Into the Bright Sunshine

Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights (Pivotal Moments in American History Series)

By: Samuel G. Freedman

Narrated by: Mike Lenz

Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

During one sweltering week in July 1948, the Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia for its national convention. The most pressing and controversial issue facing the delegates was not whom to nominate for president—the incumbent, Harry Truman, was the presumptive candidate—but whether the Democrats would finally embrace the cause of civil rights and embed it in their official platform.

On the convention's final day, Hubert Humphrey, the relatively obscure mayor of the midsized city of Minneapolis, ascended the podium. Defying Truman's own desire to occupy the middle ground, Humphrey urged the delegates to "get out of the shadow of state's rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights." Humphrey's speech 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 delegates voted to adopt a meaningful civil-rights plank. With no choice but to run on it, Truman seized the opportunity it offered, desegregating the armed forces and in November upsetting the frontrunner Thomas Dewey, a victory due in part to an unprecedented surge of Black voters. The outcome of that week in July 1948—which marks its seventy-fifth anniversary as this book is published—shapes American politics to this day.

©2023 Samuel G. Freedman (P)2023 Kalorama

Important history for today’s generation

Good story of the progress our country has made. It also explains the history that has brought us to the current state of the U.S. today. I think everyone should read this book.

Narrator bungles pronunciations

A fine book worth reading in print or electronically--but if listened to on this audiobook is ruined by the narrator's annoying and constant mispronunciations of words and names. How distracting to hear Roosevelt's name wrongly pronounced a hundred times! Other persons' names he should know how to say but doesn't include W.E.B. DuBois, Fr. Coughlin, and Harold Stassen. Place names he butchers include Cairo, IL; Des Moines, IA; Pierre, SD; and Trieste, Italy. Other names he mangles include the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps, Jacobins, and the Cunard Lines. He also hasn't a clue how to say aegis, armistice, bas relief, discomfit, dissimilating, ebullient, elementary, erudite, frieze, funereal, ignominy, interregnum, j'accuse, linotype, mayoralty, prelude, specious, and Wunderkind. Can't Audible find a narrator who hasn't been living his entire life under a rock?

Just Read the Book

The book is well researched. It’s not just about Humphrey, it’s about a period of time and about civil rights in America. The level of detail about the various people in the Midwest and especially the MInneapolis area and the treatment of Black and Jewish people is great. It hurts my heart to see how people were treated. How my family members were treated.

Humphrey seems to be in the same league as other Democrats who tried to do their best but couldn’t quite make it to the top spot. The book ends abruptly. There is lots of his career and life left for at least one more book, if not more. The author, Samuel Freedman, has a wonderful way of painting the time period without making it rosy and sentimental. He also doesn’t make it too gritty. It’s factual and encompassing.

The narrator should perhaps look for another line of work. Every few minutes I was yelling out the correct pronunciation of a word. Especially the Hebrew words. It’s almost disrespectful to have that many mispronunciations of another cultures words. And Kid Cann’s name was pronounced two different ways out of the three times it was spoken. Please look up the words or ask someone how to pronounce them. I really had a hard time listening to this only because of the narration.

Shallow and incomplete

Very disappointing. Learned very little about hu, and not much more about civil rights. Narration was ok