Samuel Freedman- INTO THE BRIGHT SUNSHINE Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights

Many know Hubert Humphrey as a man whose public life ended in disgrace—as the man who lost his bearings during the Vietnam War and then lost the presidency to Richard Nixon.
But decades before the Vietnam War or his presidential run, Humphrey was known as a trailblazing statesman who electrified the nation through an impassioned speech in support of civil rights at the July 1948 Democratic National Convention.
Urging the delegates to “get out of the shadow of state’s rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights,” Humphrey—then a 37-yearold mayor of Minneapolis—put everything on the line, rhetorically and politically, to move the party and the country forward. To the surprise of many, including Humphrey himself, the democratic delegates adopted a meaningful civil rights plank. With no choice but to run on it, President Truman desegregated the armed forces and soon thereafter won reelection against the frontrunner Thomas Dewey, a victory due in part to an unprecedented surge of Black voters.
Published on the 75th anniversary of that pivotal 1948 speech, Samuel G. Freedman’s July 2023 Into the
Bright Sunshine examines the politician’s early career, when his efforts to promote racial justice not only
transformed the Democratic Party but the nation as well. Freedman explores the journey of Humphrey’s
life from a remote, all-white hamlet in South Dakota to the mayoralty of Minneapolis as he tackles its
notorious racism and anti-Semitism to his role as a national champion of multiracial democracy. His allies
in that struggle include a Black newspaper publisher, a Jewish attorney, and a professor who had fled
Nazi Germany. And his adversaries are the white supremacists, Christian Nationalists, and America
Firsters of mid-century America—one of whom tries to assassinate him.
Celebrating one of the overlooked landmarks of civil rights history, Freedman illuminates the early life
and enduring legacy of the man who helped bring it about.
Samuel G. Freedman is an award-winning author, journalist, and educator. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and has won the National Jewish Book Award and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Award. His columns for the New York Times about education and religion have received national prizes. He is a professor at Columbia University, and has been named the nation’s Outstanding Journalism Educator by the Society of Professional Journalists.

For more information on the book click HERE