1948 Democratic National Convention in the context of "Hubert Humphrey"

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⭐ Core Definition: 1948 Democratic National Convention

The 1948 Democratic National Convention was held at Philadelphia Convention Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from July 12 to July 15, 1948, and resulted in the nominations of President Harry S. Truman for a full term and Senator Alben W. Barkley of Kentucky for vice president in the 1948 presidential election.

One of the decisive factors in convening both major party conventions in Philadelphia that year was that the eastern Pennsylvania area was part of the newly developing broadcast television market. In 1947, TV stations in New York City, Washington and Philadelphia were connected by a coaxial cable. By the summer of 1948 two of the three new television networks, NBC and CBS, had the ability to telecast along the east coast live gavel-to-gavel coverage of both conventions. In television's early days, live broadcasts were not routinely recorded, but a few minutes of Kinescope film of the conventions has survived.

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👉 1948 Democratic National Convention in the context of Hubert Humphrey

Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978) was the 38th vice president of the United States, serving from 1965 to 1969 under President Lyndon B. Johnson. A member of the Democratic Party, he twice served in the United States Senate, representing Minnesota from 1949 to 1964 and from 1971 to 1978. As a senator, he was a major leader of modern liberalism in the United States, while as vice president, he supported the controversial Vietnam War. An intensely divided Democratic Party nominated him in the 1968 presidential election, which he lost to Republican nominee Richard Nixon.

Born in Wallace, South Dakota, Humphrey attended the University of Minnesota. In 1943, he became a professor of political science at Macalester College and ran a failed campaign for mayor of Minneapolis. He helped found the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) in 1944; the next year he was elected mayor of Minneapolis, serving until 1948 and co-founding the left-wing non-communist group Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. In 1948, he was elected to the U.S. Senate and successfully advocated for the inclusion of a proposal to end racial segregation in the 1948 Democratic National Convention's party platform.

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1948 Democratic National Convention in the context of 1948 United States presidential election

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1948. The Democratic ticket of incumbent President Harry S. Truman and Senator Alben Barkley defeated the Republican ticket of New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey and California Governor Earl Warren and the Dixiecrat ticket of South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond and Mississippi Governor Fielding Wright in one of the greatest election upsets in American history.

Truman had been elected vice president in the 1944 election, and he succeeded to the presidency in April 1945 upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He won his party's nomination at the 1948 Democratic National Convention only after defeating attempts to drop him from the ticket. The convention's civil rights plank caused a walkout by several Southern delegates, who launched a third-party "States' Rights Democratic Party" ticket, more commonly known as the Dixiecrats, led by South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond. The Dixiecrats hoped to win enough electoral votes to force a contingent election in the House of Representatives, where they could extract concessions from either Dewey or Truman in exchange for their support. Former vice president Henry A. Wallace also challenged Truman by launching the Progressive Party and criticizing his confrontational Cold War policies. Dewey, the leader of his party's liberal eastern wing and the 1944 Republican presidential nominee, defeated conservative Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft and other challengers at the 1948 Republican National Convention. This was the first election to have primary and general election debates, with Dewey debating Harold Stassen in the Republican primary, while Norman Thomas debated Farrell Dobbs in the general election.

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LINKED FROM (PARENTS)
← Hubert Humphrey ← 1948 United States presidential election
LINKS TO (CHILDREN)
Philadelphia Convention Hall and Civic Center → Philadelphia, Pennsylvania → Pennsylvania → POTUS → Harry S. Truman → United States Senate → Alben W. Barkley → Kentucky → VPOTUS → 1948 United States presidential election → Coaxial cable → NBC → CBS → Kinescope →