’s article on Wallace and Dwight McDonald’s scathing Wallace: The Man and the Myth. Both pieces questioned Wallace’s sincerity about civil rights and made much of Wallace’s tenure as secretary of agriculture when southern blacks had been denied all Agricultural Adjustment Administration benefits. Demetriou wanted to know where Newman really stood on this issue, “as one political man to another.” “I know that you don’t want to stand in the way of any good that Wallace may do on the matter of civil rights, but I would like to know, just between you and me, what do you think of Henry Wallace and his past record?” Demetriou wrote.106 In May Humphrey sent a cloying letter of appreciation to Nell Russell for one of her antiWallace columns, praising her plain and straightforward talk and closing humbly with the wish that he could live up to her confidence in him.107 ADA organizer Eugenie Anderson also wrote to the Spokesman in praise of Russell’s anti-Wallace articles, and requesting to renew her subscription, as did Orville Freeman.108 Closer to the election, Humphrey attended rallies at the Hallie Q. Brown House and Phyllis Wheatley House. Like Truman, who became the first U.S. president to campaign in Harlem, Humphrey set a first by campaigning in the Twin Cities’ small black neighborhoods.109


Humphrey backed up his solicitations for support and publicity by working hard to make the Democratic party acceptable to black voters, and by extension, white liberals. Humphrey’s speech before the Democratic National Convention on July 14 accomplished that goal almost overnight. Humphrey returned to Minneapolis a hero. A crowd of two thousand, with bands and banners, greeted him at the train station, and more cheering citizens lined the route to the reception at the Nicollet Hotel. Their signs trumpeted Humphrey as a champion of human rights. Humphrey drove home the point that the Democratic party was now a liberal party, headed by a liberal president, by telling the crowd that came to greet him, “I want to tell you that the plank the convention finally adopted was the one the President hoped to have.”110 This was untrue. Truman had opposed the ADA plank, but one of the reasons Humphrey had delivered the speech was to be able to return to Minnesota and proclaim Truman a liberal.111 James Shields, a Wallace supporter, reminded a group of railroad workers that “the Democrats have no intention of doing anything concrete to insure anti-lynch legislation, anti-poll tax laws, creation of a real FEPC or ending segregation in the armed forces,” but these words were drowned out in the hoopla and hometown pride over Humphrey’s speech.112 People around the nation wrote and telegrammed the newly famous mayor. The hate mail was racist and malicious, affirming the need for civil rights. The supportive mail was just as emotional, and highlights further the powerful responses the issue provoked in whites and blacks alike. Humphrey supporter Percy Villa captured the tone of many letters when he wrote simply, “If I loved you any more I would need another heart.”113 Ten housewives from Chicago wrote to thank him for the truth. A Baptist preacher prophesied that God had chosen Humphrey to be a martyr to the cause of human rights. A descendent of a lynch victim looked forward to the day she could vote for Humphrey for president. An eighty-three-year-old white Republican from Indiana switched to the Democratic party, explaining that he always felt that the colored race was treated unfairly. Humphrey received warm letters from Twin Cities’ black leaders, including Urban League official William Seabron, who wrote, “It’ll guarantee Negro support of the Democratic Party,” and the head of the Hallie Q. Brown House, Myrtle Carden, who offered her help in his campaign.114 The Twin Cities Observer, leaders of the Elks, and Wallace supporters also sent their thanks.


The Minneapolis Spokesman featured a huge headline, “Humphrey Wins Battle for Real Civil Rights Plank!” and underneath, “Humphrey Made Us Proud!” The long article reflected Newman’s efforts to make Twin Cities blacks part of a national black constituency: “People in this state who heard Humphrey praise civil rights over states rights are thrilled that Minnesota has such leadership to offer the nation.”115 Previous issues of the paper had criticized Humphrey’s anticommunism and the ADA’s weird attempt to get Eisenhower to run for the Democrats, but this speech exonerated Humphrey from these wrongs and won him the paper’s highest praise: “To our mind that which is the best tradition of FDR is represented by Mayor Humphrey.” A large part of Humphrey’s attraction among blacks was his national reputation as a civil rights activist, which imparted to them the sense of being a part of national politics. The Spokesman’s endorsement of Humphrey read, “Negroes of America have their eyes glued on the Minnesota Senate race; they want to see Humphrey elected.”116 By August 1948, Truman was the overwhelming favorite among Minnesota black voters, according to the Spokesman’s poll. Truman now commanded 68 percent of the voters polled, and Wallace just 12 percent, compared to March when Truman had had only 22 percent to Wallace’s 54.117 Humphrey and Old-Style Democrats Humphrey’s speech and strong record of civil rights made the Democratic party appealing to ADA liberals, unionists, and black voters who shared his idea of what politics should be. As Humphrey described it, the civil rights fight laid the groundwork for a real liberal Democratic party, “not a hodge-podge of sections held together by a Roosevelt or a Wilson.”118 Old Minnesota Democrats, however, looked askance at the jettisoning of southern Democrats and resented the ADA’s coup of their party. In part the ongoing conflict between Humphrey liberals and old Democrats was about personalities and power. The ADA liberals were young, brash, know-it-all types who, as one observer noted, wanted “things done right now and in their own way.”119 They were impatient with the lingering presence of bygone battles and with those they termed “has-beens.”120 And in purging the Left, they had also put themselves in control of the party. But even if the source of the animosity was personalities and competition for power, there were important distinctions between the two different generations of Democrats that signified the


fundamental transformation of the Democratic party nationally and in Minnesota. The liberals’ caricature of the old Democrats was not completely accurate. True, the old Minnesota Democrats were based in heavily Catholic St. Paul. They practiced a machine-style politics that relied on patronage and brokering and that had developed in a sectionally divided, ethnically defined Democratic party. But they were not averse to the New Deal. Like the left wing and the ADA liberals, many old Democrats thought of themselves as rightful heirs to the New Deal legacy.121 And, moreover, they were not blind to the centralizing forces about which political scientists had written. They had organized something called the Midwest Conference, which attempted to coordinate local political activities in different regions with national DNC programs.122 They recognized the nationalizing forces in American politics and tried to adapt the Democratic party to it. Many supported Humphrey’s efforts to do just that, seeing in Humphrey the makings of a natural politician. But they were neither old-time progressives (for then they would have been Farmer-Laborites) nor beneficiaries of an academic education that explained the bounties of the social service state. Their understanding of politics came from their experiences filling post office positions, securing favors, and protecting their resources. These things allowed them to build a party in Minnesota but left them singularly unprepared to operate within the Democratic political order’s state agencies and social service networks. The ADA liberals, on the other hand, had learned about the emerging social service state and the new interest groups that supported it at the very universities that were indispensable to its development.123 And, moreover, they saw themselves as historical actors on whose shoulders fell the responsibility for sustaining and justifying that political order.124 In this regard, a particularly festering problem between the ADA and the old Democrats during the 1948 election was their different understandings of the threat posed by Wallace, which led to an open clash between the ADA and the DNC over Truman’s candidacy. Minnesota ADA leaders were reluctant to endorse Truman in 1948. They were disappointed by his apparent backpedaling on the issue of civil rights, and they felt that Truman’s conservatism undermined their own appeals to Wallace voters. They considered other options, including General Eisenhower and federal judge William O. Douglas.125 St. Paul Democrats, who had


favored Truman as vice president in 1944 while liberals like Humphrey had supported Wallace, were outraged by this breach of loyalty. They complained to the DNC, requesting support for their own Truman– Barkley clubs and questioning the loyalty of the ADA to the Democratic party.126 This led to belabored assurances from Humphrey and Freeman to the DNC, explaining once again their problems with the Wallace forces.127 Even those old Democrats who supported Humphrey did not quite understand the liberals’ concern about Wallace. At the height of the battle between the left- and right-wing factions in the DFL, Humphrey supporter E. J. Larsen wrote to the chairman of the DFL suggesting that they amend the party constitution to rename the party simply the “Democratic party,” which would have alienated all those old Farmer-Labor progressives Humphrey hoped to persuade to his side.128 All of this confirmed to the ADA that the old-style Democrats did not appreciate the threat Wallace posed to a Democratic victory in the fall, that they did not understand what historians since have recognized, that the Democratic party had to forsake traditional loyalties in order to become a truly national party. As Humphrey put it to Chester Bowles, “they [the DNC] need us more than we need them.”129 With the 1948 victories of Humphrey and other ADA Democrats, like Helen Gahagen Douglas of California and Paul Douglas of Illinois, the liberals became an increasingly influential and powerful bloc in the Democratic party, later embodied in the rational, “egghead” politics of Adlai Stevenson. In Minnesota Humphrey’s allies would continue to wrangle with traditional Democrats, but the DFL party itself was eventually rebuilt according to the liberals’ pluralist vision of politics. In building a party around organized economic groups, Humphrey’s supporters made the DFL palatable to those who disdained Irish Catholics and machine bosses. While many Minnesotans remained wary of Catholics, and while politicians still paid attention to religious affinities, anti-Catholicism no longer exerted the political influence it once had. As Eugenie Anderson recalled, anti-Catholicism was not an issue after the merger, in part, she surmised, because of Humphrey’s popularity among Catholics and his work against racial and religious discrimination.130 The best evidence for the diminishing importance of religious divisions in Minnesota politics, however, is simply the fact that the Democratic party after 1948 offered a real, viable alternative to the Republicans. Rural and urban, Catholics and Lutherans, wet and dry could all vote for and participate


in the new issues-oriented DFL party, precisely because it was organized around new economic issues, not old religious rivalries or machine bosses. Humphrey’s Senate Campaign: New Liberalism or Old Politics? Humphrey and the ADA won control of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party in June 1948, when the left wing withdrew to form a separate Progressive party. Their cutthroat tactics displaced older Democrats as well, and Humphrey supporters took control of all the major offices of the DFL. Eugenie Anderson later recalled that the ADA disbanded in Minnesota shortly thereafter, since it had in effect become the DFL party.131 Humphrey’s triumph at the national convention helped him overcome the perpetual lack of funds and gave him the positive national publicity that the Cowles-owned press in Minnesota did not.132 Humphrey ran for the Senate on a clearly defined set of issues that encompassed urban and rural concerns alike. The DFL platform supported a statewide FEPC, the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, maintaining a “dynamic” peace, and farm price supports at a flexible 80 percent of parity. It opposed sales taxes, tax reductions for iron ore companies and oleomargarine producers, and attempts to tax farm coops.133 It appealed explicitly to the farm vote, on which the ADA liberals felt particularly vulnerable. For all their brash new ideas about “issues-oriented politics,” however, when it came to campaigning, Humphrey and his organizers employed the same tried-and-true techniques that politicians had always used. Minnesota had changed enough to allow a new kind of politician into the game in 1948, but they still had to play by the old rules. So they promised patronage posts. They exchanged favors for favors.134 They tapped the DNC for jobs, exemptions, or scarce resources for “friends.” “My friend J. G. Meyers of J. Gruman Iron & Steel Co. in North Minneapolis needs bar, structural and plate steel,” wrote Humphrey to the DNC. “Can you assist?” Meyers was, Humphrey said, loyal to the party and had friends.135 They sidestepped laws about political contributions. Humphrey urged the Hotel and Restaurant Employees International Union to hire old Farmer-Labor radical Howard Y. Williams “to keep old F-Lers with natural sympathy for Wallace in line.” The union hired Williams, but, mindful of the Taft-Hartley restrictions on political activity, clarified that Williams was working for the union, although his free time was his own to do with what he wished.136 Likewise, Humphrey


prodded the DNC to pay the salary of Darrell Smith, a CIO-PAC veteran working for Humphrey.137 But though the flatteries and quid pro quos were old-style politics, much of the work these favors accomplished would eventually solidify the social service administrative state at the expense of party influence. Getting around the Taft-Hartley Act, for instance, was ultimately about cultivating and maintaining labor’s and liberals’ influence in the Democratic party. Similarly many of Humphrey’s earlier requests to the DNC were about convincing reluctant labor leaders that the Democratic party was receptive to their interests, and that he, Humphrey, had clout in the party.138 Humphrey’s organizers also paid attention to ethnic allegiances and religious prejudices of voters. While they sought to overcome a politics shaped entirely by these kinds of loyalties, they also understood that many people made sense of their worlds through these familiar identities and prejudices. So Humphrey appeared at the all-Finnish picnic, the Swedish picnic, the Yugoslav picnic. He was photographed with groups of traditionally attired Norwegians.139 He exploited his Scandinavian ancestry.140 He petitioned the DNC for appropriate nationality group speakers. When a market researcher wrote in exasperation that a group in the southeastern part of the state was “urging people to vote against you because you are Catholic,” and asked him to tell her what church he belonged to, Humphrey shared her exasperation with people’s prejudices but nonetheless responded with information about his Methodist upbringing and current church.141 Despite their diminishing significance in political discourse, “the Scandinavians,” “the Catholics,” and “the Finns” were still categories that conveyed meaning and had to be considered in campaign strategy. But these categories were never the substance of liberals’ politics. They were rather the flotsam that Humphrey’s organizers had to wade through to establish their politics. They were serious about beating Joe Ball. They knew the significance of a Humphrey victory for American liberalism. As the pragmatists they fancied themselves to be, and as the social scientists they were, they accommodated peoples’ misguided but understandable need to cling to old group identities, even as they introduced them to what they, the liberals, understood to be the real substance of political competition— the issues. And they explicitly and publicly did not exploit ethnic and religious hatreds. Their appeals played to the innocuous comfort of ethnic pride.


Similarly, to the extent that old Farmer-Labor symbols still defined people’s worldviews, especially in the countryside, and to the extent that the New Deal had used the same symbols, Humphrey’s campaign employed familiar tropes about monopolies and malefactors of wealth. “Co-ops help the entire country by combating monopoly,” he orated at rallies, and went on to attack taxation schemes as another in a long history of monopolists’ ploys to put small farmers out of business.142 His supporters condemned Senator Ball as a representative of “created wealth” and “dollar greed.”143 Humphrey traveled the Minnesota countryside, speaking at county fairs, community picnics, rallies, and farm shows. DFL organizer Byron Allen marveled at Humphrey’s persuasive manner with farmers.144 The campaign’s public relations emphasized the grassroots aspect of their organizing, how Humphrey traversed the state in an old Ford with a speaker blaring. He climbed up on haystacks to denounce high prices. He spoke from street corners instead of auditoriums.145 Humphrey identified the DFL as part of the Farmer-Labor legacy, praising the great Farmer-Labor governor Floyd Bjornesterne Olson at every stop. Humphrey himself was constantly compared to Olson. But although the rhetoric and the hard work of grassroots organizing was the same, the structure of the DFL party, its meaning, and its constituencies were different from those of the old Farmer-Labor party. Humphrey’s organizers were not organizing a movement but rather mobilizing interest groups in the Democratic party. They conducted this campaign according to their pluralist understanding of interest groups and politics. They dealt with representatives from the CIO, AFL, Farmer’s Union, and farm co-ops separately, choosing who they thought best represented a particular group after consultation and research.146 They did not attempt to draw these leaders into any kind of a movement but rather kept them at arm’s length while they (the ADA leaders) coordinated the disparate interests into a political coalition. They picked the issues carefully to avoid clashes between constituent groups, as opposed to uniting the disparate groups under a common cause.147 Unions and farmers’ groups, which had once played an active role in the structure of the Farmer-Labor party, withdrew into more passive positions as nonpartisan, “independent” interest groups, as outlined in E. E. Schattschneider’s analysis of the two-party system. Humphrey’s most important support in the countryside came from the farm cooperatives, whose leaders understood the proper relationship


of organized groups to parties and the political system.148 In contrast to the Nonpartisan League and the Farmers’ Union, farm cooperatives had historically eschewed political activity, addressing their problems through self-help and cooperation.149 However, in 1946 an organization called the National Tax Equality Association (NTEA) tried to pass legislation that taxed the patronage rebates of Minnesota’s purchasing, producing, and marketing cooperatives at corporate tax rates. Cooperative leaders worried that a Republican Congress and a Republican president would pass the NTEA’s anti–co-op legislation. So, on the basis of a clearly defined economic interest, they reluctantly decided to enter, temporarily, the maelstrom of partisan politics. They compiled lists of rural contacts and newspapers for Humphrey’s campaign. They wrote to their clients for names and assessments of local political situations. And they helped the liberals select a candidate to run against Republican Congressman Harold Knutson. But they helped in a hushed, secretive manner, not as a bold movement for farmers’ rights but rather as an interest group. One cooperative leader, thanking someone for the names of “non-Wallaceite” contacts for the Humphrey campaign, wrote, “As you appreciate, of course, we are simply being helpful to these folks and are not involved in the matter as far as our office responsibilities are concerned or that of the MAC.”150 Another cooperative official, who sent editors of rural papers a news release announcing the candidate who was to run against Knutson, wrote, “I am sure you are aware that we have done some work in securing this man as a candidate but I believe it just as well in your comments or releases in the press that the Minnesota Association [of Cooperatives] should be left completely out of the story.”151 While giving contacts and information to the DFL, cooperative leaders stressed the importance of a vigilant nonpartisanship in their newspapers. Cooperative leaders insisted that they could not endorse candidates, since their members represented a healthy variety of political thought: “[Members] do not look upon Midland as a political organization. If they did it would be torn to pieces in no time at all.”152 Cooperatives existed for specific purposes on which their memberships were agreed, and should therefore stick to those purposes. As individuals, however, cooperators could actively engage in politics to protect their interests as cooperators.153 Their papers did not rile people into action with emotional appeals to class but motivated them with admonitions of civic responsi-


bility. They talked not about politics but rather about economic issues as they affected the cooperator. They informed readers and members about the issues, so they would make their own rational political choices. It was a far cry from the “red blooded, class-conscious fighting farmers organization” that the Farmers’ Union had once brought to the FarmerLabor party.154 Humphrey became Minnesota’s first Democratic senator when he defeated Ball, 729,494 to 485,801. DFL candidates swept the polls in city and country alike, unseating twenty-three-year incumbent Republican Congressman Harold Knutson. Even Truman won the state. The farm vote was the big surprise for Democrats that year. Wallace supporters had divided liberals in New York and Pennsylvania, throwing those two important states to the Republicans. The Democrats made up for that loss, however, by winning midwestern farm states like Minnesota.155 In large part this was due to Truman’s farm policy. But in Minnesota, Humphrey’s reorganization of the DFL party according to what he called “the issues,” and his ousting of the left wing were key to Democratic success. After becoming senator, Humphrey and the ADA continued the fight for an “issues-based” Democratic party. In Minnesota this meant fighting for party labels in the Minnesota legislature. In Washington it meant translating the recommendations of the American Political Science Association’s 1950 report, “Toward a Responsible Two-Party System,” into, as Kampelman put it, “political action.” Now Humphrey’s legislative aide, Kampelman invited E. E. Schattschneider to meet with labor leaders, lawmakers, party leaders, and governmental officials about reforming the party system.156 As Kampelman put it in a letter to Schattschneider, “both Senator Humphrey and the ADA are committed to the principle that political parties ought to be made into ‘issue’ parties and that they must be more responsible to those issues.”157 After a year spent fighting southern Democrats over cloture (a measure to limit filibustering), Senator Humphrey placed great hope in party reform to overcome southern Democrats. In the American Political Science Review, Humphrey attacked “the persistence of certain archaic procedures and the lack of effective party discipline, which make for frequent criticism and serious concern on the part of those interested in maintaining not only the dignity of the Senate but its efficiency and its response to the public will.”158 Their efforts eventually led to the 1972 reforms of the Democratic party,


although the goal of a “responsible two-party system” continued to elude them. Conclusion The triumph of state-centered, interest-group pluralism in 1948 was not inevitable. Certainly Humphrey and his liberal allies did not think it was. They poured their souls into making sure America had a democratic liberal political system. They overcame entrenched powers and built a powerful, liberal Democratic party in Minnesota, where none existed before. They integrated the state DFL party into national politics. They helped redefine the national Democratic party’s focus from sectionalism and machine bosses to organized economic groups. They helped make racial equality and black civil rights legitimate political issues. Their victory changed the way politics operated in Minnesota. After 1948, Humphrey’s allies and supporters manned the positions of power in a new DFL party organized around clearly defined economic groups, not religious allegiances, bosses, or left-wing ideologies. Feelings of anti-Catholicism still existed, but they did not prevent people from voting for Democrats. Old-fashioned Democrats still existed, but they did not define DFL issues. Left-wing ideologies still existed but not in mainstream politics. Old political tactics still existed but in the service of a new political vision. Republicans still dominated state politics but within a two-party, pluralist system. Civil rights was essential to the liberal victory in Minnesota and nationally. The issue tied Minnesota liberals to national two-party politics. It illustrated the sincerity of their intentions to transform the Democratic party. It softened their anticommunist tactics. DFL organizers explicitly credited the DFL’s embrace of civil rights as key to defeating Wallace and the Republicans.159 Wallace’s candidacy forced liberals to force Truman to forsake the South, which insured not only African American votes for the Democratic party but also progressive Minnesotans’. ADA liberals effectively divided and isolated the left wing by claiming as their own its forward-looking, cosmopolitan, nationalizing, civil rights aspects, and discarding its old, agrarian, provincial, anticapitalist populism. The 1948 election continues to fascinate historians, not just because of Truman’s surprise upset victory, but also because it marked a whole series of beginnings and endings. It was the left wing’s last stand in mainstream politics. It marked the decline of party-based voting and the


rise of issue-based voting. It began the Democratic party’s transition from white supremacy to civil rights. It solidified Roosevelt’s “New Deal Revolution.” All of these beginnings and endings fulfilled and affirmed liberals’ pluralistic understanding of American political history and development. It was as if it had all unfolded according to some cosmic plan. But in fact liberals worked hard in 1948 to insure that this would indeed be the development of American politics.

EPILOGUE Civil Rights and the Fate of Postwar Liberalism

Somebody asked me . . . what I thought was going to happen when we founded the DFL Party. I said I thought by now we would have taken over the whole country. And I did. At the time, I thought our politics were so good, so pure, so equality-minded that it didn’t make any difference where we went, people would flock to us. That hasn’t been the case. Nellie Stone Johnson, labor activist, in 1991

In this book I focused on what the civil rights issue did for white liberals in the 1940s. By 1968, of course, civil rights was in fact undoing the work it had done so effectively back in 1948. It was creating dissension, not unity. It was undermining liberals’ influence in the Democratic party, not solidifying it. And it was exposing the fallacy of liberal assumptions, not affirming them. George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, ran stronger than anyone expected among the northern white working classes in the 1964 Democratic primary, and again in his thirdparty presidential bid in 1968. Richard Nixon’s strategists exploited the resentment traditional white working-class and southern Democrats felt toward liberals and African Americans. In his infamous “southern strategy,” Nixon hinted that Democrats had “gone too far” with civil rights. The Left also attacked liberals. It was a new Left by 1968, but the charges were familiar. Liberals focused too narrowly on overt instances of racial discrimination. They ignored capitalism’s structural inequities. Liberal anticommunism destroyed other, more radical, more democratic 160

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movements for racial justice. And, most disarmingly, liberals’ legislative agenda for civil rights reflected the flawed assumptions of their interestgroup pluralism. Even African Americans joined the attack, charging that the liberals delivered too little, too late, and blaming them for unfulfilled expectations that had led to an increase in militancy and violence. For a while, though, it had seemed as if liberals could hold together the unwieldy coalition of white workers, African Americans, and white southerners within a Democratic party that was being transformed from the defender of white supremacy to the upholder of black civil rights. Throughout the 1950s, Humphrey and other liberal Democrats continued the fight for federal legislation against racial discrimination in employment, a fight focused on amending the rules of congressional debate to prevent southern filibuster.1 They tried to accommodate the civil rights movement within Democratic party politics. It was Humphrey who maneuvered the omnibus Civil Rights Act of 1964 through the Senate, finally securing the long-sought fair employment legislation (now called “equal opportunity employment”). Liberal Democrats passed the Voting Rights Act (1965) and made available federal funds for urban renewal, education, job training, and antipoverty programs known as the “Great Society.” But Humphrey’s consensus style of politics, once so brash and new, began to seem old and compromising, especially when it resulted in working relationships with segregationists like Lester Maddox and Richard Russell. Humphrey continued to speak eloquently and sincerely for racial justice, but by 1964 his liberal pragmatism required him to uphold party unity rather than challenge it. It was Humphrey and Walter Mondale, then Minnesota’s attorney general, who worked out the compromise with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party (MFDP) at the 1964 Democratic convention. The MFDP delegation had overcome violence in Mississippi in order to represent themselves in the Democratic party. Predictably, southern Democrats threatened to bolt if the MFDP was seated. President Lyndon Johnson chose Humphrey to deal with the controversy, dangling before him the vice presidential spot. Humphrey and Mondale offered to seat two MFDP delegates (chosen by the administration) and promised to end segregation in the Democratic party by the time of the next convention in 1968. A sharecropper named Fannie Lou Hamer, speaking in a voice more pure than theirs, responded, “We didn’t come all this way for no two seats.”2

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Hamer’s response, her very presence, underscored how removed the liberals had become from their original sense of moral purpose. With Johnson’s Great Society in the offing, liberals had in large part achieved their ideals, which were never about racial justice per se but rather about state-centered, democratic liberalism. For Humphrey and many white liberals, racial justice was the happy outcome of a fair and stable political system. They now had to defend that political system from the forces unleashed in realizing it. These forces included not only the unexpected depth of white racism and black anger but also the unexpected humbleness of people like Fannie Lou Hamer and many others, for whom justice seemed to be about so much more than the organization of interests in the political arena. If representation of her interests was all she wanted, she could have waited another four years, because Humphrey was good on his promise to change the racist rules governing the Democratic convention. But Hamer sought something more, something that could not be captured in an interest group, and indeed, something that made the whole idea of organized economic interests seem small-minded and bureaucratic. The so-called New Left understood the difference between liberals like Humphrey and activists like Hamer in terms of a managerial, topdown liberalism that was about maintaining order versus an authentic, grassroots movement that was about disrupting power.3 There is much truth in that characterization, and yet it reduces liberal idealism to hegemonic manipulation. In fairness to postwar liberals, there had once been a moral purpose to their quest for order. The twin threats of fascism and communism, which extended the total power of the state in unprecedented ways, had once made the idea of economic interest groups in a two-party system the rock on which democracy might be salvaged in modern capitalist society. But now these threats were obsolete. The threat of communism lingered, of course, but even before the 1960s, the cold war had changed it from a metaphysical nightmare into an international political rivalry. Next to the humble dignity of the southern freedom struggle, the moral imperatives that once justified the quest for state-centered liberalism were forgotten, as were the economic-oriented policies of the early civil rights initiatives. Since the 1980s, journalists, Democrats, and academics have mourned the disappearance of New Deal, economically oriented issues, such as

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jobs, full employment, and health insurance. Some blame postwar liberals for emphasizing racial policies at the expense of the economic, class, or “structural” issues once so vital to the New Deal Democratic party. For many, the defection of white working-class Democrats in the 1980s was not merely the result of white backlash against black gains. Rather it had to do with the so-called rights revolution, which refocused activism around securing legal protections for individuals in assorted minority groups, including not just African Americans but also Native Americans, Asian Americans, the handicapped, prisoners, women, and others.4 This led to the rise of so-called identity politics, where interests were staked out on the grounds of past suffering. Perhaps the most famous indictment of rights-based liberalism in the Democratic party was Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary Edsall’s Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (1991). The Edsalls argued that liberalism flourished in the Democratic party between 1932 and 1964 because “race,” meaning civil rights, was not a partisan issue. No one party was identified with civil rights. During these years, Democrats dealt with civil rights under the New Deal rubric of enlarged economic opportunities for all; the focus was on economic issues, the Democratic party organized according to “class” interests. After 1965, liberal Democrats, including for a time Humphrey, sought to fulfill the spirit of the 1964 civil rights act by enacting policies designed to achieve not merely equality of opportunity but, as President Johnson proclaimed in 1965, “equality of result.” The new racebased policies tracked black employment figures, removed obstructions based on race, and actively integrated colleges, workplaces, and even the Democratic party. Civil rights became solely identified with the Democratic party. Traditional white working-class Democrats, who made up the bulk of Democratic electoral support, resented liberals’ attention to minority groups. Whereas once white working-class union members had been the cherished base of the Democratic party, they now felt chastised and marginal. At the 1972 Democratic convention, liberals passed new rules about party government, which required delegations to include a certain number of women, blacks, and other minority groups. This hardened feelings of estrangement between traditional white workingclass Democrats and educated white liberals. Republicans exploited the rift, infusing what the Edsalls call “the traditional ideological partisan

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divide” (over the role of the federal government) with racially coded messages, and splitting off lower-class white southerners and white ethnic workers.5 They recommended that Democrats shift the focus back to economic issues and away from race-based policies. The Edsall thesis was widely criticized in the civil rights community. Its apparent acceptance of white working-class racism as a political given, and its blaming liberals’ demise on “race” rather than racism indicated that this entire line of thinking was part of the problem, not a path to its solution.6 Historians questioned the Edsalls’ premise that there was once some kind of affable golden era when white working-class Democrats accepted civil rights if they were wrapped in the New Deal package of economic opportunity. Studies since show that the New Deal coalition never truly represented black interests, that tremendous tension always existed between white-working class Democrats and blacks, even before race-based policies, which was why, indeed, liberals had to resort to such seemingly extreme policies in the first place.7 The reasons the economically oriented issues and ideas disappeared from the Democratic party are many and varied, and have less to do with liberal mistakes than with the history of race and racism in America, which changed the nature of every issue it touched. The FEPC, for instance, embodied the sort of economically oriented New Deal policies liberals believed in. At its theoretical base was the idea of purchasing power. It promised to make economically marginal black citizens into consumers, thereby integrating them into society. Proponents argued their case in terms of its economic benefits to society, often hinting at a great as yet unexploited market, rather than the benefits to black people per se. In theory, “fair employment” was almost identical to “full employment.” Both sought government-secured employment in the name of purchasing power and economic growth. Although the FEPC reflected liberals’ economic agenda, the hate-filled, racist resistance to it imbued it with a moral transcendence. Because it involved “race,” the FEPC automatically became about much more, both for white southerners who opposed the bill, and humanitarian liberals who supported it. What the Edsalls seem to miss is that once “race” becomes part of a discussion, it changes the discussion. Whether it begets anger and resentment, or in the liberals’ case, genuine empathy, guilt, and righteousness, “race,” which can take the form of an African American person, a law affecting racial

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minorities, or a case of discrimination, automatically reshapes the original context of the discussion. In the 1940s black leaders like A. Philip Randolph, Henry Lee Moon, and Cecil Newman saw the idea of organizing into an interest group like farmers and workers as the key to integrating black economic interests into the political mainstream. Black voters by themselves were not a large enough voting bloc to command the power that the labor movement, for instance, did, but they could build coalitions with other groups that shared their economic concerns. It is this idea that the Edsalls identify as the key to Democratic success between 1932 and 1964. The idea of a black interest group, moreover, seemed to affirm the quest for a world where the color of one’s skin did not matter. As the recollections of Albert Allen and Anthony Cassius showed, one of the aspirations behind the goal of economic autonomy was the opportunity to escape from a circumscribed category, and to achieve an individual identity—to be judged by the content of one’s character, not the color of one’s skin. To realize this nonracial identity, however, Negroes had to organize as Negroes. Furthermore, while African Americans hoped to become political actors in a color-blind political arena, white liberals often needed them to be black, which meant marginal to political competition and social victims to be helped. Thus, while Newman sought to show the public that black voters made a difference in politics, white politicians sought to assure the public that their interest in civil rights was not a response to black votes. Despite the economic underpinnings of the FEPC, the value of civil rights and antiracism for white liberal politicians like Humphrey depended on civil rights being a moral issue. Nellie Stone Johnson remembers that Humphrey treated her as any other activist in the movement, which meant that he saw her as politically useful: “Hubert was hanging on to me as much as I was hanging on to him,” she recalls, not without pride.8 For someone who was herself using politics to fight for change and equality, this would have been gratifying, and Johnson spun it in the most gratifying, nonracial, way—that Humphrey was interested in her because she was a delegate to the Central Labor Union. It could be argued, however, that Johnson’s blackness in fact prevented Humphrey from treating her like a real political actor, which might have meant red-baiting her. She was, after all, a communist. But a black communist was not the same as a white communist. The sociological

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and moral significance of Johnson’s blackness automatically lifted her out of the political arena of 1940s Minnesota. Political marginality conferred a political immunity. The need to convince voters that their interest in civil rights was not “political” prevented liberal politicians from articulating how black voters fit into a Democratic party based on organized economic interests. Absent the peculiar historical circumstances that made black voters relevant in 1948, liberal interest in civil rights became more of an impediment than a help. By 1953 union leaders preparing for Humphrey’s 1954 reelection noted, prophetically as it turns out, that the rank and file thought that Humphrey was working more for southern blacks than his Minnesota constituents.9 The Record of Racial Progress in Minnesota Despite its limitations, in the end the federal civil rights legislation that Humphrey helped enact improved the social and economic status of African Americans. Despite the continuing existence of racism, the activism of the 1960s produced real, tangible changes in American life. Was the civil rights activism in Minnesota similarly effective? Did African American Minnesotans benefit from the flurry of civil rights activism that solidified the DFL and catapulted Humphrey into national politics? Did all of the concern about curbing racial tensions in the 1940s and 1950s inoculate Minnesota from the racial confrontations of the 1960s? The record of progress is mixed in Minnesota. On the one hand, white liberals continued to support human relations councils and interracial educational programs. They passed and enforced a statewide FEPC law in 1955 and a housing act in 1957. On the other hand, however, the commissions and committees that dealt with minority issues continued to be underfunded and understaffed. In 1963 the Council on Human Relations was still subsisting on funds it raised by itself. 1n 1960, 41 percent of St. Paul black families had incomes under $4,000, and the median income of non-whites in Minneapolis was $4,598, two-thirds that of whites.10 Moreover, African Americans were never politically strong enough to protect their real interests when those interests stood in the way of white interests such as an interstate freeway system. Throughout the 1950s African Americans and civil rights activists had criticized the inadequacies of the FEPC and the housing laws, but it was the construction of the freeways that awakened the black communities

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to their lack of real power in the state. Nearly two thousand non-white families, mainly African American, were displaced by new freeways that were built through black neighborhoods in St. Paul and Minneapolis in the early 1960s.11 In St. Paul about five-sixths of the black population of eight thousand lived in an area two miles long and half a mile wide along Rondo Avenue. Beginning in 1958, the construction of I-94 split the community down the middle, took up one-seventh of the land, and displaced 14 percent of St. Paul’s non-white population.12 The RondoSt. Anthony Improvement Association was organized to fight for help in relocating. They feared that while white residents of the area would have little trouble finding housing in other parts of the city, the black residents were largely restricted to this so-called black area, where the housing shortage was already acute because of urban renewal and freeway construction. In 1958 the Housing Authority estimated that seven hundred new public housing units would be available, but five hundred families displaced by urban renewal were already on the waiting list for these units. Moreover, the Housing Authority’s Relocation Office was funded to assist only those families displaced by urban renewal, not by the freeway. To perform that assistance, they needed $30,000 from the city or the Highway Department, which was not forthcoming. The association appealed to the mayor’s office and then to Governor Orville Freeman, who expressed concern, set up commissions to investigate, and eventually appropriated $25,000 for relocation assistance. But the city government offered no help. The Highway Department compensated displaced families fairly generously, which many felt was a payoff for the city’s failure to recognize the problems of relocation.13 As a result, a majority of displaced blacks remained in the ghetto area. The Urban League felt that an opportunity to relieve ghetto overcrowding and achieve residential integration had been missed, and that the ghetto had in fact been solidified. At the same time, the freeways gutted African American communities, destroying stores, newsstands, bars, and thoroughfares that had once created neighborhood cohesion. Sociologist William Julius Wilson has blamed these sorts of urban renewal and freeway programs for the crisis of inner-city black neighborhoods today.14 The civil rights legislation and the various human relations commissions failed, then, to result in real black political power, which had been one of Newman’s priorities. They also failed to prevent the riots they had been created to prevent. Arthur Naftalin, who was so prominent in

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the establishment of postwar liberalism in the DFL party, was mayor of Minneapolis when riots broke out in the summer of 1966 and 1967. Like Humphrey, Naftalin emphasized human relations when he became mayor. In 1963 he asked the city council to appropriate $35,000 for the Commission on Human Relations to provide it with a real staff and a formal governmental structure.15 The city council granted some funds but not enough to carry out Naftalin’s recommendations, which included relocation assistance, job training programs, welfare assistance, and initiatives to stop police brutality. The 1966–67 riots damaged property in north Minneapolis black neighborhoods and further soured relations between whites and blacks. In St. Paul, a disturbance at a dance on Labor Day weekend in 1968 led to two days of looting and fires in the SummitUniversity area. The riots of 1966–68 brought forth a wave of commissions, investigations, and self-castigation on the part of white liberals. The numerous investigations into the causes of the riots emphasized that the problem was an economic one between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” but they laid the ultimate blame on white racism.16 The prosperous white majority had moved out to the suburbs, leaving the city to the poor, the elderly, and racial minorities. City leaders failed to allot resources to programs and recommendations that might have helped solve the economic problems that underlay the rioting. Investigators also pointed to a newly recognized, but quickly admitted, problem: white liberal paternalism. One report after another listed white liberals’ paternalistic programs and elitist attitudes as a major cause of mistrust and miscommunication between white experts and the people they were supposed to be helping.17 They recommended that white leaders cultivate ties with “indigenous” members of the black communities and listen to their voices. In explaining the failure of earlier human relations programs, one report noted that “the primary concern has been the ‘success’ of the program, rather than the success of the people that were to be served,” which captured perfectly the work performed by those 1940s-style human relations programs.18 Mayor Naftalin and other DFLers struggled to stay relevant in the changing civil rights atmosphere. They admitted past wrongs and encouraged “indigenous” voices. But they still held themselves up as the sensible, bold, middle way between the extremes, between the violence on the one hand, and conservative reaction on the other. Unfortunately, the riots and liberals’ renewed efforts to solve the

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problems exacerbated an already divisive atmosphere. The consensus and unity such human relations activities had fostered among liberals in the 1940s were as absent from Minneapolis in the 1960s as the old Farmer-Labor radicals. The issues of racial justice and black civil rights were not merely an ancillary result of liberal activism but, rather, central to the establishment and legitimation of the Democratic political order in postwar American politics. The instrumentality of civil rights for white liberals lay in the concrete reality of black votes, the moral authority civil rights conferred on “sincere” politicians, and, as I have tried to show throughout this book, in the language and ideas behind civil rights, which matched and affirmed the foundational ideas of that Democratic political order. The dynamic relationship between civil rights and postwar liberalism legitimated both in the political life of the nation. Or it did at least for while, until the language and ideas of civil rights resulted in real expectations on the part of African Americans and a real backlash from white working-class Democrats. The dynamic relationship between antiracism and postwar liberalism reminds us how deeply embedded, how present, issues of race are in American politics, even in those places where race does not seem to matter.


Notes

Preface 1. A copy of the speech is reprinted in Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man, 458–59.

Introduction 1. See, for instance, Valelly, Radicalism in the States; and Haynes, Dubious Alliance. 2. William S. White, “The Democrats in Pre-Convention,” Washington Post, Sept. 28, 1959. Political scientist John Fenton later affirmed White’s observation, noting that the healthy interaction of competing interest groups, responsive government, and informed citizens was a happy ideal, seldom fulfilled, except in Minnesota and Wisconsin (Fenton, Midwest Politics, 100). See also Hrebrenar and Thomas, eds., Interest Group Politics in the Midwestern States. 3. The historic strength of the DFL party was recently noted in “Minnesota Democrats Racing against Time,” New York Times, Sept. 10, 2000, 30. 4. See, for instance, Nelson Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy in the Postwar Era,” in Gerstle and Fraser, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 122–52; Ira Katznelson, “Was the Great Society a Lost Opportunity?” in Gerstle and Fraser, eds., The Rise and Fall, 185–211; Lipsitz, Class and Culture in Cold War America; May, The Big Tomorrow. On the constriction of civil rights possibilities in the early cold war era, see Sullivan, Days of Hope, 221–75; Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion, 18–35; and Lichtenstein and Korstad, “Opportunities Lost and Found.” Others see merely a narrowing of political possibilities, without making the case that there was some alternative; see Fowler, Believing Skeptics. 5. Brinkley, The End of Reform; Milkis, The President and the Parties; Valelly, Radicalism in the States; and Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order. 171

172 Notes to Introduction 6. See, for instance, Schlesinger, A Thousand Days; and Hamby, Beyond the New Deal. 7. On the poisonous effects of interest-group pluralism, see, especially, Lowi, The End of Liberalism. 8. See Holcombe, The New Party Politics; Lubell, The Future of American Politics; and Cohen, Making a New Deal. 9. Lipsitz, Class and Culture; and Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining.” 10. See, especially, Edsall and Edsall, Chain Reaction; and Shafer, Quiet Revolution. 11. Thurber, The Politics of Equality. 12. On the ideological arguments that divorced the Left from liberals in the 1940s, see, especially, Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age; and Diggins, The Rise and Fall of the American Left. 13. Mills, The Power Elite; Lowi, The End of Liberalism, 101–24; “polyarchy” is described in Fowler, Believing Skeptics, 186–94. For Benson’s predictions, see Benson, “Politics in My Lifetime.” 14. See Sullivan, Days of Hope, 221–75; Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion, 22– 24, discussing the formation of the Progressive party with no mention of Elmer Benson. 15. Sullivan, Days of Hope. 16. On the nationalizing tendencies that led to the decline of third-party radicalism, see, especially, Valelly, Radicalism in the States. On the nationalization of the “race problem,” see, especially, Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 86–105. 17. Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order, 1–10, 92–127. 18. In 1940 there were 9,928 Negroes in Minnesota. By 1950 the number of African Americans in the state had risen to 14,022, still about one-half of 1 percent of the state population. Figures from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of the Population: 1950, vol. 2, pt. 23, table 14, p. 45. 19. On wartime racial politics, see Myrdal, An American Dilemma, 409–28, 997– 1026; Dalfiume, “The Forgotten Years of the Negro Revolution”; Sitkoff, “Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War”; Kryder, Divided Arsenal; Reed, Seedtime for the Modern Civil Rights Movement; and Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 16–31. 20. Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color. 21. Quoted in DFL Independent Newsletter, Jan. 12, 1947, 3. 22. Milkis, The President and the Parties, 98–124, 146. 23. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 8. 24. Examples include Sullivan, Days of Hope; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe; Dittmer, Local People; Lipsitz, A Life in the Struggle; Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement; Weiss, Whitney Young and the Struggle for Civil Rights; and Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law. 25. Here I refer mainly to those critiques of postwar liberal civil rights efforts as serving the ends of the cold war, capitalism, or the social service state, limited by their pursuit of civil rights through legislative means, including Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion, 18–35; Gerstle, “Race and the Myth of Liberal Consensus”; Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 5–11; Hodgson, America in Our Time, especially, 473–78; and Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights.

Notes to Chapter 1 173 26. In Sullivan’s Days of Hope, Humphrey and the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), in their opposition to Wallace and support for Truman, ended the hope to which the title refers.

1. The Rise and Fall of the Farmer-Labor Party 1. This scene is described in Morlan, Political Prairie Fire, 191. Morlan cites the Nonpartisan Leader, Apr. 8, 1919. 2. The following description of agrarian movements relies on Hicks, The Populist Revolt; Saloutos and Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West, 1900–1939; Nye, Midwestern Progressive Politics; Mayer, Floyd B. Olson; Gieske, Minnesota FarmerLaborism; Mitau, Politics in Minnesota; and Morlan, Political Prairie Fire. 3. Holmquist, ed., They Chose Minnesota, 8. 4. Lass, Minnesota, 122–23; Mitau, Politics in Minnesota, 6–10. On the party system in the late nineteenth century, see McCormick, The Party Period and Public Policy; and the roundtable discussion, “Alternatives to the Party System in the Party Period, 1830–1900,” featuring Ronald Formisano, Mark Voss-Hubbard, Michael Holt, and Paula Baker, in Journal of American History 86 (1999): 93–166. 5. On the rise of the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota, see Morlan, Political Prairie Fire, 22–75. In its six years in power, the Nonpartisan League enacted most of its platform, giving women the vote in 1917. 6. On the cooperative movement in Minnesota, see Keillor, Cooperative Commonwealth. 7. U.S. Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1901, table 9, p. 20. 8. For instance, Per Hansa, the protagonist, tells his kinfolk about the new group of settlers in the area: “These folks were Irish, he explained; their women were terrible trolls, with noses as long as rake handles. . . . They were much uglier than Indians, and spoke so fast it sounded like this” (Rölvaag, Giants in the Earth, 138–39). 9. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, vol. 3, pt. 1, table 2, p. 1187. Also, Minnesota: A State Guide, compiled by the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration, 74–75. 10. A useful overview is in Holmquist, ed., They Chose Minnesota. For information on the foreign-born populations of the Twin Cities, see Schmid, Social Saga of Two Cities, 129–86. 11. On the ethnic composition of the Iron Range, see the unexpectedly fascinating Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns, 23–24, originally published in 1938; and Sirjamaki, “The People of the Mesabi Range.” 12. The character of these mining towns is described in Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns, 18–25, and throughout. The image of the tearful railway worker surrounded by his family is significant in this regard, as the Nonpartisan League sought to counter images of wild, unsettled workers. 13. On the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, see Chrislock, Watchdog of Loyalty. On antilabor repression, see also Betten, “Riot, Revolution and Repression in the Iron Range Strike of 1916”; Haynes, “Revolt of the Timber Beasts.” On antiLeague violence, see Morlan, Political Prairie Fire, especially, 152–82.

174 Notes to Chapter 1 14. The origins of the Farmer-Labor party are discussed in Valelly, Radicalism in the States; Naftalin, “A History of the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota”; and Gieske, Minnesota Farmer-Laborism. 15. Valelly, Radicalism in the States, 35. 16. Naftalin, “A History of the Farmer-Labor Party,” 71, quoting the Minnesota Leader, Mar. 11, 1922. Naftalin wrote this dissertation in the midst of the political struggle against Benson’s left-wing faction, and his interpretation is influenced by that struggle, as I will discuss in chapter 2. 17. Valelly, 35–46, Radicalism in the States; Naftalin, “A History of the FarmerLabor Party,” 71–72. 18. On the Farmer-Labor Association’s pervasive role in the party, see Holbo, “The Farmer-Labor Association”; and Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 10–11. 19. From Carter, American Messiahs, 89. See also Anderson, Puzzled America, 255–70; J. O. Meyers, “Governor Olson of Minnesota,” The Nation 133 (Nov. 18, 1931): 539–40; and Walker, American City. Governor Olson, and the press’s enthrallment with Olson, bears no small resemblance to the current fascination with Governor Jesse Ventura, also a large, honest, down-to-earth, third-party, populist-type hero. 20. Mayer, Floyd B. Olson, 93–164; Gieske, Minnesota Farmer-Laborism, 147–50. 21. Olson’s ill health and death are movingly described in Mayer, Floyd B. Olson, 143–45, 289–301. 22. The labor movement’s role in diminishing ethnicity in politics is discussed in Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 48–54; Cohen, Making a New Deal, 251–360; and Lipset, Political Man, 325. 23. On the Citizens’ Alliance and antilabor activity, see Walker, American City, 177–98; Millikan, “Maintaining Law and Order”; and Rachleff and Quam, “Keeping Minneapolis an Open Shop Town.” 24. On the 1934 strike, see Walker, American City, 198–268; Valelly, 103–18; Solow, “War in Minneapolis”; Dobbs, Teamster Rebellion; Le Sueur, “What Happens in a Strike”; and the series of oral histories conducted by the Minnesota Historical Society’s Radicalism in Minnesota project, cited in Radicalism in Minnesota, 1900–1960: A Survey of Selected Sources (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1994), 27–45. 25. See Shover, Cornbelt Rebellion; and “The Corn Belt Cracks Down,” New Republic, Nov. 22, 1933, 36–38. 26. Reprinted in Youngdale, ed., Third Party Footprints, 244–45. 27. Reprinted in Youngdale, ed., Third Party Footprints, 245. 28. On the still contentious issue of communism in the Farmer-Labor party, see Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 12–33; and Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism, 257–65. Haynes and Klehr have since collaborated on several well-researched books on the activities of American communists and their ties to Moscow. See Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism; and Klehr and Haynes, Venona. 29. Mayer, Floyd B. Olson, 253. 30. Carter, American Messiahs, 56. 31. Valelly, Radicalism in the States, 85–102. See also Tweton, The New Deal at the Grass Roots. 32. During the 1930s, Farm Bureau membership increased, while Farmers Union membership decreased, or stayed the same. See Tontz, “Memberships of General Farm Organizations, United States, 1874–1960”; and Valelly, Radicalism in the States,

Notes to Chapter 1 175 100. On the Farm Bureau, see McConnell, The Decline of Agrarian Democracy, 44–54. 33. Control of the Minnesota legislature, however, continued to elude the party. See Naftalin, “The Failure of the Farmer-Labor Party to Capture Control of the Minnesota Legislature.” 34. For favorable portraits of Benson, see Shields, Mr. Progressive; and A. I. Harris, “Benson: Labor Governor,” New Republic, Nov. 3, 1937, 360–62. For a less favorable description, see Haynes, Dubious Alliance. 35. On details of communism in the CIO and Farmer-Labor party in the 1930s– 40s, see Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 12–33, 71–106; Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism, 257–65; and an excellent oral history interview with Sam Darcy, the Communist party educational director for Minnesota, in the Oral History Collection at Minnesota Historical Society. 36. On the competing factions within the labor movement, see Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 34–46. 37. See Keillor’s biography, Hjalmar Petersen of Minnesota, 143–69. 38. I will return to the importance of anti-Semitism in Minneapolis in the following chapters. On this issue, see McWilliams, “Minneapolis, the Curious Twin”; and Gordon, Jews in Transition, especially, 43–68. 39. In his efforts to discredit Benson and the left wing, Hjalmar Petersen was aided by Republican businessmen like William McKnight of Minnesota Manufacturing and Mining (later 3M), who opposed Benson’s tax policies. See Keillor, Hjalmar Petersen of Minnesota, 160–62. 40. See the infamous Are They Communists or Catspaws? written and published by Republican auditor Ray Chase, who was later sued for slander. See Gordon, Jews in Transition, 51–52. 41. On isolationism in Minnesota politics, see Keillor, Hjalmar Petersen of Minnesota, 170–90. For examples of internationalist educational efforts, see the League of Women Voters’ The Woman Voter, for 1939–44 and beyond; and the University of Minnesota’s radio series program “The World We Want,” sponsored by the Key Center for War Information (later the Bureau for Current Affairs). Transcripts are in the University of Minnesota Department of Political Science Papers, box 14, University of Minnesota Archives. 42. Elmer Benson to Howard Y. Williams, Oct. 20, 1941. Benson’s many exchanges concerning the war can be found in the Elmer Benson Papers, box 16, Minnesota Historical Society. 43. Quoted in “Farmer-Labor Party to Quit Isolationism,” by Gordon Roth, PM, Aug. 29, 1941. Friends warned Benson not to change his position too suddenly, lest it confirm to all that he was enthralled by the communists. Abe Harris to Elmer Benson, July 15, 1941, Benson Papers, box 16. 44. See “A Statistical Analysis of the 1946 Election,” Papers of the National Republican Party, microfilm, Series A, Reel 1, pt. 2; and White et al., eds., Minnesota Votes. 45. The best discussion of the merger is in Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 107–24. 46. The CIO’s Sidney Hillman and the Communist party’s Earl Browder both ordered Popular Front Farmer-Laborites to work for merger in 1943. See Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 109–14. 47. On this election, see Solberg, Hubert Humphrey, 88–96; and Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 102–5.

176 Notes to Chapter 2 48. “I cannot win as a Democrat. Since the Farmer-Labor party is being dissolved, I naturally have to go some other place.” Harold Hagen to Sig Walstrom, Jan. 28, 1944, Harold Hagen Papers, box 3, Minnesota Historical Society. 49. “Resolution,” Feb. 14, 1944, Francis Smith Papers, box 1, Minnesota Historical Society. 50. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 114–18. Roosevelt received 52 percent of the vote. See White et al., Minnesota Votes, 24. 51. See, for instance, Ira Katznelson, “Was the Great Society a Lost Opportunity?” and Nelson Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining,” both in Gerstle and Fraser, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order; Lipsitz, Class and Culture in Cold War America; Lichtenstein and Korstad, “Opportunities Found and Lost”; and Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, who talks about the ways postwar decisions created the urban crisis. 52. See Brinkley, The End of Reform, 137–74; and Milkis, The President and the Parties, 3–17, 98–146. 53. This point is argued in detail in Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order, 191–99.

2. The New Two-Party Liberalism 1. Arthur Naftalin for Barney Allen, “Politically, This I Believe . . .” [1944], Arthur Naftalin Papers, box 20, Minnesota Historical Society. 2. Analyses of this shift in political sensibility include Valelly, Radicalism in the States; Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age; and May, ed., Recasting America, 1–18. 3. See Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order, especially 162–89. 4. See Lowi, The End of Liberalism, 72–79; and Fowler, Believing Skeptics, 176–210. 5. On Humphrey’s years at the University of Minnesota, see Solberg, Hubert Humphrey, 68–87; Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man, 59–60; and Kampelman, Entering New Worlds, 54–61. Kirkpatrick left the university in 1947 to join the State Department. See “History of Department of Political Science,” by William Anderson, University of Minnesota Department of Political Science Papers (hereafter cited as DPSP), box 14, University of Minnesota Archives. 6. On Latham, see Humphrey, Education, 74. Lindblom took part in KUOM’s “The World We Want” radio series, where he was introduced as a faculty member. See transcripts in DPSP, box 14. On Moos, see William Anderson to Joseph Harris [undated, 1940], DPSP, box 11. 7. See Seidelman, Disenchanted Realists, 19–23. See also Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920, 11–43; Haskell, The Emergence of Professional Social Science, 1–47; and Purcell, The Crisis of Democratic Theory. 8. See, for instance, Kirkpatrick and Christensen, The People, Politics and the Politician, 1–2. 9. Kirkpatrick and Christensen, The People, 2; italics in original. Kirkpatrick repeated this passage often. It also appears in his “Report on W. E. Mosher’s Introduction to Responsible Citizenship,” DPSP, box 11; and again in Kirkpatrick, “Report of the Committee of the American Political Science Association on War-Time Changes in the Political Science Curriculum,” 1143.

Notes to Chapter 2 177 10. Kirkpatrick and Christensen, The People, 1. The critiques against APSA and the pluralists include Surkin and Wolfe, eds., An End to Political Science; Lowi, The End of Liberalism, 38–54; and Fowler, Believing Skeptics, 176–94. 11. The Political Science Department faculty participated in a public education radio series sponsored by the Key Center for War Information (later the Bureau for Current Affairs). See transcripts of “Political Prospects for Postwar Reconstruction,” transcript radio panel featuring Evron Kirkpatrick, Charles Lindblom, Elio Monachesi, and Edgar Wesley, [1943]; “Bureaucracy,” with William Anderson, Evron Kirkpatrick, and Lloyd Short (all of the Political Science Dept.), broadcast Mar. 17, 1944; “Political Prospects for Postwar Reconstruction,” with Kirkpatrick and others, Feb. 22, 1944; “Are Democracies Following the Road to Serfdom?” with William Anderson and Herbert McClosky, Apr. 27, 1945; and “What Is the Full Employment Bill?” Oct. 10, 1945; all in DPSP, box 14. 12. This was a common argument at the time; it can be found in such pro– New Deal works as Wallace, New Frontiers; and Roosevelt, Looking Forward. In terms of its currency at the University of Minnesota, see Humphrey, The Political Philosophy of the New Deal, 16; and Lloyd Short in University of Minnesota, Key Center of War Information, Special Bulletin no. 70, “Bureaucracy,” with William Anderson, Evron Kirkpatrick, and Lloyd Short, broadcast Mar. 17, 1944, p. 4, DPSP, box 14. 13. Humphrey, Political Philosophy, 16. 14. Kampelman lecture, “State Essence,” Max Kampelman Papers, Lecture Notes, box 5, Minnesota Historical Society. See also Humphrey, Political Philosophy, 11–12. On political scientists’ conception of a benevolent, integrative state, see Seidelman, Disenchanted Realists, 69–74, and throughout. On general ideas about the state in the 1930s–40s, see Brinkley, The End of Reform, especially 31–85; and Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order, 162–89. 15. Humphrey, Political Philosophy, 56. 16. Humphrey, Political Philosophy, 88–90. 17. Humphrey, Political Philosophy, 32, lifting whole paragraphs from Lerner, It’s Later Than You Think, 20–21. 18. Fowler, Believing Skeptics, 198; Latham, “The Group Basis of Politics: Notes for a Theory,” 376–97. 19. Truman, The Governmental Process; MacIver, The Web of Government; and Latham, The Group Basis of Politics. Lowi, The End of Liberalism, 75, says that a group-based view of politics was conventional wisdom by 1948. 20. On postwar liberal refutation of “ideology,” and embrace of “pragmatism,” see Pells, The Liberal Mind, 138–82; and Fowler, Believing Skeptics, 4–17. For examples, see Wallace, New Frontiers, 19–34; Humphrey, Political Philosophy, especially 13–17; and Schlesinger, The Vital Center. 21. For discussion of the liberal rebuttals to accusations of confusion and indirection, see Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order, 164–65; for examples, see Humphrey, Political Philosophy, 13–17. 22. On Keynesianism, see Brinkley, The End of Reform, 7–8, 128–31; and Hodgson, America in Our Time, 78–82. Alvin Hansen, who articulated Keynesianism for President Roosevelt, and Walter Heller, the Keynesian chairman of Economic Advisors under Kennedy and Johnson, had been economists at the University of Minnesota in the 1930s (Hansen) and 1950s (Heller).

178 Notes to Chapter 2 23. Stuart Chase, “The Economy of Abundance,” in Bingham and Rodman, eds., Challenge to the New Deal, 139–42, quote on p. 140. See also Brinkley, The End of Reform, 70–71. 24. Brinkley, The End of Reform, 66. Brinkley likewise identifies these two ideas as ideas that later became part of Keynesianism. 25. See, for instance, “Bureaucracy,” “Is Free Enterprise Necessary for Democracy?” and “Political Prospects for Postwar Reconstruction,” all from “The World We Want” radio series; see transcripts in DPSP, box 14. 26. University of Minnesota application, box 5, Kampelman Papers. 27. Anderson, “The Role of Political Science,” 12. 28. See Anderson, Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations: A Budget of Suggestions for Research; and Anderson, “The Commission on Intergovernmental Relations and the United States Federal System.” 29. Schattschneider, Party Government, 1. 30. Hinderaker, “Harold Stassen and Developments in the Republican Party in Minnesota, 1937–43”; Naftalin, “A History of the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota”; and Morlan, “The Political History of the Nonpartisan League, 1915–1922.” 31. Kampelman, “Harold Laski.” Kirkpatrick’s student Carroll Hawkins was writing a dissertation on the political thought of Laski. 32. Murphy, “People and Pedagogues,” 172. 33. See Pomper, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System? What, Again?”; and Ranney and Kendall, Democracy and the American Party System, especially, 500. 34. Schattschneider, Party Government, 30–31. Subsequent page references are given parenthetically in the text. 35. On the “cross-pressure” function of group activity, see MacIver, The Web of Government, 421–30; Truman, The Governmental Process, 1–45; Lipset, Political Man, 74–80; as well as Schattschneider, Party Government, 33. The idea remains relevant today, although the context is no longer totalitarianism but decline of “civil society.” See Putnam, Bowling Alone. 36. Schattschneider, Party Government, 62; and Truman, The Governmental Process, 274–76. 37. Schattschneider, Party Government, 48. See also Myrdal, An American Dilemma, 452–522, which discusses the importance of the two-party system to democracy in contrast to southern one-party rule. 38. On the plebiscitary presidency, see Schattschneider, Party Government, 53; and Milkis, The President and the Parties, especially 260. 39. An early statement of the transition from sectional to “class” politics is Holcombe, The New Party Politics. See also Schattschneider, Party Government, 115–21; Key, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, 269–79; and Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 29–60. 40. See Schattschneider, The Struggle for Party Government, 1–4; American Political Science Association Committee on Parties, Toward a More Responsible TwoParty System, 15–25. Kirkpatrick later repudiated the report and the committee; see Kirkpatrick, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: Political Science, Policy Science, or Pseudo-Science?” American Political Science Review. On the many critiques of the report, see Hinderaker, Party Politics, 44–49.

Notes to Chapter 2 179 41. Memo “Meeting Political Science Association on Party Responsibility held on April 6, 1949,” Kampelman Papers, box 9. 42. Humphrey, “The Senate on Trial,” 650–51. 43. Naftalin, “The Failure of the Farmer-Labor Party to Capture Control of the Minnesota Legislature.” 44. Naftalin, “A History of the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota,” 25–28. 45. Naftalin, “A History,” 111. 46. See, for instance, the portrayal of Townley in Saloutos and Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West, 1900–1939, 162. 47. Naftalin, “A History,” 71. 48. Naftalin, “A History,” 117, 140. 49. Darrell Smith to Archie Robinson, Feb. 3, 1948, Hubert H. Humphrey Papers, Mayor’s Office Files (hereafter cited as MOF), Political Files (hereafter cited as PF), box 25, Minnesota Historical Society. 50. Dale Kramer, “Young Man in a Hurry,” New Republic, June 16, 1947, 14–16. 51. “Third Party in American Politics,” handwritten notes for the League of Women Voters Institute, Oct. 18, 1946, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 26; and “Improvement of Party Organization: Specific Resolutions,” Jan. 31, 1953, Donald Fraser Papers, box 5, Minnesota Historical Society. 52. Arthur Naftalin for Barney Allen, “Politically, This I Believe . . .” [1944], Naftalin Papers; see also another speech written for labor leader Rubin Latz [1945], Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 53. Humphrey, “What’s Wrong with the Democrats?”; “Address by Mayor Humphrey—January 10, 1948—Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” Humphrey Papers, Senate Campaign Files (hereafter cited as SCF), box 2; “Excerpts from Address before Hennepin County Democratic-Farmer-Labor Convention—May 14, 1948” and “Third Party in American Politics,” handwritten notes for the League of Women Voters Institute, Oct. 18, 1946, both in Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 26; Humphrey to C. O. Madsen, Mar. 4, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 25; and “The Structure and Operation of American Political Parties,” [undated, ca. 1950] lecture outline by Humphrey, DFL State Central Committee Papers, box 26, Minnesota Historical Society. See also letter confirming Freeman’s address to the League of Women Voters of Minneapolis on “Our Two-Party System—Pattern of American Politics,” Mrs. T. O. Everson to Orville Freeman, July 2, 1948, DFL State Central Committee Papers, box 1. 54. See Mitau, Politics in Minnesota, 57–79; and Adrian, “The Origins of Minnesota’s Nonpartisan Legislature.” 55. “Statement in Support of Party Designations,” Eugenie M. Anderson Papers, box 13, Minnesota Historical Society; and “Party Labels Urged,” DFL Newsletter, Mar. 1949, DFL State Central Committee Papers, box 3. Compare to Schattschneider, Party Government, 6–9. 56. See Naftalin, “The Failure of the Farmer-Labor Party.” They finally achieved their goal in 1973. 57. See, especially, Humphrey’s handwritten notes for League of Women Voters speech, “Third Party in American Politics,” Oct. 18, 1946, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 26. 58. See Resolution against All-Party Political Activity in Farmer-Labor Women’s Clubs of Minnesota, Report of the Convention, 1934, p. 18, Arthur (Spot) Reier-

180 Notes to Chapter 2 son Papers, box 1, Minnesota Historical Society. Also Elmer Benson, interview by Lucile Kane, Russell Fridley, and James Borman, June 4, 1963, Minnesota Historical Society. 59. Susie Stageberg, “As a Woman Sees It,” undated [1944?], Susie Stageberg Papers, box 2, Minnesota Historical Society. 60. John Bosch to Elmer Benson, Feb. 5, 1941, Benson Papers, box 16. 61. See Burnham, “The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe,” 7– 28; and Lubell, The Future of American Politics, especially 44–60. 62. See Press Release, from Mayor’s Office, May 12, 1948, about Humphrey’s address to Steelworkers of America, CIO, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26; Kampelman’s draft of a speech against Henry Wallace, June 25, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25; Humphrey, “What’s Wrong with the Democrats?” “Address by Mayor Humphrey—January 10, 1948—Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” Humphrey Papers, SCF, box 2; and “Excerpts from Address before Hennepin County DemocraticFarmer-Labor Convention—May 14, 1948,” Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 26. 63. See the Farmer-Labor party’s “Resolution,” Feb. 14, 1944, box 1, Francis Smith Papers, Minnesota Historical Society. The resolution to form the “Farmer-LaborDemocrat party” stated that the fight against fascism and for lasting peace had to be carried on in the national political arena; since a national third party was not yet feasible in 1944, the Farmer-Labor party had agreed to merge with the Democrats in the name of anti-fascism. See also Benson’s denial that the Democratic party carried on Farmer-Labor principles and his contention that the national Democratic party sought to destroy the Farmer-Labor party, in Benson, interview. 64. For a description of this overlap, see Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 34–46; and Naftalin, “A History,” who sees the unions’ “educational associations” as vulnerable to communist takeover, 117–25. 65. Naftalin, “A History,” 303, 330–39. 66. See Elmer Benson to Irene Paull, Oct. 3, 1941, and Benson to Howard Y. Williams, Oct. 20, 1941, Benson Papers, box 16. 67. For left-wing statements to this effect, see “Why the DFL Doesn’t Win Elections,” Minnesota Leader, Feb. 28, 1948, 4–5 (the Minnesota Leader was published by the left wing’s DFL Association); State Executive Board of the DFL Association, “An Open Letter to Mayor Humphrey,” Feb. 12, 1948; a letter from Harold Fossum et al., to George Phillips [n.d., 1946]; and “Resolution to Oppose Hubert Humphrey,” Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 26. On left-wing disenchantment with Humphrey, see also Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 129; Solberg, Hubert Humphrey, 94–97. 68. See Benson, “Politics in My Lifetime,” 154–60; Benson, interview; “How Left Is the DFL Ass’n?” and “Joe Ball Must Have Sincere Opposition,” both in Minnesota Leader, Nov. 1947, 8. 69. William S. White, “The Democrats in Pre-Convention,” Washington Post, Sept. 28, 1959. 70. Fenton, Midwest Politics, 100. See also Hrebrenar et al., eds., Interest Group Politics in the Midwestern States. 71. Lowi, The End of Liberalism, especially, 55–124. 72. McConnell, The Decline of Agrarian Democracy; and McConnell, Private Power and American Democracy. 73. See Milkis, The President and the Parties, 9–13.

Notes to Chapter 3 181

3. Antiracism and the Politics of Unity 1. See foreword to the Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker in Minnesota. The “Pledge of Unity” was sponsored by the St. Paul Council on Human Relations and the National Conference of Christians and Jews. The commission endorsed the pledge in 1944; see Minutes, July 28, 1944, vol. 1, Governor’s Human Rights Commission, Minutes, 1943–67, Records, Minnesota Department of Human Rights, Minnesota Historical Society. See also National Conference of Christians and Jews (Minneapolis) letter to “fellow citizen,” 1944, with other antiracism materials in Genevieve Steefel Papers, box 13, Minnesota Historical Society. On rural interest, see “Danger Signal for American Democracy,” Farmers Union Herald (St. Paul), Sept. 17, 1948; and “Dancehall Democracy,” Midland Cooperator (Minneapolis), Jan. 8, 1947, 2. 2. The total state population in 1940 was 2,792,300, whereas in 1950, it had risen to 2,982,483. Population figures from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of the Population: 1950, vol. 2, pt. 23, table 14. 3. Figures from Moon, Balance of Power, 148. 4. Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker, 3. 5. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, vol. 3, pt. 1, p. 1187. See also Minnesota: A State Guide, compiled by the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration, 74–75. 6. Kryder, Divided Arsenal, x-xiv, 1–24. 7. For concerns about unity, see, especially, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Minority Peoples in a Nation at War, vii-viii. On Americans’ mixed interest in racism during World War II, see Kryder, Divided Arsenal; Blum, V Was for Victory, 182–220; Dower, War without Mercy, 118–79; and Reed, Seedtime for the Modern Civil Rights Movement. A more hopeful picture was presented by McWilliams, Brothers under the Skin, 3–58. 8. See “Report of the 34th Annual Meeting of the NAACP,” Jan. 4, 1943, NAACP Papers, reel 14. On the OWI, see Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 82–112. 9. Typical titles included “Are These Americans?” “Out of Many—One,” and Ruth Benedict and Gene Weltfish, “The Races of Mankind” (New York: Public Affairs Committee, Inc., 1943). The Public Affairs Committee published a pamphlet series that included many pamphlets on race relations, including Alfred McClung Lee, Race Riots Aren’t Necessary, Public Affairs Pamphlet No. 107 (New York: Public Affairs Committee, Inc., 1945); Maxwell Stewart, The Negro in America, Public Affairs Pamphlet No. 95 (New York: Public Affairs Committee, Inc., 1945); and others. 10. Benedict, Race: Science and Politics; Montagu, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth; and Myrdal, An American Dilemma. Other popular titles included Moon, ed., Primer for White Folks; McWilliams, Brothers under the Skin; and the journal Common Ground, published by the Common Council for American Unity from the 1930s to the 1950s. 11. Myrdal, An American Dilemma, xlv-lix. 12. Myrdal, An American Dilemma, lix. Many antiracism pamphlets took their lead from Myrdal. On concerns that America’s race problem would be turned against it, see Dower, War without Mercy, 164–80; and Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Minority Peoples, 149–221. 13. See Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, 1–12.

182 Notes to Chapter 3 14. Jacobson, Whiteness, 98–109; see also Benedict, Race; Boas, Race and Democratic Society, which includes essays from 1910 to the 1930s; and Baker, Negro-White Adjustment. 15. Jacobson, Whiteness, 91–109. 16. Benedict, Race, 230–31. Subsequent page references are given parenthetically in the text. 17. Montagu, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth, 184. 18. On the March on Washington Movement and the wartime FEPC, see Garfinkel, When Negroes March; Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 55–131. See also Myrdal, An American Dilemma, 852; Dalfiume, “The Forgotten Years of the Negro Revolution,” 98–99; Terkel, “The Good War,” 335. 19. On opposition to the FEPC, see Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 79, 102; A. Philip Randolph, “March on Washington Movement Presents a Program for the Negro,” in Logan, ed., What the Negro Wants, 145; and “8802 Blues,” The Nation, Feb. 22, 1943, 248–50. 20. House Committee on Labor, To Prohibit Discrimination in Employment, 78th Cong., 2d sess., on HR 3986, HR 4004, HR 4005, June-July 1944, 68. 21. Benedict, Race, 247–48. 22. See House Committee on Rules, To Prohibit Discrimination in Employment because of Race, Creed, Color, National Origin or Ancestry. Hearings, 79th Cong., 1st sess., on H.R. 2232. Mar. 8, Apr. 19–20, 25–26, 1945, 1. 23. Montagu, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth, 185. 24. See Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 29–60; and Lipset, Political Man, 325. For full discussion, see chapter 2. 25. U.S. Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1901 (Washington, D.C., 1902), 20; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1920 (Washington, D.C., 1920), 46; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, vol. 3, pt. 1, p. 1187. 26. See Holmquist, ed., They Chose Minnesota. 27. On postwar repression and anti-German violence, see Chrislock, Watchdog of Loyalty; and Morlan, Political Prairie Fire, 152–82. 28. On Prohibition in Minnesota politics, see Naftalin, “A History of the FarmerLabor Party in Minnesota,” 73–74; and Elmer Benson, interview by Lucile Kane, Russell Fridley, and James Borman, June 4, 1963, Minnesota Historical Society. 29. Quote from The Protestant, Mar.-Apr. 1946, 3, Elmer Benson Papers, box 20, Minnesota Historical Society. On anti-Catholicism in the Farmer-Labor party, see Naftalin, “A History,” 73–74. See also Carl Ross’s analysis of the 1948 election for The Worker, where he accuses the Roman Irish of the red-baiting that defeated the Left, as well as other anti-Catholic materials in Oscar and Madge Hawkins Papers, Minnesota Historical Society. 30. On anti-Semitism in Minneapolis, see Gordon, Jews in Transition, especially 43–68; McWilliams, “Minneapolis: The Curious Twin”; and Berman, “Political AntiSemitism in Minnesota during the Great Depression.” 31. Quote from transcript of radio broadcast, “Around the World in St. Paul,” broadcast Mar. 6, 1946, 2. The program was part of the University of Minnesota’s radio series “The World We Want.” Transcripts in Department of Political Science Papers (hereafter cited as DPSP), box 9, University of Minnesota Archives. The book was Sickels, Around the World in St. Paul.

Notes to Chapter 3 183 32. Transcript, “Around the World in St. Paul,” 3. 33. Minnesota: A State Guide, 77–80. 34. Lewis, “Minnesota: The Norse State,” 426. 35. Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns, 23–24. 36. Schmid, Social Saga, 129, 172. 37. Sickels, Around the World in St. Paul, 95. Spangler, The Negro in Minnesota, 126, reports 1944 as the date Negroes were first featured in the festival, reflecting the importance of the war in changing race relations, but Sickels describes the early African American exhibits in the 1930s. 38. Sickels, Around the World, 108, 126, 236. See also Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 16, 1942, and Apr. 21, 1944. 39. Sickels, Around the World, 193. 40. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of the Population: 1950, vol. 2, pt. 1, xvi. 41. This view is at odds with current interpretations, which see the naturalized state of whiteness as the basis of its oppressive nature. See, for instance, Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, 1–23. On the wartime transformation of ethnic groups into “white,” see Jacobson, Whiteness, 96–138. 42. Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker, 45. 43. Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker, 27. 44. Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker, 4. 45. Governor’s Interracial Commission, Minutes, Feb. 16, 1944, in Governor’s Human Rights Commission, Minnesota Department of Human Rights, Records, Minnesota Historical Society. 46. “Racial and Cultural Democracy: Summary of Class Proceedings, 1943–44” in Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota, Apr. 25, 12th Meeting, in DPSP, box 5. 47. Governor’s Interracial Commission, Minutes, Oct. 29, 1945. 48. Governor’s Interracial Commission, Minutes, Feb. 16, 1948. 49. Rubin Latz to Humphrey, Mar. 11, 1948, Hubert H. Humphrey Papers, Mayor’s Office Files (hereafter cited as MOF), box 16, Minnesota Historical Society. 50. On the Minneapolis Auto Club, see Samuel Scheiner to Wilfred Leland, Nov. 11, 1947; graffiti reading “Jews and Negroes Are Subhuman,” sent to Mayor’s Council on Human Relations on Feb. 25, 1947; see also Scheiner correspondence about H. P. Mudgett’s reports on anti-Semitism in Sleizer’s Bar, Apr. 9, 1947; all in Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 51. For a discussion of the traveling exhibit, see Jacobson, Whiteness, 106–9. 52. “Minorities and Community Living,” transcript of broadcast, Dec. 12, 1945, for the University of Minnesota’s “The World We Want” series, DPSP, box 9. 53. This component of the Japanese American internment experience has only recently been written about. See Brooks, “In the Twilight Zone between Black and White”; Shaffer, “Opposition to Internment.” My information comes from the Minneapolis Committee on Resettlement of Japanese Americans, Papers; and the St. Paul Resettlement Committee, Papers, Minnesota Historical Society. Many of the Nisei who resettled in Minnesota came to learn Japanese at the U.S. War Department’s Japanese Language Camp; see Ano, “Loyal Linguists: Nisei of World War II Learned Japanese in Minnesota.” See also Myer, “Japanese-American Relocation.” 54. “Report of the Special Committee on the Resettlement of the Japanese-

184 Notes to Chapter 3 Americans, Oct. 23, 1942, International Institute,” St. Paul Resettlement Committee Papers, box 1. 55. “Equal Justice under the Law: The Japanese-American Resettles in Minnesota,” by Genevieve Steefel for the Committee for the Resettlement of Japanese Americans, July 1943; see also “Script for Radio Broadcast, June 17,” on O.C.D. Work for the Nisei, prepared by Genevieve Steefel, [1943]; both in Minneapolis Committee on Resettlement of Japanese Americans Papers, box 2. 56. “Equal Justice Under the Law,” 11. 57. See, in particular, Anthony Brutus Cassius, interview by Carl Ross for Hotel and Restaurant Workers Local 665 project, 1981, Minnesota Historical Society; Nellie Stone Johnson, interview by Carl Ross for Hotel and Restaurant Workers Local 665 project, 1981, Minnesota Historical Society; and Nellie Stone Johnson, interview by Carl Ross et al., Mar. 1, 1988, Minnesota Historical Society. 58. Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker, 38. 59. See “Activity Report of the United Labor Committee for Human Rights,” “CLU Resolution, March 26, 1947,” and “Joint Committee for Employment Opportunity Statement,” in Central Labor Union of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Central Labor Union Records, box 43, Minnesota Historical Society. 60. National Conference of Christians and Jews, letter to “fellow-citizens,” [1944], in Steefel Papers, box 13. 61. Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker, 33. 62. Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker, 33. 63. “Racial and Cultural Democracy,” DPSP. For information on Charles Horn, as he liked to see it, see Newman, “An Experiment in Industrial Democracy.” 64. Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker, 12; Newman, “An Experiment,” 55; and Liepold, Cecil E. Newman, 94–100. The figure of one thousand workers was in times of “maximum production,” and constituted more than 20 percent of the adult African American population in the state. Spangler, The Negro in Minnesota, 125, reports that at its peak, the plant employed 1,200 Negroes. See also Minneapolis Star, Oct. 17, 1945. 65. Charles Horn to Hjalmar Petersen, Nov. 21, 1946, Hjalmar Petersen Papers, box 19, Minnesota Historical Society. See also correspondence between Horn and the state Republican party, indicating Horn’s monitoring of union newspapers, Republican State Central Committee Papers, box 4, Minnesota Historical Society. On his economic conservatism, see the Federal Cartridge Corporation’s journal, The Monark, a biweekly “factory and feature medium for maintenance of good fellowship and high morale among all personnel of the organization,” which featured sermons by Horn, bowling scores, news of employee hobbies, and kitchen tips. See also Dypwick, “Fun Pays Dividend.” For an example of Horn’s concern about federal taxation, see “Sound Advice from President Charles L. Horn,” The Monark, Aug. 16, 1946, 3; and “Stop Government Spending,” Feb. 21, 1947, 2. Nellie Stone Johnson mentions a union at the Twin Cities Ordnance Plant in the interview by Carl Ross et al., Mar. 1, 1988, 30, but I have found no evidence of such a union. 66. “Anti-Firearms Movement,” The Monark, Jan. 30, 1941, 1. 67. Dypwick, “Fun Pays Dividend,” 21. 68. “Building Employees Win Boost,” Minneapolis Star, Mar. 29, 1947. 69. Johnson, Nellie Stone Johnson, 155. 70. “Fair Play,” The Monark, Mar. 26, 1942.

Notes to Chapter 4 185 71. Charles Horn to Hubert Humphrey, Dec. 30, 1946, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 72. “Racial and Cultural Democracy,” May 15 meeting, DPSP. 73. “Company Policies Remain the Same Says Pres. Horn,” The Monark, Aug. 24, 1945, 2. On the closing of the Twin Cities Ordnance Plant, see “Many Have Transferred Back to Home Plant Since TCOP Shutdown,” The Monark, Sept. 7, 1945, 3. In 1947 the New Brighton plant was operating a small arms salvaging program with a workforce of seven hundred, 90 percent of which were veterans. It is hard to say whether or not black workers were rehired by this plant. See “Arms Plant’s Revival Sure,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, July 17, 1947, 13. 74. Testimony in Support of a Minnesota Fair Employment Practice Bill, submitted to the Labor Committee of the Minnesota State Senate, Feb. 10, 1949, Steefel Papers, box 13. 75. Otto Christenson, “Fair Employment Practices Act, communication from Otto Christenson to the Minnesota League of Women Voters, Nov. 21, 1949” (St. Paul: Minnesota Employers Association, 1949), 10, at Minnesota Historical Society.

4. The Black Communities in Minnesota 1. The total state population in 1910 was 2,075,708, while in 1940 it had risen to 2,792,300. Figures from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of the Population: 1950 (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1952), vol. 2, pt. 23, p. 44, table 14. 2. Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker in Minnesota, 3. For 1930s population, see Schmid, Social Saga of Two Cities, 172. 3. On discriminatory practices, see Spangler, The Negro in Minnesota, 90–95. 4. Spangler, The Negro in Minnesota, 107, citing a Minneapolis Urban League study; and Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker in Minnesota, 21. 5. Thompson, American Daughter; Johnson, Nellie Stone Johnson. See also Hedgeman, The Trumpet Sounds; Fairbank, Days of Rondo; and Taylor, “Growing Up in Minnesota.” 6. Spangler, The Negro in Minnesota, 100, referencing the Duluth Herald, June 15, 16, 1920; see also Ethel Ray Nance, interview by David Taylor, May 25, 1974, Minnesota Historical Society; and William Maupins, interview by David Taylor, July 31, 1975, Minnesota Historical Society. 7. “Anoka Lynching Balked,” Minneapolis Star, Sept. 7, 1931. 8. Hall, “Roman Holiday in Minneapolis,” Crisis, 38 [40] (Oct. 1931): 337–39. This account is affirmed by “End of Race Row Believed Near,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 18, 1931. See also “Home Stoned in Race Row,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 15, 1931; “Crowd of 3000 Renews Attack on Negroes’ Home,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 16, 1931; “4000 Assemble Near Negro’s Home,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 17, 1931. Schmid, Social Saga, 187, indicates that after the Tribune reported that Lee would move, the NAACP issued a statement, reported on July 20, 1931, saying that he would not move. Schmid reports that he in fact stayed in the house, with no new demonstrations. 9. Spangler, The Negro in Minnesota, 71. 10. Spangler, The Negro in Minnesota, 92. See also David Vassar Taylor, “The Blacks,” in Holmquist, ed., They Chose Minnesota, 73–91.

186 Notes to Chapter 4 11. On the Hall brothers, see S. E. Hall, interview by David Taylor, Dec. 19, 1970, Minnesota Historical Society; S. E. Hall, interview by Ethel Ray Nance, May 1975, Minnesota Historical Society; and Young, “History of the St. Paul Urban League,” 19–20. 12. Young, “History of the St. Paul Urban League,” 22. 13. On efforts to keep migrants out of the Twin Cities, see Spangler, The Negro in Minnesota, 67, who cites an interview with Cecil Newman and J. Louis Ervin. Shortly after the St. Paul Urban League was formed, it expanded to include Minneapolis and was renamed the Twin Cities Urban League; however, they separated again in the 1930s, only to be recombined in the 1940s. See Young, “History of the St. Paul Urban League,” 35–36; Spangler, The Negro in Minnesota, 105; and Hall, interview by Taylor. 14. Young, “History of the St. Paul Urban League,” 40; and Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker, 21–22. 15. Young, “History of the St. Paul Urban League,” 41. 16. Young, “History of the St. Paul Urban League,” 34–39; Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker, 21–22. 17. “Phyllis Wheatley House, 1924–1934,” tenth anniversary booklet, in Phyllis Wheatley Community Center Papers, box 1, Minnesota Historical Society. For further information on white women’s Progressive-era activity, see Stuhler, ed., Women of Minnesota; and Onqué, “History of the Hallie Q. Brown Community House,” 18. 18. On NAACP accomplishments, see Spangler, The Negro in Minnesota, 92. On inactivity and revivals, see NAACP materials, Curtis C. Chivers Papers, 1924–76, Minnesota Historical Society; and NAACP St. Paul Branch, minutes and related records, 1904, 1905, 1934–42, Minnesota Historical Society. 19. The list includes Urban League leaders Roy Wilkins, Clarence Mitchell, Whitney Young, and Anna Arnold Hedgeman; photographer Gordon Parks; journalist Carl T. Rowan; writer Era Bell Thompson; saxophonist Lester Young; artist Henry Bannarn; and others. David Taylor argues that at the turn of the century the presence of John Q. Adams, the editor of the Western Appeal, made St. Paul a thriving black intellectual center, attracting leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and William Trotter; see David Taylor’s “Booker T. Washington and the Western Appeal,” unpublished manuscript in David Taylor Papers, Minnesota Historical Society. Cecil Newman, editor of the Minneapolis Spokesman, expressed regret that Minnesota Negroes of “national reputation” were forced to leave the state, in a radio program titled “Minorities and Community Living,” Dec. 12, 1945, for the University of Minnesota’s “The World We Want” series, transcripts in Department of Political Science Papers (hereafter cited as DPSP), box 9, University of Minnesota Archives. 20. Hall, interview by Taylor. “Oatmeal hill” reportedly referred to the lighter skin color of blacks in this solidly middle-class area, as opposed to “Cornmeal Valley,” the area west of Dale Street, where the southern migrants settled, the term referring to a southern food staple. For pictures of this insular black community, see Twin Cities Observer, 1940s; St. Paul Echo, Northwestern Bulletin, 1920s. See also descriptions of St. Paul black life in Thompson, American Daughter, 159–64. 21. On the problem of respectability and protest, see Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent; and Gaines, Uplifting the Race. 22. Thompson, American Daughter, 159–64.

Notes to Chapter 4 187 23. Onqué, “History of the Hallie Q. Brown Community House,” 35; Young, “History of the St. Paul Urban League,” 34. 24. Cited in Governor’s Interracial Commission, The Negro Worker, 15–16. “White” included all ethnic groups, including Mexican; American Indians were dealt with separately. 25. Onqué, “History of the Hallie Q. Brown Community House,” 35, cites a finding that 90 percent of black families in Ramsey County (St. Paul) were on relief, as compared to 33 percent of all families in Ramsey County. 26. Phyllis Wheatley House, Annual Report, 1933–34, Phyllis Wheatley Community Center Papers, box 1. 27. Phyllis Wheatley House, Annual Report, 1933–34. 28. “Why Send Our CCC Boys South?” Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 19, 1940; and Onqué, “History of the Hallie Q. Brown Community House,” 40. 29. See calendars, Phyllis Wheatley Community Center Papers, box 1; and Anthony B. Cassius, interview by Carl Ross, Dec. 1, 1981, 35, Minnesota Historical Society. 30. See The Union Advocate, throughout the 1930s; Central Labor Union radio program called “Racial Presentation” (1943) in Central Labor Union of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Central Labor Union Records, box 38, Minnesota Historical Society. See also pamphlets in box 1, Duluth CIO Industrial Council Records, Minnesota Historical Society. 31. On the creation of Local 665, see Cassius, interview by Ross; and Albert Allen, interview by Carl Ross, June 17, 1981, Minnesota Historical Society; and Johnson, Nellie Stone Johnson, 80–86. 32. Cassius, interview by Ross. Helstein would end up becoming president of the United Packinghouse workers, CIO, while Douglas Hall would become involved with the left wing of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, running for Congress in 1946. 33. See “Waiters Win $13,000 Wage Increase,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 1, 1940; and A. B. Cassius to Central Labor Union, Mar. 8, 1940, Central Labor Union of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Central Labor Union Records, box 11. Other sources differ. The Minnesota Negro Council’s News and Reviews indicates that in 1933, black waiters at the Curtis earned $18.00 a month, and “after several wage negotiations in 1938, the men now receive $62.50 per month with other favorable stipulations” (News and Reviews, May 22, 1938); still another source, the Minneapolis Spokesman, Aug. 8, 1940, reported Cassius as saying that Negro waiters were earning $21.00 per month, and after he won the lawsuit, they were making $86.00 per month. 34. Cassius, interview by Ross, 3; brackets in transcript. 35. Cassius, interview by Ross, 29, and throughout. 36. On his battle against city hall, see Cassius, interview by Ross; Minneapolis Spokesman, June–Aug., 1947; and the Minneapolis Tribune, July–Aug., 1947. The Cowles-owned Minneapolis papers were sympathetic to Cassius, because they had themselves waged a steady battle against the city council to change the liquor licensing rules, the strange result of prohibitionists and organized crime. The licensing procedures in Minneapolis prohibited most citizens from acquiring a liquor license, let alone a black man. 37. Cassius, interview by Ross, 13–14. 38. Albert Allen, interview by Carl Ross, June 17, 1981, 2. Unless otherwise indicated, the account in the text is from this interview.

188 Notes to Chapter 4 39. Nellie Stone Johnson, interview by Carl Ross, May 1981, 5, Minnesota Historical Society. 40. Allen, interview, 6–10. 41. The following account is from three interviews with Nellie Stone Johnson, by Carl Ross, Nov. 17, 1981, May 1981, and Mar. 1, 1988; and Perry, “The Good Fight.” See also Johnson, Nellie Stone Johnson, 71–93. 42. On the Farmer-Labor Association, see Holbo, “The Farmer-Labor Association”; and Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 10–11. 43. Johnson, Nellie Stone Johnson, 129. 44. Johnson, Nellie Stone Johnson, 130. No Humphrey biographers have mentioned this side-by-side campaigning. 45. “Spotlight Glares on City Candidates,” Minneapolis Tribune, May 13, 1945, 3L. 46. Nellie Stone Johnson, interview by Carl Ross et al., Mar. 1, 1988, 28, Minnesota Historical Society. 47. Johnson, Nellie Stone Johnson, 137–39. 48. Littlejohn apparently approached the Railroad Brotherhoods first, but they refused to accept blacks into their unions, so they unionized with the hotel and restaurant workers. See Cassius, interview by Ross, 17. 49. Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 15, 1940. 50. Johnson, interview by Ross et al., Mar. 1, 1988, 6–7. 51. Resume—National Federation of Settlements—Pittsburgh, June 1–5, 1938, box 1, Phyllis Wheatley Community Center Papers. 52. Minnesota Negro Council, News and Reviews, Industrial number v. 1, no. 4 (May 22, 1938), 1. 53. See Liepold, Cecil Newman. On Newman’s appeal to white readers, see Richardson, “Twin Cities Spokesman.” 54. On black intellectuals and activists in the 1930s, see Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era. 55. Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 15, 1940. 56. “47 Men and Women Meet at Dreamland Cafe to Organize Council of Negro Operations,” Minneapolis Spokesman, May 3, 1940; “NAACP Drive,” Minneapolis Spokesman, May 31, 1940; “Slogan of the Minneapolis Council of Negro Organizations: Every Minneapolis Negro in Some Organization in 1941. Join Up!” Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 14, 1941. 57. Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 2, 1940; Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 15, 1940; Minneapolis Spokesman, Aug. 22, 1947. See also “As I See It,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 15, 1946. Newman affirmed, “there is no reason for any Twin City Negro not to be in the NAACP,” Minneapolis Spokesman, May 3, 1940. 58. “Let’s Form a Club, Slogan of the Hour,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 15, 1940; Joseph Albright letter, Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 15, 1940; announcement of local 516 Dining Car Employees Union meeting, Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan., 19, 1940; announcement of radio show “Brotherhood Hour,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 19, 1940; and Herbert Howell, “All Negro Day,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 14, 1941. 59. Twin Cities Observer, Apr. 27, 1945, and elsewhere. 60. “We’re Not Doing So Bad,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 16, 1940. 61. “Minorities and Community Living,” Dec. 12, 1945, for the University of Minnesota’s “The World We Want” series, transcript in DPSP, box 9. 62. Minneapolis Spokesman, Sept. 24, 1948.

Notes to Chapter 5 189 63. Newman proudly pointed out in 1940 that the Crisis had reprinted articles from the Minneapolis Spokesman three times in the past ten months; Minneapolis Spokesman, July 19, 1940. The Minneapolis Spokesman continued to reprint articles from the black press but also began to include articles from the liberal white press as well. 64. Newman, “Experiment in Industrial Democracy.” 65. Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 15, 1940, Apr. 14, 1944, and Apr. 21, 1944; Minneapolis Spokesman, Apr. 18, 1941. 66. Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 8, 1946; “Randolph to Speak at Three Rallies,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Apr. 21, 1944; “FEPC Schedules Mass Meetings,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 18, 1946; and Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 19, 1940. 67. On the National Guard, see Spangler, The Negro in Minnesota, 122–23; and “Discrimination Must Stop in the Defense Industry,” Minneapolis Spokesman, May 30, 1941, and June 20, 1941; Minneapolis Spokesman, July 4, 1941; Minneapolis Spokesman, June 27, 1941; “Manager of Farmers Union Fires Girl Because of Negro Friends,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 10, 1941; Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 1, 1946. 68. Newman, “Experiment”; and Leipold, Cecil E. Newman, 94–100. 69. Newman, “Experiment,” 53.

5. An Independent Black Interest Group 1. On black Americans during World War II, see Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 560–604; Kryder, Divided Arsenal; Blum, V Was for Victory, 182–220; White, A Man Called White; Dalfiume, “The Forgotten Years of the Negro Revolution”; Garfinkel, When Negroes March; Sitkoff, “Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War”; and Reed, Seedtime for the Modern Civil Rights Movement. 2. Dalfiume, “The Forgotten Years,” 100. 3. These organizations included the NAACP, the Committee for Participation of Negroes in National Defense, the National Negro Congress, and local defense committees. See Dalfiume, “The Forgotten Years,” 98, citing the Pittsburgh Courier, Dec. 1940–Feb. 1941; White, A Man Called White, 186–94; Adams, “Fighting for Democracy in St. Louis,” Missouri Historical Review, 61–62. 4. Quote from Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 8. The organization of the march is recounted in Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 37–61; White, A Man Called White, 186–87; and Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 53–78. The goals of the march are in A. Philip Randolph, “March on Washington Movement Presents a Program for the Negro,” in Logan, ed., What the Negro Wants, 133–62. 5. On administrative contests, see Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 74–87; and “8802 Blues,” The Nation, Feb. 22, 1943, 248–50. In 1944 the FEPC was transferred to Congress, where southern Democrats and conservative Republicans filibustered requests for appropriations. See White, A Man Called White, 193–94. 6. Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 95–96; Minneapolis Spokesman, Apr. 28, 1944, Feb. 8, 1946. 7. National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Committee, Manual of Strategy. 8. Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 145.

190 Notes to Chapter 5 9. Randolph, “March on Washington,” cites four hundred thousand southern black soldiers (157); see also Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 289. On wartime migrations, see Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 88–132; Sugrue, The Origins of Urban Crisis, 17–55; and Lemann, The Promised Land. 10. See Kurian, ed., Datapedia of the United States, 1790–2000, 18–21. Minnesota’s black population increased modestly from 9,928 to 14,022. 11. See John Kirby, Black Americans in the Era of Roosevelt, 152–217; “The Negro Vote,” Opportunity, 1936, 302–4; Randolph, “March on Washington,” 133–62, especially, 147–49. Myrdal also placed great hope in the vote: “The Northern vote might become the instrument by which the [N]egroes can increasingly use the machinery of federal legislation and administration to tear down the walls of discrimination” (An American Dilemma, 440). 12. Moon, Balance of Power, 198. 13. Moon, Balance of Power, 198–99. 14. In 1944, representatives of the twenty-five largest mass black organizations issued a statement outlining Negro interests, which makes the point that Negro interests were not just about lynching and poll tax now, but rather closely aligned to those of organized labor. White, A Man Called White, 263–64. See also Hamilton and Hamilton, The Dual Agenda, 43–71. 15. White, A Man Called White, 23–173, in which White discusses his work with the NAACP in the 1930s. See Kelley, Hammer and Hoe, for grassroots civil rights movements in the South in the 1930s. Lynching remained an issue, as a lynching wave swept across the South in 1946 and 1947; discussed in White, A Man Called White, 322–28; reported in the Minneapolis Spokesman and the Minneapolis Tribune, 1945–47. 16. Sugrue, The Origins of Urban Crisis, 33–88; Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto. White saw housing as one of the most important frontiers of civil rights, and the NAACP began a campaign against restrictive covenants in 1945, but these were local fights. See White, A Man Called White, 304–5; and Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law, 81–98. 17. See, for example, “187 Families Must Leave Homes at Sumner Field,” Minneapolis Star, May 21, 1947, 20; “Mayor to Ask Council’s OK on City Housing Authority,” Minneapolis Star, May 22, 1947, 29; “Small Town Housing,” Minneapolis Star, June 16, 1947, 12; and “Persuasion Keynotes Drive on New Home Race Bias,” Minneapolis Star, Jan. 4, 1947. 18. Quoted by S. Vincent Owens in a radio discussion of the FEPC bill, “Should We Support Federal Legislation to Establish a Fair Employment Practices Commission?” University of Minnesota, General Extension Division, Bureau for Current Affairs, bulletin no. 129, p. 5, Department of Political Science Papers, box 9, University of Minnesota Archives. 19. On the struggle for a full employment law, see Bailey, Congress Makes a Law. 20. Bailey, Congress Makes a Law, 57. These words were rejected by conservatives and did not appear in the final bill. 21. Radio discussion of the FEPC bill, University of Minnesota, General Extension Division, Bureau for Current Affairs, bulletin no. 129, “Should We Support Federal Legislation to Establish a Fair Employment Practices Commission,” 3. 22. For chart of state FEPC laws, see Blood, Northern Breakthrough, 147. 23. Transcript of the United Labor Committee Program, Jan. 19, 1946, Genevieve Steefel Papers, box 13, Minnesota Historical Society; WTCN featured journalists

Notes to Chapter 5 191 Nell Dodson Russell, Minneapolis Spokesman; Janet Kroll, American Jewish World; and Brenda Ueland, Minneapolis Daily Times, in February to talk about the FEPC bill in Congress. See Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 1, 1946. 24. On the Communist rally, see “Nellie Stone to Introduce Speaker at Lenin Meeting,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 1, 1946. Five hundred attended, according to the Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 6, 1946. On the Randolph rally, see Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 8 and 15, 1946; Minneapolis Star, Feb. 8, 1946, Feb. 9, 1946, Feb. 11, 1946, Feb. 12, 1946; Feb. 14, 1946; Feb. 15, 1946. The FEPC rally coincided with National Brotherhood Week. See also Kesselman, Social Politics, 196. 25. The other major black newspaper was Milton G. Williams’s Republican Twin Cities Observer. The Governor’s Interracial Commission listed Newman’s papers as the only black papers in the state; see The Negro Worker in Minnesota, 52. In 1948, the Minneapolis Spokesman’s circulation was 3,570. As Newman pointed out, however, newspapers in the tightly knit black communities got passed around from family to family, or were read at settlement houses and bars. Circulation from N. W. Ayers & Son’s Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals, 1930–69 (Philadelphia: Ayers, 1969). 26. See Burckel, ed., Who’s Who in Colored America, 450. 27. On the promise of a strong federal government for black Americans, see Kirby, Black Americans, 13–47. 28. On the racial politics of “state’s rights,” see Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation. 29. “All People Benefit from Spending Programs,” Minneapolis Spokesman, July 26, 1940; “AKA Women Oppose Transfer of Job Control to States,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 1, 1946; “The Importance of Executive Orders,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Aug. 6, 1948. 30. “Health Insurance Needed,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Apr. 8, 1949. 31. On OPA, “Battle against Inflation,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 8, 1946; “National Elk Lodges . . . ,” Feb. 15, 1946, 1; and “Kudos for Chester Bowles,” Feb. 15, 1946, 6. On Taft-Hartley, Minneapolis Spokesman, Aug. 29, 1947, and Sept. 5, 1947. 32. Letter from Phillip Stranson, Minneapolis, Mar. 24, 1948, and Newman’s reply, “An Honest Conservative,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Apr. 2, 1948. 33. “An Honest Conservative,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Apr. 2, 1948. 34. Minneapolis Spokesman, July 30, 1948, and Oct. 31, 1947. 35. Nell Russell, “As I See It,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 15, 1946. 36. Minneapolis Spokesman, Sept. 26, 1947; this was an editorial opposing Henry Wallace, whom she thought blacks looked to as a kind of savior. 37. Minneapolis Spokesman, Sept. 24, 1948. 38. Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 15, 1946. 39. See, for example, Randolph, “March on Washington,” 145–48; and Moon, Balance of Power, 7–12. The NAACP and the Urban League constantly worried about their political independence. See, for instance, the reply of the Urban League’s Lester Granger to Humphrey’s request for assistance, Lester Granger to Hubert Humphrey, Mar. 25, 1948, Hubert H. Humphrey Papers, Mayor’s Office Files, box 16, Minnesota Historical Society. 40. Like Cecil Newman, Vann wanted to de-race black politics, writing for Opportunity in 1937 that “too much legislation requested for us as Negroes because we are Negroes may prove our undoing in later years”; quoted in Kirby, Black Americans, 139.

192 Notes to Chapter 5 41. “Negro Vote Independent,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Nov. 17, 1947. 42. “Urban League, NAACP, and Politics,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Sept. 17, 1948. 43. “Dissension in the NAACP,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Apr. 16, 1948. 44. On the Taft-Hartley Act, see Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order, 226–61. 45. Minneapolis Spokesman, June 4, 1948. 46. “Independent Vote Important,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Oct. 15, 1948; “Truman Makes Comeback,” Oct. 22, 1948. 47. See Russell column in Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 20, 1948, Mar. 5, 1948, and July 23, 1948; see Albert Allen letter attacking Russell’s “pandering,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 12, 1948. 48. Nellie Stone Johnson, interview by Carl Ross, Nov. 17, 1981, Minnesota Historical Society, 26. 49. See Johnson, interview by Carl Ross, Nov. 17, 1981; “Seminar by Nellie Stone Johnson, with Carl Ross, et al.,” Mar. 1, 1988. Perry, “The Good Fight.” See also Johnson, Nellie Stone Johnson. 50. Johnson, interview by Carl Ross, Nov. 17, 1981, 8. See also Perry, “The Good Fight.” 51. See Johnson, Nellie Stone Johnson, 104–8. 52. Quote from Anthony Cassius, interview by Carl Ross, 1981, Minnesota Historical Society, 37. 53. Twin Cities Observer, Mar. 5, 1948. 54. Minneapolis Spokesman, June 4 and 18, 1948. Stassen had a strong record in terms of antiracism education, but he never followed through with civil rights legislation, and Newman understood the difference. 55. Twin Cities Observer, June 10, 1948. There were several black resorts in northern Minnesota, run by black entrepreneurs. Resorts were segregated. A common explanation for the segregation was the large number of southerners who vacationed on Minnesota lakes. 56. “Tax editorial,” Twin Cities Observer, Feb. 6, 1948. See also, “The deep south isn’t the only section that makes a mockery of constitutional voting guarantees,” Twin Cities Observer, Feb. 6, 1948. Curiously, the Minneapolis Spokesman never mentioned this issue in any of its discussions of the black vote. 57. See, for instance, Twin Cities Observer, Oct. 31, 1947. This particular editorial worried that Taft-Hartley might interfere with an arrangement between the musicians union and the recording industry, which set aside a percentage of royalties for a fund for unemployed musicians. The Taft-Hartley Act rolled back organized labor rights as stated in the Wagner Act of 1935. The act passed in 1947 over labor protests and Truman’s veto. 58. Twin Cities Observer, Jan. 9, 1947. 59. Minneapolis Spokesman, July 2, 1948, 4, in an article about the Republican Convention. 60. Twin Cities Observer, Sept. 30, 1948. 61. On the shift of power in the Democratic party, see Key, Southern Politics; Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 29–60; Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. These analyses of the shift remain basically unchallenged, though historians since have filled in the details.

Notes to Chapter 6 193 62. Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 29–60. Lubell frames the idea of “class” politics, of voting one’s pocketbook, as part of the assimilation of an ethnic population trying to get into the middle class. 63. See Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 9, 1940, attacking John Nance Garner; and Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 15, 1946. 64. Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 15, 1946. For a detailed analysis of the congressional rules and structures that allowed southern Democrats to stymie New Deal legislation and still remain in the Democratic party, see Bensel, Sectionalism and American Political Development. 65. Moon printed a passage of the hearings on a petition for cloture on the FEPC (which would have disallowed a filibuster), in which Louisiana Senator John Overton gives a lengthy soliloquy on how swell the Republicans have been to the Negro, concluding, “We [Democrats] do not want the Negroes in the party. They do not belong in the Democratic party”; quoted in Moon, Balance of Power, 24.

6. Civil Rights in Local Politics 1. The states of New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts had fair employment laws by 1947. These were all places with substantial black populations. Chicago, Wisconsin, Indiana, Milwaukee, and Cleveland also had fair employment laws but with no enforcement powers. 2. Gladys Hart Peterson to Reuben Youngdahl, May 16, 1946, Hubert H. Humphrey Papers, Mayor’s Office Files (hereafter cited as MOF), box 16, Minnesota Historical Society. 3. See Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 119. 4. WTCN Campaign Speech by Bradshaw Mintener, May 10, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, Political Files (hereafter cited as PF), box 25. 5. Quoted in Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 124. Humphrey to John Cowles, Feb. 14, 1945, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 21. 6. Humphrey to Vincent Halloran, Mar. 3, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. On the controversial appointment of Ed Ryan as police chief, see Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man, 95–97; and Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 122–23. 7. See the Minneapolis Tribune and the Minneapolis Star, 1946–48. Both Cowlesowned, they reported extensively on labor strife, featuring a regular column called “On the Labor Front” and inviting editorials on such questions as “Are Strikes Necessary?” (Minneapolis Star, Feb. 13, 1946, 18). 8. Solberg, Hubert Humphrey, 105; Minneapolis Star, May 5, 1947, 1, 11; May 6, 1947, 1. 9. “Report by the Mayor: Articles Written by Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey . . . ,” Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 10. Talk by Mayor Humphrey on behalf of the candidacy of Robert Wishart [1947], Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 11. On communism in the Farmer-Labor party, see Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 12–33; and Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism, 257–65. 12. See Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 125–31.

194 Notes to Chapter 6 13. For a detailed description of events leading up to the 1946 convention and the convention itself, see Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 131–36. 14. Quoted in Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 129. 15. Eugenie Anderson, interview by Arthur Naftalin for the Hubert Humphrey Oral History Project, July 14, 1978, 33, Minnesota Historical Society. See also Kampelman, Entering New Worlds, 65–66; and Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 136. 16. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 139. Loeb letter in New Republic, May 13, 1946, 699. 17. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 139. 18. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 139. On the founding and history of Americans for Democratic Action, see Gillon, Politics and Vision; Hamby, Beyond the New Deal, 147–68. 19. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 140. 20. See, for example, Humphrey to David Smilow, Mar. 26, 1947, and Humphrey to Clarence Madsen, Mar. 26, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. On whether opposing communism was “red-baiting,” Humphrey wrote to Madsen, “If I have to choose between being called a red-baiter and a traitor, I’ll be a red-baiter.” 21. Humphrey to Clarence Madsen, Mar. 26, 1947. 22. The city council and independent administrative boards, appointed by the city council, determined taxation, laws, licensing, districting, and spending, while the mayor controlled only the police department. See Altshuler, A Report on Politics in Minneapolis. See also Dubious Alliance, 122–23. 23. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 123; see also Minneapolis Tribune, Feb. 18, 1946, 10; Feb. 23, 1946, 8. There are extensive files about the city charter in the papers of the Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota Archives. 24. The labor movement opposed the new city charter on the grounds that a labor-friendly mayor would not always be in office; see editorial forum about the city charter, Minneapolis Star, Feb. 23, 1946, 8. Humphrey used labor’s opposition to the plan as yet another instance showing his independence of the labor movement. 25. Shore, “One City’s Struggle against Intolerance.” 26. Humphrey to Gael Sullivan, Aug. 27, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. See also the Council on Human Relations’ fundraising letter, Oct. 1947, which also speaks of the council’s situation as temporary, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 27. See, for instance, the description of the council in Leipold, Cecil E. Newman, 80; and several letters from irate citizens objecting to taxpayers’ money being spent on the organization, including Edsall Beery to Humphrey, n.d., and Humphrey to Edsall Beery, Sept. 15, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 28. These presidents included George Jenson of the Nash-Kelvinator Refrigerator Company, Stuart Leck of the James Leck Company, and others. Humphrey also tried to appoint retailer Donald Dayton, who refused, citing conflict of interests as his stores were a focus of FEPC campaigns. Donald Dayton to Humphrey, June 4, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. See also Charles Horn to Humphrey, Dec, 30, 1946; Humphrey to Charles Horn, Jan. 2, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 29. These individuals are listed on the stationery of the Independent Voters of Minnesota (IVM). Humphrey’s campaign workers went through the stationery of the IVM, marking those people that needed to resign from the organization because of its communist-front status. They did not mark the names of civil rights folks. See

Notes to Chapter 6 195 memo, n.d. [1948], Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. On Humphrey not redbaiting civil rights activists, see Johnson, Nellie Stone Johnson, 104–8. 30. Humphrey memo to members of the Council on Human Relations, Feb. 19, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 31. Hall had been Anthony Cassius’s lawyer in his successful suit against the Curtis Hotel. See Anthony B. Cassius, interview by Carl Ross, Dec. 1, 1981, Minnesota Historical Society. See also Nellie Stone Johnson’s recollection of Hall in Johnson, Nellie Stone Johnson, 90–91. 32. “Doug Hall Problem,” Orville Freeman to Humphrey [Oct. 12, 1946], Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 33. “Doug Hall Problem.” See also Theodore Slen to Humphrey, Aug. 29, 1946, and E. J. Larsen to Theodore Slen, Mar. 27, 1946, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 34. Humphrey to Sam Davis, Sept. 25, 1946, Sam K. Davis Papers, 1919–80, 149A67B, Minnesota Historical Society. On Davis’s communism, see Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 43. 35. The left-wing argument that there were fundamental differences between grain executives and regular people was spelled out in “Statement Adopted by State Executive Board of the DFL Association—Feb. 12, 1948, An Open Letter to Mayor Humphrey,” Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26, as well as in the Minnesota Leader, the left wing’s newspaper. See, for instance, “Joe Ball Must Have Sincere Opposition,” Minnesota Leader, Nov. 1947. 36. See Harding, “Community Self-Surveys.” 37. F. Stuart Chapin to Humphrey, Oct. 12, 1946, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 38. “Minneapolis Community Self Survey (Scope and Coverage),” Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 39. “Why the Boom Is On for Humphrey,” Minnesota Outlook, Apr. 24, 1948, 5. Minnesota Outlook was Humphrey’s campaign paper, published by Freeman. 40. Shore, “One City’s Struggle against Intolerance.” 41. FEPC activists across the nation included the recognized leaders of respectable society, businessmen, churches, and so on in their struggle, with good results. See Kesselman, The Social Politics of FEPC, 128; Smith, Freedom to Work, 146–49. 42. Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 4, 1946; Blood, Northern Breakthrough, 99; “FEPC Ruling May Cover Business,” Minneapolis Star, Feb. 14, 1946, 18. See also “Steps in Securing Adoption of Minneapolis Fair Employment Practice Ordinance,” cited in Blood, Northern Breakthrough, 99. 43. Minutes of the Mayor’s Council on Human Relations, July–Sept., 1946, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 44. Minneapolis Star, Jan. 3, 1947, 19. Fourteen liberals and twelve conservatives sat on the nonpartisan city council. 45. “Minneapolis FEPC Ordinance,” reprinted in Blood, Northern Breakthrough, 147. 46. See Transcript of the United Labor Committee Program, Jan. 19, 1946, Steefel Papers, box 13. 47. “If education alone could change the inherent qualities of people we would not need a police force or law making bodies,” Kyle wrote. She was a columnist for the Twin Cities Observer, but her remarks were standard. See letters to editor in Minneapolis Star, Feb. 7, 1946, 10 (two letters for FEPC); see also Feb. 8, 1946, 14.

196 Notes to Chapter 6 48. Minutes of Meeting, Mayor’s Council on Human Relations, Sept. 4, 1946, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 49. See “Twin Cities Makes Progress in Solving Race Problem,” Minneapolis Star, June 10, 1947, editorial page; “Mayor Makes Plea for Minority Groups,” Minneapolis Star, June 19, 1947, 1; Hubert Humphrey to Charles Johnson at the Minneapolis Star, Dec. 11, 1947, in response to editorial in the paper that accused Humphrey of stooping to get the black vote. Minutes of Meeting, Human Relations Council, Sept. 4, 1946, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 50. “Twin Cities Make Progress in Solving Race Problems,” Minneapolis Star, June 10, 1947, editorial page. 51. “Crowd Supporting Demand for Mpls FEPC Throngs Council Hearing,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 15, 1946. 52. See ads in Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 18, 1946; “Communist Vets Met in All-Day Conference,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 18, 1946; “William Patterson to Speak at Lenin Memorial Meeting at CIO Hall,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 25, 1946; “Nellie Stone to Introduce Speaker at Lenin Meeting,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 1, 1946; “500 at Lenin Memorial Meeting,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 6, 1946. 53. See, for instance, “State Negro Vote a Factor,” Minneapolis Spokesman, May 3, 1940; “Publisher’s Corner,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Aug. 8, 1947; “Truman Makes a Comeback,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Oct. 22, 1948. 54. See, for instance, note about Mabeth Paige Hurd, “good friend and subscriber, is Republican . . .” Minneapolis Spokesman, Nov. 17, 1947; and Orville Freeman’s subscription request, June 18, 1948. 55. On opposition to the FEPC, see Christensen, “Fair Employment Practices Act,” Nov. 21, 1949. 56. “Early State and Municipal Fair-Employment-Practice Laws,” in Blood, Northern Breakthrough, 145. 57. “Cases Handled by Fair Employment Practice Committee to Date,” May 1, 1948, Human Relations files, Humphrey Papers, box 16. See also Blood, Northern Breakthrough. 58. See survey in Blood, Northern Breakthrough, 89. 59. Fair Employment Practice Commission, “Report on Operations,” June 1, 1947– May 15, 1950, Amos Deinard Files, Minneapolis Fair Employment Practices Commission Records. 60. Enoch Johnson, President Amalgamated Local 1139, to Amos Deinard, Minneapolis FEPC, July 18, 1949, Deinard Files 61. Minneapolis Spokesman, Nov. 25, 1949. 62. Minneapolis FEPC, Minutes of the Meeting of Apr. 18, 1949, Deinard Files. 63. “Resolution” from Local 1139; and Wilfred Leland to Enoch Johnson, July 27, 1949, Deinard Files. 64. See Moreno, From Direct Action to Affirmative Action. 65. Ruchames, Race, Jobs, and Politics. 66. See, for instance, Humphrey to Angus Clarke Jr., Jan. 12, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 67. Congregational Congress of Minnesota to “Friend,” June 5, 1947, on behalf of the Inter-Racial Relations Vacation Visits Program, Denzil Carty Papers, box 3, Minnesota Historical Society.

Notes to Chapter 7 197

7. Civil Rights in Party Politics 1. “Mayor Makes Plea for Minority Groups,” Minneapolis Star-Journal, June 19, 1947, 1–2. 2. Richard Bensel examines how Democrats used the committee system in Congress to avoid civil rights debates on the floor and maintain what he calls a “bi-polar Democratic majority.” See Bensel, Sectionalism in American Political Development, 175, 230–51. See also Martin, Civil Rights and the Crisis of Liberalism, 61; and Berman, The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration, 7–8. There is some indication Republicans supported the effort to get anti-poll tax and antilynching legislation out of committee and onto the Senate floor in order to exploit the Democrats’ Achilles heel. See “Anti-Poll Tax Bill Wins House Support,” Minneapolis Star-Journal, July 16, 1947, 4; “House Votes Poll Tax Ban,” Minneapolis Star-Journal, July 22, 1947, 2; “Unity Begins at Home,” Minneapolis Tribune, Jan. 19, 1946, 4. The Minneapolis Spokesman likewise took this position; see “Joseph Ball Forces Democrats to Take Stand on FEPC,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 4, 1946. 3. On Republican isolationists, see Griffith, “Old Progressives and the Cold War”; Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 227–44; and Moos and Kenworthy, “Dr. Shipstead Comes to Judgment,” Harper’s Magazine, July 1946, 22–27. 4. On civil rights and cold war competition, see Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights, 18–78. 5. See Hinderaker, “Harold Stassen and Developments in the Republican Party in Minnesota, 1937–43.” 6. See Mitau, Politics in Minnesota, 18–23; and Stassen, Where I Stand. 7. Williams, “Harold Stassen: Fake Liberal,” 757. See also Rodell, “Harold Stassen: The Biggest Tory of Them All,” 7; and the left-wing “Miners Are Determined That Stassen Slave Act Be Killed, Says Mauseth,” Minnesota Labor, Feb. 1, 1946. 8. Quoted in Abels, Out of the Jaws of Victory, 53. 9. Minneapolis Morning Tribune, May 9, 1944, editorial page. 10. Alice L. Sickels, “A Post War Project Proposing to Establish a Folk Arts Center . . . and An International Park . . . ,” [St. Paul: 1943]; “Governor’s Address at State Fair Grounds on Interracial Groups” [1944], in Minnesota, Governor (1943–1947: Thye), Records, 1944, Minnesota Historical Society. 11. See Esbjornson, A Christian in Politics, 182–87. 12. The main evidence of the campaign’s anti-Semitism is the infamous Are They Communists or Catspaws? written and published by Republican auditor Ray Chase. See also Gordon, Jews in Transition, 51–52. 13. On Stassen’s nationally focused politics and presidential strategy, see Hinderaker, “Harold Stassen”; and Abels, Out of the Jaws, 50–71. 14. “Vets Hear Story of Stassen-Stalin Meeting,” Minneapolis Star, May 9, 1947, 21; “Stassen Reports on Stalin Visit,” Minneapolis Star, June 25, 1947, 25. 15. “A United Nations Government,” in Peaslee, ed., Man Was Meant to Be Free, 43–56, reprinted from the Saturday Evening Post, May 22, 1943. 16. On expectations of U.S. economic leadership, see J. B. Condliffe, “Obstacles to International Trade,” National Planning Association Pamphlet no. 59 (Apr. 1947) (Washington, D.C.: National Economic and Planning Association), 12. See also McCormick, America’s Half-Century, 72–124; and Maier, “The Politics of Productivity.”

198 Notes to Chapter 7 17. On midwestern progressive Republicans, see Mulder, The Insurgent Progressives in the United States Senate and the New Deal, 1933–1939; and Griffith, “Old Progressives and the Cold War.” The other “no” vote on the UN charter was from another of the western Republican progressives, California Senator Hiram Johnson. 18. Rodell, “The Biggest Tory,” 7–9. See also M. W. Halloran, “Shipstead May Run on UNO Issue,” Minneapolis Star-Journal, Feb. 28, 1946, 1. 19. Quotes from Moos and Kenworthy, “Dr. Shipstead Comes to Judgment,” 25. 20. “Stassen Heads Drive for Racial Equality,” Minneapolis Tribune, Jan. 11, 1946, 13. 21. “Stassen to Launch Brotherhood Observance Here,” Minneapolis Star-Journal, Feb. 15, 1946, 17, with photo. 22. “FEPC Meeting to Hear Stassen,” Minneapolis Tribune, Jan. 12, 1946, 1. His speech on the FEPC can be found in Peaslee, ed., Man Was Meant to Be Free, 81–84. 23. “Cecil Newman Protests Stassen’s Invite to Emergency Meeting,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 18, 1946. 24. See, for instance, “Here’s the Key to Happiness in the South,” a list compiled by a northern girl who married a Louisianan and moved south; number one is “never mention the Negro problem,” followed by number two, “never speak of the Civil War or Eleanor Roosevelt,” Minneapolis Star-Journal, Jan. 1, 1947, 16; and “First Fourth,” a sarcastic snippet about how the town of Vicksburg celebrated its first Fourth of July since the Civil War in 1947, Minneapolis Tribune, July 18, 1947, 6. 25. Quote from “Lynchings at the Half-Way Mark,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 8, 1931. 26. Minneapolis Tribune, June 28, 1931, editorial about Scottsboro; Homer Smith letter to Minneapolis Tribune, July 5, 1931 (Smith, a black communist, wrote to defend the Communist party against the paper’s charge that it was exploiting the Scottsboro case); Minneapolis Tribune, “Lynching at the Half-way Mark,” July 8, 1931, 12; “Bilbo of Mississippi,” July 18, 1931, 20; “Posseman Subdues Negro Protesters,” July 19, 1931, 3. 27. “Civil Liberties Belong to All Americans,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 29, 1947, 4. 28. “Mayor, Race Council Order Investigation of Bar Bias Charge,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 15, 1947, 11; “Camps Deny Policy of Bias,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 26, 1947; “Persuasion Keynotes Drive on ‘New Home’ Race Bias,” Minneapolis Star-Journal, Jan. 4, 1947; “U.S. Housing Probe Set,” Minneapolis Star-Journal, July 23, 1947. 29. John Cowles and his brother Gardner Cowles later became financial players in Washington politics and financed some of Humphrey’s 1968 campaign. See Solberg, Hubert Humphrey, 326. 30. See, for instance, “Stassen and the GOP,” Minneapolis Star-Journal, Feb. 9, 1946, 8. 31. See, for instance, “Council Labels,” Minneapolis Star, May 29, 1947, editorial page; “Bossism Is Bossism Whatever the Label,” Minneapolis Star, May 9, 1947; “Partisanship at City Hall,” Minneapolis Star, May 5, 1947, 14; “Political Dictatorship and the Eighth Ward,” Minneapolis Star, May 6, 1947, 18; “50% of State Says Unions Too Powerful during War,” Minneapolis Tribune, Aug. 12, 1945, 1; “Here’s the Evidence of Labor Bossism,” Minneapolis Star, May 16, 1947, 6; “Steel and the Law,” Minneapolis Tribune, Jan. 14, 1946, 4, which compliments the CIO’s restraint but spells out the paper’s disagreement with it. 32. Rowan, Breaking Barriers, 77–83. In 1947 left-winger Sam Davis criticized Cowles, the owner of three papers, for having no Negro employees. See Sam K.

Notes to Chapter 7 199 Davis to Cecil Newman, Feb. 8, 1947, Sam Davis Papers, 149A67B, Minnesota Historical Society. Newman did not print the accusation in his paper. 33. “Southern Negroes’ Voting Luck Varies,” Minneapolis Tribune, May 3, 1944, 7. See also “Unity Begins at Home,” Minneapolis Tribune, Jan. 19, 1946, 4. 34. “Supremacy Issue to Face Democrats,” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, May 21, 1944, 7; “Solid South May Get New Deal from Administration,” Minneapolis Tribune, May 4, 1944, 4; “Elections Dim Dixie ‘Revolt,’” Minneapolis Tribune, May 4, 1944, 6. 35. “28 Lynching Defendants Freed; Trigger Man Hails ‘Justice,’” Minneapolis Star, May 22, 1947, 8; “Northern Meddling Charged in Lynch Trial,” Minneapolis Star, May 29, 1947, 3. 36. Myrdal, An American Dilemma, 813; White, A Man Called White, 89, 269; “The Bilbo Case,” Minneapolis Tribune, Jan. 4, 1947, 4. On Bilbo, see Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation, 238–53; and Dittmer, Local People, 19–40. 37. “Tangle of Politics May Give Bilbo His Senate Seat,” Minneapolis Star-Journal, Jan. 2, 1947, 14. 38. Minneapolis Star-Journal, Jan. 3, 1947, 1. 39. Minneapolis Star-Journal, Jan. 4, 1947, 1. 40. Quote from Hubert Humphrey, “What’s Wrong with the Democrats?” The Progressive, Apr. 1948, 8. The Progressive, originally founded by Robert La Follette Sr., and published in Madison, Wisconsin, was a regular mouthpiece for non–New York-based liberals. 41. Milkis, The President and the Parties, especially 52–74; and Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order, 128–34. See also Burner, The Politics of Provincialism. 42. See Shafer, Quiet Revolution, which examines how African Americans and women rewrote the party rules at the 1972 convention to break up the old boys network. This led to the disastrous candidacy of George McGovern, and Democrats since have been trying to figure out how to get back their old boys constituency. See also Edsall and Edsall, Chain Reaction. 43. Humphrey, “What’s Wrong with the Democrats?” 8. 44. Minnesota Council for Fair Employment Practice, “Minneapolis Fights Discrimination,” [1947], Hubert H. Humphrey Papers, Mayor’s Office Files (hereafter cited as MOF), box 16, Minnesota Historical Society. 45. Humphrey to Cecil Newman, Feb. 9, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 46. Humphrey to Frank Kingdon, Feb. 17, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, Political Files (hereafter cited as PF), box 25. See also Humphrey to Earl Bester, Feb. 18, 1948, box 25; and Humphrey to Wilfred Leland, Mar. 7, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16, in which he worried that they were “missing the boat on national publicity,” and ordered Leland to write some articles about the council’s work. 47. Kramer, “Young Man in a Hurry,” New Republic, June 16, 1947, 14–16; “Humphrey in Minnesota,” New Republic, Oct. 18, 1948, 8; Morison, “The Amazing Mr. Humphrey,” The Nation, Oct. 30, 1948, 489–91. 48. Humphrey to Chester Bowles, July 28, 1948; and Chester Bowles to Humphrey, July 22, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 49. “Editors in Minnesota—particularly labor editors—tell me they are not getting material from the Democratic National Committee. Will you put the following on the list?” This request was followed by a list of labor papers. Humphrey to Jack Redding, DNC publicity, Dec. 4, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 27.

200 Notes to Chapter 7 50. Gerald Reilly, “Stand on Senator Ball Held Democratic Test,” Sunday Star (Washington, D.C.), Sept. 5, 1948. 51. Humphrey to Gael Sullivan, Sept. 4, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 27. 52. Walter Quigley to Humphrey, 1947; Humphrey to Gael Sullivan, Oct. 4, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 27. The ADA’s budget that year was only $18,000. 53. Humphrey to Gael Sullivan, Jan. 7, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 27; Humphrey to Howard McGrath, May 18, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. 54. Humphrey to Howard McGrath, May 18, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 27. 55. Humphrey to Gael Sullivan, Apr. 19, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 27. 56. On the Harrington question, see Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 145; also Orville Freeman to Gael Sullivan, Dec. 30, 1947; and Orville Freeman to J. Howard McGrath, Sept. 13, 1948, Democratic-Farmer-Labor State Central Committee Papers (hereafter cited as DFLP), boxes 1 and 2, respectively, Minnesota Historical Society. 57. Humphrey to Gael Sullivan, Jan. 7, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 27. See also Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 194–95. 58. Humphrey, “What’s Wrong with the Democrats?” 59. Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 28, 1941. The Farmer-Labor party protested Bilbo’s presence in the state. 60. E. J. Larsen to John Moriarity, Feb. 14, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. Even after Truman won in November, Larsen continued to warn the DFL not to stick out its neck on the Negro problem. See E. J. Larsen to Barney Allen, Mar. 15, 1949, Byron (“Barney”) Gilchrist Allen Papers, box 2, Minnesota Historical Society. 61. Truman recalled that when Strom Thurmond was reminded that Truman was only carrying out Roosevelt’s platform, Thurmond replied, “I agree, but Truman really means it.” Abels, Out of the Jaws, 84; and Truman, Memoirs, 183. Roosevelt never proposed federal enforcement of civil rights. That was the distinction southerners made in evaluating 1948. 62. Charles Munn to Stephen Harrington, Aug. 26, 1946, DFLP, box 1. 63. Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order, 128–161; and Milkis, The President and the Parties, 52–74. 64. Humphrey to Lowell Scheel, May 28, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 65. Harold Hagen to Sig Wahlstrom, Jan. 28, 1944, Harold C. Hagen Papers, box 3, Minnesota Historical Society. See also Hagen to Andrew Trovaton, Feb. 18, 1944, Hagen Papers, box 3. 66. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1952, 30. 67. Farmers Union Herald (St. Paul), Sept. 3, 1948. 68. Farmers’ Independent (Bagley, Minn.), Feb. 7, 1948. 69. See letters from Clifford Bouvette, Ione Hunt, and other rural DFL county chairs in Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, boxes 25 and 26, and in DFLP, box 1. See also Roland Muller to Humphrey, Sept. 28, 1948; and Karl Rolvaag to Humphrey, Sept. 20, 1948, Humphrey Papers, Senate Campaign Files (hereafter cited as SCF), box 1. 70. See, for instance, “Facts for Farmers,” published by Minnesota Labor’s League for Political Education, and “A Liberal Program for Minnesota’s 1949 Legislature,” Minnesota Association of Cooperatives Papers, box 3, Minnesota Historical Society.

Notes to Chapter 7 201 71. Quotes from “Annual Activity Report of the United Labor Committee of Minnesota for Human Rights, Apr. 1946 to Mar. 31, 1947,” Central Labor Union of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Central Labor Union Records (hereafter cited as CLU Records), box 43, Minnesota Historical Society. 72. “Activity Report of the United Labor Committee For Human Rights,” [Nov. 12, 1947], CLU Records, box 43. 73. “He is smart enough to know that if he hammers on these topics he makes friends who believe that he is putting people ahead of politics. . . . Men who seem dead set against him have swung over because of his sincere talks on Youth, etc. etc. . . .” Vincent Hollaren to Humphrey, [Mar. 1, 1948], Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 74. See Conference Program, The Second Annual Northwestern Farmer and Workers Education Conference, Sept. 27–28, 1947, Minnesota Association of Cooperatives Papers, box 3. 75. “Dancehall Democracy,” Midland Cooperator (Minneapolis), Jan. 8, 1947, 2. The book was Margaret Halsey, Color Blind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946). 76. “Could Happen Here,” Midland Cooperator, Jan. 22, 1947, “Negro Wins, Loses and Wins Auto in Carolina Drama,” Midland Cooperator, July 23, 1947. 77. “Danger Signal for American Democracy,” Farmers Union Herald (St. Paul), Sept. 17, 1948. 78. There was no mention of this store, at least in the selection of papers I examined, which was not comprehensive. For information on the store, which was organized by a black social club called the Credjafawns, see the Twin Cities Observer, 1946–47, and “Successful Co-op in St. Paul,” Eyes Magazine, June 1946, 13–15. 79. Edward A. Day to George Phillips, Dec. 24, 1948, CLU Records, box 43. See also Day’s earlier letter to Phillips, similarly noting how the human rights program placed labor in “a deservedly more favorable light with many misinformed and confused but sincere people,” Day to Phillips, Oct. 7, 1947, CLU Records, box 43. 80. See, for instance, Karl Rolvaag to Humphrey, Sept. 20, 1948, Humphrey Papers, SCF, box 1. 81. Vincent Hollaren to Humphrey, [Mar. 1, 1948], Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. See also letters in DFLP, box 1, from county chairmen in rural areas, echoing idea that unions alienate farmers; and the County Demographic Surveys completed by DFLP, box 8. 82. Walter Lundberg to Humphrey, Jan. 28, 1948; and undated memo to Humphrey about labor’s radio programs, in Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 83. Vince Halloran to Humphrey, [Mar. 1, 1948], Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25; see also R. S. Cowie to Herbert [sic] Humphrey, Sept. 29, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. 84. Robert Jewell to Humphrey, Sept. 30, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. 85. Humphrey to Robert Jewell, Oct. 31, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. 86. See “Inter-Racial Vacation Visits,” sponsored by the Race Relations Committee, Minnesota Council of Churches, in Phyllis Wheatley Community Center Records, box 7, Minnesota Historical Society. 87. R. S. Cowie to Herbert [sic] Humphrey, Sept. 29, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. 88. R. S. Cowie to Herbert [sic] Humphrey, Sept. 29, 1947; and Robert Jewell to Humphrey, Sept. 30, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28.

202 Notes to Chapter 8

8. The 1948 Election and the Triumph of the Democratic Political Order 1. “Effects of a New Deal Victory,” US News and World Report, July 23, 1948, 19; see also Clark Clifford’s “Memorandum for the President,” Nov. 19, 1947, analyzed in Yarnell, Democrats and Progressives; and Andrew Biemiller, “Memo on Political Recommendations,” for Americans for Democratic Action, July 14, 1947, Hubert H. Humphrey Papers, box 28, Minnesota Historical Society. On the 1948 election, see also Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey; Sitkoff, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948”; Abels, Out of the Jaws of Victory; and Hartmann, “The 1948 Election and the Configuration of Postwar Liberalism.” 2. Clifford, “Memorandum,” quoted in Yarnell, Democrats and Progressives, 33. 3. On blacks and the New Deal, see Kirby, Black Americans in the Age of Roosevelt: Liberalism and Race; Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln; Moon, The Balance of Power; and Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 81–99. 4. Clifford, “Memorandum,” 12–13, quoted in Yarnell, Democrats and Progressives, 35. 5. Clifford “Memorandum,” quoted in Sitkoff, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948,” 597. 6. On Wallace’s disagreement with Truman, see Markowitz, The Rise and Fall of the People’s Century, 161–99; and Hamby, Beyond the New Deal, 87–119. 7. Markowitz, The Rise and Fall, 51–52. For Wallace’s vision of an international New Deal, see his “Century of the Common Man” speech, given May 8, 1942, reprinted in Vital Speeches, June 1, 1942, 482–85. 8. On the origins of the cold war, see Paterson, On Every Front; and LaFeber, America, Russia and the Cold War, 1945–1990. On American liberals response to Truman’s foreign policy, see Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age; and Hamby, Beyond the New Deal, 87–119. 9. Markowitz, The Rise and Fall, 232. Humphrey and his cohorts in Americans for Democratic Action spoke of the Marshall Plan as a kind of international goodwill program; see “Statement of the ADA on the Marshall Plan,” July 16, 1947, Humphrey Papers, Mayor’s Office Files (hereafter cited as MOF), Political Files (hereafter cited as PF), box 28. 10. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal, 159–61, and Sullivan, Days of Hope, 234–36. 11. Sullivan, Days of Hope, 244–47. 12. Markowitz, The Rise and Fall, 266–71; and Abels, Out of the Jaws of Victory, 30–31. 13. Truman, Clifford, and the DNC discounted Wallace as a threat; they maintained that the real threat was from the Republicans; see Yarnell, Democrats and Progressives, 28–45; Abels, Out of the Jaws of Victory, 30–31. Markowitz also sees Wallace as not much of a threat because of the internal contradictions of his political vision; see Markowitz, The Rise and Fall, 266–67. In his memoirs, Truman treats Wallace as a threat to emphasize his beleaguered, “lonely” candidacy; Truman, Memoirs, vol. 2, 184. 14. Sitkoff, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948,” 606; and Gillon, Politics and Vision. 15. The “northern strategy,” as opposed to the Republicans’ successful “southern strategy” of the 1970s, where Republicans Nixon and Reagan appealed to white

Notes to Chapter 8 203 southerners’ resentment at the Democratic party’s embrace of civil rights. See Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority. 16. Congressional Record, Feb. 1948, quoted in Sitkoff, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948,” 601. 17. Quoted in Abels, Out of the Jaws of Victory, 10. 18. Sitkoff, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948,” 602; Abels, Out of the Jaws of Victory, 10–12. 19. Abels, Out of the Jaws of Victory, 13. 20. Sitkoff, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948,” 607. These efforts are recounted most recently in Thurber, The Politics of Equality, 54–64. 21. Humphrey to New York Mayor William O’Dwyer, Apr. 29, 1948; see also another run of letters to the same effect, dated June 10, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. 22. James Loeb to Humphrey, Apr. 14, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. 23. Loeb to Humphrey, Apr. 14, 1948. 24. On the DNC’s reluctance to endorse civil rights, see Redding, Inside the Democratic Party, 140–41. 25. On the Democrats’ negotiations over this issue, see Berman, The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration, 107–11; Thurber, The Politics of Equality, 59–61; and Sitkoff, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948,” 610–12. 26. Sitkoff, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948,” 611–12; Solberg, Hubert Humphrey, 11–17 (Solberg begins Humphrey’s biography with the 1948 convention). 27. Fuller, “The Funeral Is Called Off”; Berman, The Politics of Civil Rights, 108– 14; Sitkoff, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948,” 611. The Moody resolution was defeated 925 to 309; for the roll calls on the planks, see Runyon, Verdini, and Runyon, comps. and eds., Sourcebook of American Presidential Campaign and Election Statistics, 1948–1968, 31–33. 28. Bendiner, “The Rout of the Bourbons,” The Nation. Among those who walked out was Eugene “Bull” Connor. 29. Bendiner, “The Rout of the Bourbons,” 91; see also Fuller, “The Funeral Is Called Off.” 30. Ione Hunt to Humphrey, Aug. 9, 1948, Democratic-Farmer-Labor State Central Committee Papers (hereafter cited as DFLP), box 2, Minnesota Historical Society. 31. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 164. 32. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 164. See also “Will the D-F-L Party of Minnesota Be a Clean, Honest, Decent Progressive Party?” written by Arthur Naftalin for the 1948 precinct caucuses, copy in Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 33. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 155–56. 34. See “Statement Adopted by the State Executive Board of the DFL Association,” Feb. 12, 1948; and “Resolution Opposing Hubert Humphrey,” [1948], Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 35. Naftalin, “A History of the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota”; Kampelman, “The Communists and the Congress of Industrial Organizations”; Robert Morlan, another ADA organizer, was writing his dissertation on the Nonpartisan League, which had also used some of the same methods, and in fact may have been the model followed by the communists. 36. “Plans for Political Organization,” undated [1947]; and “Minutes State Board Meeting,” Oct. 19, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28.

204 Notes to Chapter 8 37. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 138–39. 38. ADA National Political Committee, Memorandum, Jan 3, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. See also Gerald Heaney to Orville Freeman, Apr. 27, 1948, suggesting small meeting, with no labor, no DFL, just ADA to discuss recent problems, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 39. “She has lists of old party workers. . . . She knows those who are sympathetic to the ADA program,” Bill Leland to Humphrey, Feb. 10, 1948; and “I am enclosing a list of Minnesota labor people suggested by three of our ADA members to be invited to the July 30 luncheon,” Doris Tullar to Humphrey, July 17, 1947. These and many other letters of recommendations and lists of possible recruits are in Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, boxes 25 and 28. 40. See, for instance, Eugenie Anderson to Arthur Naftalin, [no date]; Naftalin to Anderson, Sept. 25, 1946; and George Demetriou to Humphrey, Apr. 28, 1948; Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. 41. “Attached is a letter from the IVM with some names marked by me. These people should write public letters resigning,” George Demetriou to Humphrey, Apr. 20, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 42. Memo to Doris Tullar, ADA, Reverend John Simmons; and Humphrey from Orville Freeman, [no date, early 1948]; Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 43. See Gillon, The Democrats Dilemma, 17–31, 32–36. Naftalin developed a course at the university called “Field Work in American Politics” in 1947 in which students got credit for participating in party activities or political campaigns, and writing a report about it. Course description and syllabus Department of Political Science Papers, box 9, University of Minnesota Archives. 44. See, for instance, Florence Frederickson’s description of their caucus, Frederickson to Humphrey, Apr. 4, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 45. ADA National Political Committee, Memorandum, Jan. 3, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. 46. See Orville Freeman to Gerald Heaney, Aug. 29, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. James Shields would run against Humphrey in the DFL Senate primary. 47. Gerald Heaney to Humphrey, Mar. 16, 1948; Humphrey to Heaney, Mar. 23, 1948 (Heaney was the ADA organizer in Duluth); Humphrey to John Blatnik, June 21, 1948; and Blatnik to Humphrey, July 1, 1948; Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, boxes 25 and 26. 48. Gerald Heaney to Humphrey, July 9, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 49. Humphrey to Blatnik, June 21, 1948; and Humphrey to Gerald Heaney, June 22, 1948; Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 50. See plans for taking over the American Veterans Committee, [Bob Gannon to Orville Freeman], Apr. 14, 1947, Orville L. Freeman Papers, box 1, Minnesota Historical Society; and announcement for taking over the Young DFL Association, 1947, DFLP, box 1, and reprinted in Shields, Mr. Progressive. 51. “Political Plans of the ADA,” [undated, 1947], Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. 52. ADA Officers Report, [1948], Minnesota chapters, DFLP, box 1. 53. See, for instance, Morris Greenberg to Humphrey, Dec. 11, 1947; Clara Watson to Humphrey, May 16, 1948; and Eugenie Anderson to Humphrey, Aug. 28, 1948;

Notes to Chapter 8 205 Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, boxes 25, 26, and 28; Gerald Heaney to Humphrey, Jan. 3, 1948, indicating dissatisfaction with ADA among rank and file, DFLP, box 8. 54. UE (Local 1139) Call, Jan. 1948, 2. 55. Bob to Bill-Hubert, May 24, 1948; Matt Pelkonen to Humphrey, Dec. 14, 1947; also Martin McGowan to Humphrey, Dec. 22, 1947; Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 56. Incident recorded in an untitled transcript of an exchange between leftwinger Walter Frank and Humphrey’s secretary Bill [Simms], July 9, [1947], Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. See also Burt Bowler to Humphrey, Apr. 26, 1948, Humphrey Papers, box 26. 57. Humphrey to Burt Bowler, May 11, 1948; Democrat Bowler had written to Humphrey about Naftalin’s rudeness to him; Bowler to Humphrey, Apr. 26, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 58. Clara Watson to Humphrey, May 16, 1948; Humphrey to Watson, May 18, 1948; and Humphrey to Wm. Felton, May 18, 1948; Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 59. Humphrey to Watson, May 18, 1948. 60. See, for example, Humphrey to David Smilow, Mar. 26, 1947; and Humphrey to Clarence O. Madsen, Mar. 26, 1947; Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 61. Humphrey to Feike Feikema, May 11, 1948; and Humphrey to Matt Pelonen, Dec. 16, 1947; Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26; Humphrey to Les Hurt, Sept. 9, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28; Humphrey to Paul Harris, Sept. 15, 1948, Humphrey Papers, Senate Campaign Files (hereafter cited as SCF), box 1. 62. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 168–72. 63. See Humphrey to Barney Allen, Jan. 15, 1948; and Freeman to Harold Barker, Jan. 2, 1948; Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 64. See Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 173, 183, for description. 65. Orville Freeman to All County Chairman, Apr. 19, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 66. Freeman to All County Chairman, Apr. 19, 1948. 67. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 184. Some of these lists are in DFLP, box 1. 68. Orville Freeman to Florence Frederickson, Apr. 1, 1948, and Apr. 21, 1948, DFLP, box 1. 69. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 179–93. 70. “How Left Is the DFL Association?” Minnesota Leader, published by the DFL Association, Nov. 1947, 8. See other issues for years 1947–48. 71. James Youngdale to the Minneapolis Star, May 7, 1948, unpublished letter in Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 72. Gerald Heaney to Humphrey, Feb. 23, 1948; Humphrey to Scheiner, Feb. 27, 1948; and Scheiner to Polinsky et al., Feb. 27, 1948; Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 73. See “Anti-Semitism Not an Issue,” Samuel Scheiner’s letter to the editor, Minneapolis Star-Journal, June 6, 1947, 18. 74. Textile Workers Union of America, Precinct Caucus flyer, and others, box 3, DFLP. On the unions’ position and support of the Humphrey faction, see Haynes, Dubious Alliance, especially, 206–9. 75. The left wing in Hennepin County sought an injunction preventing the seating of “right-wing” delegates at the county conventions. The district court judged that the “complaint is a political matter in which the court should not intervene but

206 Notes to Chapter 8 which should be decided by the political procedures provided therefore by the appropriate political party organizations”; court statement, May 11, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 203–4. 76. T. J. Doyle to “Levi,” May 15, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 77. Gerald Heaney to Humphrey, May 17, 1948, DFLP, box 1. According to Heaney, the left wing had 203 attendees, compared with the ADA’s 303, although apparently the newspaper suggested the two conventions were the same size. 78. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 210. 79. Nellie Stone Johnson, interview by Carl Ross, Nov. 17, 1981; and Johnson, Nellie Stone Johnson, 137–43. 80. These figures and the following descriptions are from the Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 30; Feb. 6, 13, 20, 27; Mar. 19, 1948. 81. Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 19, 1948. 82. Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 30, 1948. 83. Minneapolis Spokesman, Aug. 13, 1948; Aug. 20, 1948; Sept. 10, 1948. 84. “Humphrey and Youngdahl,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Sept. 10, 1948. 85. Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 6, 1948; “The Wallace Phenomenon,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 3, 1948. 86. Minneapolis Spokesman, May 7, 1948; Feb. 27, 1948; see also Sept. 10, 1948. 87. Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 27, 1948. 88. “The Plight of the Liberals,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 12, 1948. 89. Minneapolis Spokesman, Sept. 17, 1948. 90. “The Way I See It,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Dec. 19, 1947; Carl T. Rowan, “Wallace Clashes with Columnist on Race Issue,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 5, 1948; “The Way I See It,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 5, 1948. 91. Albert Allen to Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 12, 1948. 92. “Will the Third Party Defeat Itself?” Minneapolis Spokesman, May 21, 1948; and especially, “Negro Congressman from California?” Minneapolis Spokesman, June 4, 1948. 93. Twin Cities Observer, Mar. 5, 1948; the Observer stressed the chaos in the Democratic party throughout the election year. See Sept. 30 cartoon of Humphrey being forced to support Truman. 94. Minneapolis Spokesman, Jan. 30, 1948; Oct. 22, 1948. 95. “Truman Makes Comeback,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Oct. 22, 1948. 96. Rowan, Breaking Barriers, 83. 97. Minneapolis Spokesman, Oct. 22, 1948. 98. Minneapolis Spokesman, Apr. 16, 1948. 99. Humphrey to James Forrestal, Apr. 26, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 100. Humphrey to Luther Youngdahl, June 24, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 101. See clippings and subscription lists in Civil Rights files, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 102. Humphrey to Cecil Newman, Sept. 21, 1948, and Humphrey to Albert Black, Nov. 8, 1948, Humphrey Papers, SCF, box 2. 103. Minneapolis Spokesman, Feb. 6, 1948. 104. Humphrey to Cecil Newman, Feb. 9 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, box 16. 105. Humphrey to Lester Granger, Mar. 23, 1948, and Granger to Humphrey, Mar. 25, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 27.

Notes to Chapter 8 207 106. George Demetriou to Cecil Newman, Apr. 1, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 27. 107. Humphrey to Nell Dodson Russell, May 28, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 108. Minneapolis Spokesman, Mar. 12, 1948; July 2, 1948. 109. Minneapolis Spokesman, Oct. 22, 1948, for announcement of Humphrey at Hallie Q. Brown. This was just a week before Truman went to Harlem on Oct. 29; see Sitkoff, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948,” 613. 110. “2,000 Cheer for Mayor,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 18, 1948. 111. Abels, Out of the Jaws of Victory, 99, sees it as given and obvious to all that Truman opposed the strong plank, in explaining why the South bolted if it “knew” Truman opposed the plank. 112. “Democrats ‘Rights’ Plan Called Failure,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 18, 1948. This was right next to the story of Humphrey’s exuberant homecoming, a placement consistent with the Republican paper’s emphasis on Democratic skullduggery. 113. Percy Villa to Humphrey, July 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. Letters about speech in Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, boxes 25 and 28. 114. Myrtle Carden to Humphrey, [July 19, 1948]; William Seabron to Humphrey, July 1948; Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 115. Minneapolis Spokesman, July 16, 1948. 116. “Send Humphrey to Washington,” Minneapolis Spokesman, Oct. 29, 1948. 117. Minneapolis Spokesman, Aug. 13, 1948. 118. Humphrey to Chester Bowles, July 22, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 119. Curtiss Olson to Barney Allen, Dec. 20, 1948, Byron “Barney” Gilchrist Allen Papers, box 1, Minnesota Historical Society. 120. Orville Freeman to Humphrey, Jan. 24, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28; and “Let’s Not Run Has-beens,” Orv to Bill, n.d. [1948], Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 121. E. J. Larsen to John Moriarity, Feb. 14, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 25. 122. Information on the Midwest Conference is in DFLP, box 1. 123. See Plotke, especially, 109–12. 124. Plotke, especially, 109–12. See also Humphrey to Mr. Wendell Berge, Mar. 8, 1948: “Even out here in Minnesota we get the sense that this is one of many solemn hours in the history of mankind,” with reference to the ADA, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. 125. On the Truman debacle, see Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 196–201; and Hamby, Beyond the New Deal, 209–39. On Minnesota ADA’s conflicting feelings, see Darrell Smith to Gerald Heaney, Jan. 6, 1948; and Hubert Humphrey to Leon Henderson, Mar. 28, 1948; Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28; Humphrey to Chester Bowles, July 28, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 126. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 196–201; Orville Freeman to Byron Allen et al., Dec. 13, 1948, Allen Papers, box 1. 127. Orville Freeman to Senator McGrath, [n.d., draft, 1948], DFLP, box 2; Humphrey to Gael Sullivan, Apr. 19, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 27. 128. E. J. Larsen to Harold Barker, Apr. 19, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26.

208 Notes to Chapter 8 129. Humphrey to Chester Bowles, July 28, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 130. Eugenie Anderson, interview by Larry Hackman, Mar. 11, 1973, for the JFK Library, at Minnesota Historical Society. 131. Eugenie Anderson, interview by Arthur Naftalin, July 14, 1978, Minnesota Historical Society. 132. The Cowles press endorsed Ball. Humphrey to James Loeb Jr., Apr. 27, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. 133. DFL Platform, 1948, DFLP, box 1. 134. “Orv tells me that Leonard and Earl are looking for a new car. I will see if I can’t give you a lift on this,” Humphrey to Larson, Loevinger, and Lindquest, Apr. 13, 1948, Orville Freeman’s employers, who were concerned about the time Freeman was putting into Humphrey’s campaign, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 135. Humphrey to Robert Moore, July 9, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 27. See also Humphrey to Gael Sullivan, Oct. 13, 1947, box 27, about a security clearance for Kirkpatrick, who was seeking a job in the State Department. 136. Humphrey to Hugo Ernst, May 18, 1948; and Howard Williams to Humphrey, June 8, 1948; Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 137. Humphrey to Gael Sullivan, Sept. 11, 1947, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. Humphrey presents Smith to Sullivan as an able organizer, not as CIO-PAC. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 156, identifies Smith as a CIO-PAC veteran secretly paid by the CIO. 138. Humphrey requested that Robley Cramer, editor of the Minneapolis Labor Review, be told that the DNC, “at my recommendation,” got his pal the OPA job. Humphrey to Richard Nacy, June 10, 1946, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 27. 139. Dick Silvola to Orville Freeman, June 18, 1948, DFLP, box 1; Humphrey to Gerald Heaney, June 22, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 140. Arthur Naftalin to Humphrey, Aug. 9, 1948, Humphrey Papers, SCF, box 2. 141. Kathryn Roth to Humphrey, May 9, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 26. 142. Speech, Hubert Humphrey, undated [1948], Humphrey Papers, SCF, box 1. 143. [Unknown] to Humphrey, Oct. 27, 1948, and others, Humphrey Papers, SCF, box 1. 144. Byron Allen to Robert Handschin (Farmers Grain Terminal Association), Aug. 18, 1948, DFLP, box 8. 145. U.S. News and World Report, Nov. 4, 1948. 146. Doris Tullar to Humphrey, July 17, 1947, “I am enclosing a list of Minnesota labor people suggested by three of our ADA members to be invited to the July 30 luncheon you discussed with Eugenie the other evening.” Curtiss Olson to Doris Tullar, ADA secretary, Sept. 22, 1947, recommending Emil Morberg of Oslo, Minnesota, for ADA membership; Humphrey to Curtiss Olson, Oct. 15, 1947. Olson was their “insider” representative for the rural northwestern ninth district; Jack Jorgensen to Humphrey, Feb. 4, 1948, recommending Bert Milaca; Gerald Heaney to Humphrey, Dec. 6, 1947, “I am enclosing a list of names of persons who helped make our meeting in Duluth [ADA] . . . a success.” These and others are in Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 28. 147. This was Clark Clifford’s advice to Truman for the 1948 campaign, described in Barton Bernstein, “The Ambiguous Legacy: The Truman Administration and

Notes to Epilogue 209 Civil Rights,” in Bernstein, ed., Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration, 283. 148. For a detailed account of this, see Haynes, “Farm Coops and the Election of Hubert Humphrey to the Senate.” 149. See Keillor, Cooperative Commonwealth; and Saloutos and Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Midwest, 1900–1939, 56–86, 286–320. 150. Frank Paskewitz to Frank Shilston, July 10, 1948, Minnesota Association of Cooperatives Records, box 6, Minnesota Historical Society; see also M. W. Thatcher to Humphrey, June 16, 1948, Humphrey Papers, MOF, PF, box 27. 151. Harry Peterson to R. S. Gilfillian, editor, Farmers Union Herald (St. Paul), Aug. 6, 1948; see also Hjalmar Petersen to Harry Petersen, Oct. 8, 1948, assuring Petersen that he did not mention Petersen’s name or association, Minnesota Association of Cooperatives Records, box 5. 152. “The Policy of Politics,” Midland Cooperator (Minneapolis), Aug. 25, 1948. 153. “Cooperators as Individuals Urged to Take Part in Politics,” Midland Cooperator, Sept. 29, 1948; “Those Political Ads,” and “Some for Ball; Some for Humphrey,” Midland Cooperator, Oct. 27, 1948. 154. Quoted in Saloutos and Hicks, Agricultural Discontent, 231, from the Farmers Union Herald (St. Paul), Sept. 1929. See also Shover, Cornbelt Rebellion (1965). 155. On the role of the farm vote in Truman’s election, see Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 158–178; Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey, 215–20; and Republican National Committee, “The 1948 Election, A Statistical Analysis,” May 1949, 9, 19, Papers of the Republican Party [microform], series A, reel 1, pt. 2. 156. Memo, “Meeting Political Science Association on Party Responsibility Held on Apr. 6, 1949,” Max Kampelman Papers, box 9, Minnesota Historical Society. 157. Max Kampelman to E. E. Schattschneider, May 20, 1949, Kampelman Papers, box 9. 158. Humphrey, “The Senate on Trial,” 650–51. 159. See Lee Loevinger to Barney Allen, Mar. 12, 1949, Freeman Papers, box 1. See also “Freeman Cites Achievements in Civil Rights Field,” Press Release, Nov. 1, 1956, Freeman Papers, box 3.

Epilogue 1. Thurber, The Politics of Equality, 67–87. 2. Quoted in Thurber, The Politics of Equality, 158. On the MFDP at the 1964 convention, see also Dittmer, Local People, 272–302. 3. Gitlin, The Sixties, 133–35. 4. See Edsall and Edsall, Chain Reaction, 4–5. On the development of “rightsbased liberalism” in the late twentieth century, see also Brinkley, The End of Reform, 10. See also Brown, States of Injury, which offers a cogent critique of the limitations of rights-based reform from a radical feminist perspective. 5. Edsall and Edsall, Chain Reaction, 3–31. The idea that civil rights ended Democratic hegemony has become standard. See also Dionne, Why Americans Hate Politics; MacInnes, Wrong for All the Right Reasons; and Brown, Minority Party. 6. See, especially, Reed and Bond, “Equality: Why We Can’t Wait.” 7. See Sugrue, “Crabgrass-Roots Politics”; Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; and Gerstle, “Race and the Myth of Liberal Consensus.”

210 Notes to Epilogue 8. Johnson, Nellie Stone Johnson, 105. 9. Memo to Hubert Humphrey, June 16, 1953, Orville L. Freeman Papers, box 2, Minnesota Historical Society. 10. St. Paul Urban League, “The 1968 Labor Day Weekend in St. Paul,” 36; and Mayor’s Commission on Human Relations, “Special Report,” 2. 11. See Minnesota Human Rights Department, “Report of the Legislative Interim Commission on Housing Discrimination and Segregation Practices” (n.d. [1957]), Minnesota Human Rights Department Records, Minnesota Historical Society; and F. James Davis, “Freeway Exodus,” a Research Report, Aug. 1, 1962, at Minnesota Historical Society. By 1960, the African American population in Minneapolis had risen to 11,782, and in St. Paul to 8,240. 12. St. Paul Urban League, “The 1968 Labor Day Weekend,” 37. 13. St. Paul Urban League, “The 1968 Labor Day Weekend,” 38. 14. Wilson, When Work Disappears. 15. “Blueprint for Action in Human Relations,” Outline of a Special Message by Mayor Arthur Naftalin, presented to the Minneapolis City Council, Aug. 9, 1963, Minneapolis Civil Rights Department Records, Minnesota Historical Society. 16. “A Report by the Minneapolis City Council’s Commission on Human Development to the City Council” [1966], ii, Minneapolis Civil Rights Department Records, Minnesota Historical Society. 17. “Special Report of the Mayor’s Commission on Human Relations,” Aug. 1967, and “A Report by the Minneapolis City Council’s Commission on Human Development to the City Council” [1966], in Minneapolis Civil Rights Department Records. 18. “A Report by the Minneapolis City Council’s Commission on Human Development to the City Council” [1966], 38.

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Index

African Americans: Democratic party and, 91–92, 130; discrimination and, 61, 81–82; divisions among, 88–91; Republican party and, 89–91; votes of, 80–81, 86–88; World War II and, 79–82 African Americans (Minnesota), 40–41, 61–92, 166–69; concern about, 49–50, 52–53; discrimination against, 61–62; divisions among, 74–76; Duluth lynching, 62; in Festival of Nations, 48; Interstate 94 and, 166–68; in labor movement, 66–74; population, 61; and Truman, 150; and Henry Wallace, 87–88, 143–50 Agricultural Adjustment Agency (AAA), 10 Allen, Albert, 69–70, 125, 145 Allen, Byron (Barney) G., 19 Alsup, Frank, 72 American Farm Bureau Federation, 10 American Political Science Association: Committee on Parties (1946–50), 31; “Toward a More Responsible TwoParty System” (1950), 31, 157 Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), 118, 119, 123; anger against, 138–39; civil rights and, 133–34; Democratic party and, 150–53; founding of, 98; in Humphrey’s

Senate campaign (1948), 135–43; Henry Wallace and, 151–52 Anderson, Eugenie, 97, 98, 136, 148, 153 Anderson, William, 20, 26 Anti-Catholicism, 3, 46, 152, 154 Anticommunism, 9, 12, 18 Anticommunism, liberal, xx, xxiii, 98, 101–2; in 1948 election, 135–36, 139 Antiracism, xxi–xxii, xxiii, xxv, 41–46; conceptions of race and, xxi–xxii, 49–53; in rural areas, 124–28 Anti-Semitism, 3, 12, 46, 51, 141 Ball, Joseph, 90, 135 Benedict, Ruth: Race: Science and Politics (1940), 42, 43–44, 45 Benson, Elmer A., xvii, 96, 97, 131, 139; anti-Semitism and, 141; communists and, 11–12; as governor, 11–12; merger and, 16–17; in 1938 election, 12–13; Progressive party and, xix–xxx, 139– 40, 142; World War II and, 13–14 Bentley, Arthur, 23 Bilbo, Theodore, 117–18 Blatnik, John, 138 Bosch, John, 35 Boyd, Frank, 72, 77, 101 Cassius, Anthony Brutus, 67–69 CIO (Minnesota), 11, 16, 55 223

224 Index Civil Rights Act (1964), 161 Class-based politics: definitions of, xvii–xviii; demise of, xxi, 18, 155 Clifford, Clark, 129–30, 132 Communist party, 9, 11–12, 16 Cooperatives, 155–57 Cowles, John, 94, 116–17 Davis, Sam K., 102 Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, xvi, xvii, 133–43; Farmer-Labor principles of, 34, 155; farmers and, 127–28; formation of, 17; left wing and, 97– 98; party labels and, 34–35; in rural areas, 124–25; schism in, xix, 101–2, 140–42 Democratic National Committee (DNC), 120–22 Democratic party (Minnesota), 121–23, 134, 150–53; merger with FarmerLabor party, 14–17 Democratic party (national), xvi, xx, 118–23; civil rights and, 111–12, 133–34; divisions in, 111, 119–20, 123, 129–31; 1948 election, 129–34; perceptions of, xxiv, 116–18; redefinition of, xxiii; the South and, 119–120 Dewey, Thomas, 82 “Dixiecrats,” 134 Douglas, Helen Gahagen, 152 Douglas, Paul, 152 Du Bois, W. E. B., 86 Ervin, J. Louis, 62 Ethnicity: in Minnesota, 3, 46, 154; in relation to race, 47–53. See also Immigrant groups (Minnesota) Edsall, Thomas B. and Mary, 163–64 Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), 44–45, 53–59, 80, 82–83; businesses and, 59; criticism of, 107– 9; Minneapolis FEPC, 55, 104–10; philosophy of, 82, 164 Farmer-Labor Association, 6, 71 Farmer-Labor party: blacks and, 55; decline of, 10; depression and, 7–8; divisions in, 5–6; isolationism of, 13–

14; merger, 14–17; 1938 election, 12; origins of, 4–5 Farmers, 123–24, 155; workers and, 3–4 Farmers’ movements, 2 FEPC. See Fair Employment Practices Committee Festival of Nations (St. Paul), 47, 48 Fraser, Donald, xvi Freeman, Orville, xvi, 20, 101–2, 167; 1948 election and, 136–38, 141–43 Freeway construction: effects on blacks, 166–67 Giants of the Earth (Rolvaag), 3 Governor’s Interracial Commission, 50–51; unions and, 56–57 Hagen, Harold, 16, 123 Hall, Douglas, 100, 101–2 Hallie Q. Brown House, 63–64 Hamer, Fannie Lou, 161–62 Hedgeman, Anna Arnold, 76, 83 Herring, Pendleton, 23 Hinderaker, Ivan, 26 Horn, Charles Lilley, 57–59, 77–78, 85 Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union (Local 665) (AFL), 66–67 Human Relations. See Mayor’s Council on Human Relations (Minneapolis) Humphrey, Hubert: Americans for Democratic Action and, 98, 138–39; anticommunism and, 98–99, 101–2; antiracism and, xxiii–xxiv; blacks and, 84, 142–43, 147–50; Catholics and, 152, 154; Civil Rights Act (1964), 161; consensus politics of, 33–34, 100– 101, 126, 128, 139–40; DFL and, xvi, 15–16, 34, 97–99, 101–2, 150–59; DNC and, 120–22, 151–52; ethnic vote and, 154; Farmer-Labor legacy and, 34, 155; farmers and, 125–28, 155; FEPC (Minneapolis) and, 105–9; Human Relations and, 99–106, 119–20; Nellie Stone Johnson and, 71; labor movement and, 93–96; left wing and, xvii, 35–37, 135–43; as mayor, 93–96; mayoral campaign (1943), 15–16; New Deal and, 22–23;

Index 225 Humphrey, Hubert (continued): New Left criticizes, 162; programmatic politics of, xvi, 37, 119–23, 155–59; Senate campaign (1948), 126, 153–59; southern Democrats and, 133, 157; speech at Democratic convention (1948), 134, 149; at University of Minnesota, 15, 21; views on parties, 27; Wallace supporters and, 140 Immigrant groups (Minnesota), 3, 47– 49; politics and, 46, 154. See also Ethnicity Interest group pluralism, 20; critiques of, 38 Interest groups, 27–28, 91, 155 Jacobson, Matthew Frye, 42 Japanese-Americans, 53–55 Johnson, Nellie Stone, 58, 70, 77, 88–89, 125; Communist party and, 71–72, 83 Kampelman, Max, 20, 22, 25, 27, 157; 1948 election and, 136 Kelm, Elmer, 17, 97 Keynesianism, 24–25 Kirkpatrick, Evron M., 20, 21, 27, 98, 136 Knutson, Harold, 118, 156, 157 Laski, Harold, 26 Lasswell, Harold, 23 Latham, Earl, 20, 23 Latz, Rubin, 100, 125 Left wing, 35–37, 96–97, 140–42 Leland, Wilfred, 108 Le Sueur, Marion, 6, 96 Le Sueur, Meridel, 6 Lewis, Sinclair, 47 Liberalism (postwar), 33–34, 160–61, 162–66; explanations of, xvi–xxii, 18; left wing and, xviii–xix, 35–37; political scientists and, 19–21 Lindbergh, Charles, Sr., 4 Lindblom, Charles E., 21 Loeb, James, Jr., 98, 133 Lundeen, Ernest, 13 Mahoney, William, 4, 5, 6 March on Washington Movement (MOWM), 79–80

Mayor’s Council on Human Relations (Minneapolis), 94, 102–4, 98–106 McCarthy, Eugene, xvi, 136 McClosky, Herbert, 20 McWilliams, Carey, 47 Minneapolis Central Labor Union, 15, 55, 66, 94 Minneapolis Spokesman, 73–76, 78, 146; compared to the Twin Cities Observer, 90–91, 146; 1948 election and, 143–44; reaction to Humphrey speech (1948), 150 Mintener, Bradshaw, 94, 100, 103 Mississippi Freedom Democratic party, 161 Mitchell, Clarence, Jr., 76, 77, 83 Mondale, Walter, xvi, 161 Montagu, Ashley: Man’s Most Dangerous Myth (1942), 42, 45 Moon, Henry Lee, 81 Moos, Malcolm, 21 Myrdal, Gunnar: An American Dilemma (1944), 42 NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People): in Minneapolis and St. Paul, 62, 64, 79 Naftalin, Arthur, 16, 19, 20, 27, 97, 98, 167– 68; DFL caucuses and, 140–42; dissertation on the Farmer-Labor party, 32–33; 1948 election and, 136, 138, 139 National Council for a Permanent FEPC, 80 New Deal, 18, 21–24, 31; blacks and, 65– 66; effects of, 10, 35–36 Newman, Cecil, 52, 58, 60, 73–78, 100, 105–6; and Charles L. Horn, 77–78; 1948 election and, 144–50; political strategy of, 83–92 Nixon, Richard, 160 Nonpartisan League, 1, 2, 4, 32–33 Olson, Floyd Bjornesterne: communists and, 9; as governor, 6–7; memory of, 155; 1934 strike and, 8; radicalism of, 8–9 Olson, Orville, 97

226 Index Petersen, Hjalmar, 12, 141 Phyllis Wheatley House, 63–64, 72 Political parties, 27–33 Political repression, 4, 7 Political science: New Deal and, 21–24; pluralism and, 23, 26–27, 38–39; twoparty system and, 25–32 Progressive party (1948), 131–32, 139–40; explanations of, xix Race: conceptions of, 42–44, 47–48, 49– 53, 85; Jews and, 50–52 Randolph, A. Philip, 79–80, 83 Republican party (Minnesota), 2, 112– 18; cooperatives and, 156; divisions in, 111–12; in rural areas, 123–24 Rolvaag, Ole: Giants of the Earth, 3 Rowan, Carl T., 117, 143–44, 146 Russell, Nell Dodson, 74, 83, 85; criticism of Henry Wallace, 145 Schattschneider, E. E., 26; invited to Washington, 157; Party Government, 27–31; on third parties, 29–30 Scheiner, Samuel, 125, 141 Seestrom, Selma, 97 Shipstead, Henrik, 5, 13, 112, 114–15 Smith, Francis, 97 Soule, George, 25 Stageberg, Susie, 35, 96 Stassen, Harold, 13, 89–90, 112–16 Steefel, Genevieve, 54, 100, 101, 125

Taft-Hartley Act, 84, 87, 135, 154 Teamsters Union (Local 574), 8 Third parties: demise of, xx; prevalence of, 2 Thompson, Era Bell, 65 Thye, Edward, 40, 113, 115 Townley, Arthur C., 1, 5, 32 Truman, David, 23 Truman, Harry S., 129–30; civil rights and, 132–33 Twin Cities Observer, 75–76, 89–91, 146 Twin Cities Ordnance Plant, 57, 58 University of Minnesota, Department of Political Science, 15, 20–21, 25–27, 136; views on Farmer-Labor party, 31–32 Urban League (St. Paul), 63, 73 Wallace, Henry, xix, 130, 131–32; blacks and, 143–50 Wallace, George, 160 Wheaton, Frank, 62 White, Walter, 86 Wilkins, Roy, 76 Williams, Milton G., 75, 88–91 Wishart, Robert, 95, 97 World War II, 41; blacks and, 76–77 Working Peoples’ Nonpartisan League (WPNL), 4–5 Young, Whitney, 76 Youngdahl, Luther, 113–14, 147

Jennifer A. Delton is assistant professor of history at Skidmore College. Her current research concerns the cultural and political history of antiracism programs in corporate America.

Popular Farmer-Labor Governor Floyd B. Olson at his desk, 1936. For many progressives in the 1930s, Olson personified the radical possibilities of third-party movements. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Hubert Humphrey (right) with left-leaning New Dealer Henry Wallace when their politics still matched, 1944. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

New liberals and old-style Democrats, circa 1945. Left to right: Hubert Humphrey, Evron Kirkpatrick, Harry Truman, Arthur Naftalin, and Elmer Kelm. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Industrialist Charles Lilley Horn with employees, 1944. Note his spats and boutonniere. Horn hired one thousand African American workers at his government-contracted plant during the war. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Minneapolis Spokesman founder and editor Cecil Newman, 1946. In the pages of the Spokesman and on the new municipal interracial committees, Newman called for a more active black presence in Minneapolis politics. Courtesy of the Minneapolis Public Library, Minneapolis Collection.

African American labor activist Nellie Stone Johnson, 1943. With labor’s backing, Johnson won election to the Minneapolis library board in 1944, becoming the first elected black official in Minneapolis. Courtesy of the Minneapolis Public Library, Minneapolis Collection.

Announcement for a Communist-sponsored rally at which African American labor activist Nellie Stone (later Nellie Stone Johnson) was a featured speaker, 1946. Note also the presence of CIO leader Robert Wishart, who would later be a Humphrey ally. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Labor activist and businessman Anthony Brutus Cassius, from the centennial edition of the Minneapolis Beacon, 1956. Courtesy of the Minneapolis Public Library, Minneapolis Collection.

Anthony Cassius (left) at his bar, the Cassius Club Café. In 1947 Cassius fought the Minneapolis city council for a liquor license. From the centennial edition of the Minneapolis Beacon, 1956. Courtesy of the Minneapolis Public Library, Minneapolis Collection.

Labor activist and Minneapolis NAACP president Albert Allen, from the centennial edition of the Minneapolis Beacon, 1956. Courtesy of the Minneapolis Public Library, Minneapolis Collection.

William Green (AFL), Hubert Humphrey, and Walter Reuther (CIO) seal the fate of American labor at the ADA convention in 1948. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Left-wingers Elmer Benson and Susie Stageberg at the Progressive–DFL convention, June 1948. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Mayor Humphrey emphasizing the importance of antiracist ideals, 1948. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Humphrey’s triumphant return to Minneapolis after his civil rights speech at the Democratic National Convention, July 1948. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

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