Hubert H. Humphrey Hometown, Doland, South Dakota - South Dakota Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

Humphrey was born in Wallace, Codington County, South Dakota. He was the son of Hubert Humphrey, Sr. and Ragnild Kristine Sannes, who was Norwegian. Humphrey spent most of his youth in the small town of Doland, South Dakota, on the Dakota prairie; during his years living in Doland the town's population was around 700. His father was the town pharmacist and a community leader; he served as Doland's mayor and as a town council member. In the late 1920s a severe economic downturn hit Doland; both of the town's banks closed and Humphrey's father struggled to keep his drugstore open.

After his son graduated from Doland's high school, Hubert, Sr. left Doland and opened a new drugstore in the larger town of Huron, South Dakota (population 11,000), where he hoped to improve his fortunes. As a result of the family's financial struggles, Hubert had to leave the University of Minnesota after just one year to help his father in the new drugstore. He earned a pharmacist's license from the Capitol College of Pharmacy in Denver, Colorado (completing a two-year licensure program in just six months), and spent the years from 1930 to 1937 helping his father run the family drugstore. He was a brother of Phi Delta Chi (Theta Chapter), a professional pharmaceutical fraternity and an honorary brother of Alpha Phi Alpha, an African-American fraternity. He was also a brother of Tau Delta Phi. Over time the "Humphrey Drug Company" in Huron became a profitable enterprise and the family was able to prosper again.

However, Hubert did not enjoy working as a pharmacist, and his dream remained to earn a doctorate in political science and become a college professor. In 1937 he returned to the University of Minnesota and earned a bachelor's degree in 1939. He also earned a master's degree from Louisiana State University in 1940, serving as an assistant instructor of political science there. One of his classmates was Russell B. Long, a future U.S. Senator from Louisiana. He then became an instructor and doctoral student at the University of Minnesota from 1940 to 1941 (joining the American Federation of Teachers), and was a supervisor for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Humphrey would soon become active in Minneapolis politics, and as a result he never finished his Ph.D.

In 1934 Hubert began dating Muriel Buck; she was a bookkeeper and graduate of local Huron College. They were married in 1936 and remained married until Humphrey's death nearly 42 years later. They had four children: Hubert Humphrey III, Nancy, Robert, and Douglas. Unlike many prominent politicians Humphrey never became wealthy, and through most of his years as a U.S. Senator and Vice-President his home was located in a modest middle-class housing development in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.. In 1958 Hubert and Muriel used their savings to build a lakefront home in Waverly, Minnesota, some forty miles west of Minneapolis.


During World War II, Humphrey tried twice to join the armed forces, but was rejected both times due to a hernia. Instead, he served in an administrative capacity in a variety of wartime government agencies; he also worked as a college instructor. In 1942 he was the state director of new production training and reemployment and chief of the Minnesota war service program. In 1943 he was the assistant director of the War Manpower Commission. From 1943-1944 Humphrey was a professor in political science at Macalester College in St. Paul and from 1944-1945 he was a news commentator for a Minneapolis radio station.

In 1943, Humphrey made his first run for elective office, for mayor of Minneapolis. Although he lost, his poorly-funded campaign still captured over 47% of the vote. In 1944, Humphrey was one of the key players in the merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties of Minnesota to form the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). When in 1945 Minnesota Communists attempted to seize control of the new party, Humphrey became an engaged anti-Communist and led the successful fight to oust the Communists from the DFL.

After the war, he again ran for mayor of Minneapolis and won the election with 61% of the vote. He served as mayor from 1945–1949. He was re-elected in 1947 by the largest margin in the city's history to that time. Humphrey gained national fame during these years by becoming one of the founders of the liberal anti-communist Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and for reforming the Minneapolis police force. Previously, the city had been declared the antisemitism capital of the country and the small African-American population of the city encountered numerous instances of racial discrimination. Humphrey worked hard to end these examples of racism, and his tenure as mayor would be famous for his efforts to fight bigotry in all its forms.

Minnesota elected Humphrey to the United States Senate in 1948 on the DFL ticket, and he took office on January 3, 1949. He was the first Democrat ever elected senator from the state of Minnesota since before the Civil War. Humphrey's father died that year, and Humphrey stopped using the "Jr." suffix on his name. He was re-elected in 1954 and 1960. His colleagues selected him as majority whip in 1961, a position he held until he left the Senate on December 29, 1964 to assume the vice presidency. During this period, he served in the 81st, 82nd, 83rd, 84th, 85th, 86th, 87th, and a portion of the 88th Congress.

Initially, Humphrey's support of civil rights led to his being ostracized by Southern Democrats, who dominated most of the Senate leadership positions and who wanted to punish Humphrey for proposing the successful civil rights platform at the 1948 Convention. However, Humphrey refused to be intimidated and stood his ground; his integrity, passion and eloquence eventually earned him the respect of even most of the Southerners. His acceptance by the Southerners was also helped a great deal when Humphrey became a protege of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. Humphrey became known for his advocacy of liberal causes (such as civil rights, arms control, a nuclear test ban, food stamps, and humanitarian foreign aid), and for his long and witty speeches. During the period of McCarthyism (1950–1954), Humphrey was accused of being "soft on Communism," despite having been one of the founders of the anti-communist liberal organization Americans for Democratic Action, having been a staunch supporter of the Truman Administration's efforts to combat the growth of the Soviet Union, and having fought Communist political activities in Minnesota and elsewhere. In 1954 Humphrey proposed to make mere membership in the Communist Party a felony — a proposal that failed. He was chairman of the Select Committee on Disarmament (84th and 85th Congresses). In February, 1960, Senator Humphrey introduced a bill to establish a National Peace Agency.[2] As Democratic whip in the Senate in 1964, Humphrey was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of that year. Humphrey's consistently cheerful and upbeat demeanor, and his forceful advocacy of liberal causes, led him to be nicknamed "The Happy Warrior" by many of his Senate colleagues and political journalists.

While President John F. Kennedy gets credit for creating the Peace Corps, the first initiative came from Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Jr. (D-Minnesota) when he introduced the first bill to create the Peace Corps in 1957—three years prior to JFK and his University of Michigan speech. In his autobiography, "The Education of a Public Man," Hubert Humphrey wrote: "There were three bills of particular emotional importance to me: the Peace Corps, a disarmament agency, and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The President, knowing how I felt, asked me to introduce legislation for all three. I introduced the first Peace Corps bill in 1957. It did not meet with much enthusiasm. Some traditional diplomats quaked at the thought of thousands of young Americans scattered across their world. Many senators, including liberal ones, thought the idea was silly and unworkable. Now, with a young president urging its passage, it became possible and we pushed it rapidly through the Senate. It is fashionable now to suggest that Peace Corps Volunteers gained as much or more, from their experience as the countries they worked. That may be true, but it ought not demean their work. They touched many lives and made them better.

Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Marker Name: Hubert H. Humphrey Marker Type: City Marker Text: Monument on the main street of Doland, SD, dedicated to Dennis and Duane Kozlowski, of Olympic fame, and Hubert H. Humphrey, a politician. He graduated from Doland High School in 1929. In 1945, he was the Mayor of Minneapolis, MN. From 1949-1965, a United States Senator. In 1961, he was the Assistant Senate Minority Leader. In 1964, he was elected 38th Vice President. In 1968, he was the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. In 1971-1978, he was back in the Senate. He died of cancer Jan 13, 1978. "The Happy Warrior" "I have little time for people who say we ought not to promise that we shouldn't raise peoples' hopes. We live by hope and we live by promise. Achievement is not enough because so many times you don't quite make it. We don't always get what we want but we have to believe that someday, somehow we will be better that we can do it."

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