Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights And The Transformation Of The Democratic Party

by Jennifer A. Delton

How did a largely white state like Minnesota become a springboard for leadership in civil rights? Why did it produce a generation of liberals-Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Donald Fraser, Orville Freeman, and Eugene McCarthy-whose ideals transformed the Democratic Party? In Making Minnesota Liberal, Jennifer A. Delton delves into the roots of Minnesota politics for the answer, tracing the change from the regional, third-party, class-oriented politics of the Farmer-Labor Party to the national, two-party, pluralistic liberalism of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). While others have examined how anticommunism and the Cold War shaped this transformation, Delton takes a new approach, showing the key roles played by antiracism and the civil rights movement. In telling this story, Delton contributes not only to our understanding of Minnesota's political history, but also the relationship between antiracism and American politics in the twentieth century. Making Minnesota Liberal combines political history with a discussion of the symbolic role played by race in political battles between whites. Delton recounts the creation of Minnesota's Farmer-Labor Party, its merger with the Democrats, and the acrimonious battle for control of the DFL just after World War II. She argues that the Humphrey liberals won this battle in part because antiracism activities enabled previously antagonistic groups, divided by ethnicity, religion, and class, to unify around a common cause. Delton contends that although liberal Minnesotans' concern for racial justice was genuine, it also provided them with national political relevance and imbued their bid for power with a sense of morality. Ultimately the language of tolerance and diversity that emerged from antiracism prepared Minnesotans for Humphrey's vision of a pluralistic and state-centered liberalism, which eventually became the model for Democratic politics nationwide. Making Minnesota Liberal is an absorbing and trenchant account of a key moment in American history, one that continues to resonate in our time. Jennifer A. Delton is assistant professor of history at Skidmore College.

Genres: History

256 pages, Hardcover

First published May 7, 2002

Reviews

[Karlyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Delton examines how Hubert Humphrey's people propagated a new form of "issue-based" politics in the early 1940s in attempt to unite Minnesota's Farm-Labor and Democratic Party into a one state-wide Democratic Party that would be in line with the national two-party system. She contends that civil rights - or at least the rhetoric of equality - was at the heart of this transformation, resulting in more progressive commitments among Minnesotans and ultimately rocking Humphrey to national acclaim while challenging the principles of the national Democratic Party.

Delton's tracing of the deliberate rise of issue-based politics over previous machine or ethnic/religiously divided party loyalties is thorough and offers a close-up depictions of the rise of postwar liberalism. However, she gives too much credence to Hubert Humphrey's verbal and surface level commitment to civil rights and doesn't examine closely enough how the Minnesotans rhetorical progressivism failed to translate into material and concrete action along the same line.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not fully sure what Delton is accomplishing by pointing to Minnesota as a bastion for liberal thought in the early 20th century here, except perhaps to trace the evolution of a moment in which labor, economics, and ethics all came together to articulate an overlap between local and national politics. She is pointing us to the moment in the 1920s at which Minnesota's long immigrant history was forced into an articulation of how politics would serve rural interests, and yet also how rural interests had to be national interests when it came to the issue of civil rights. Maybe it's because Minnesota feels like an anomaly to her--a predominately white, predominately rural state that made an overcommitment to defending civil rights, which she articulates as the path to the eventual demise of postwar liberalism. Or perhaps this is a moment in which the assumption that class politics would govern voters, that people would vote based on their economic interests rather than on basis of party loyalty or ethnic identity. Or maybe this was just the moment in which labor was not solely about money, but also about values, identity, and the promise of democracy on a much larger level. She argues that this is a universal problem, that these were the same disagreements happening all across America, but I'm not sure everyone would have articulated these principles as that of a liberal pluralist bent. What I find most interesting about this text is how she frames the old guard of Minnesota immigrants--largely Scandinavian--as informing how race and ethnicity, and subsequently tolerance, were pursued as local issues and then articulated as moral issues central to the state's politics. (I also like her argument that what prompted this shift was the massive wartime influx of black migrants into Northern cities, as it forced new conceptions of both whiteness and citizenship into public debate.) Otherwise, still trying to figure out exactly how this relates to how we understand rural/agrarian politics as a whole.

[Daniel Kleven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, in-depth account of the development of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party in Minnesota, kind of centered on Hubert Humphrey, probably our most well-known national politician (until Tim Walz's vp candidacy??). This is not a HHH puff piece, by any means, as Delton documents all the political machinations that took place, the "red-baiting," and the moves that a small young cohort of academic political scientists used to wrest control of the Democratic party from a more socialist leaning group. She also shows along the way how race played into all of this, the activities of Cecil Newman and the Black newspapers, the dynamics of Civil Rights nationally, and provides great context for Humphrey's famous "Into the Bright Sunshine" speech in 1948. Good stuff.

[Andy Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, solid presentation of Minnesota's turn from the more "radical" politics of Olsen and the Farmer-Labor party to Humphrey's moderate stance through the lense of civil liberties. Interesting, though a bit scattered in argument.