Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. (May 27, 1911January 13, 1978) was an American politician who served as the 38th Vice President of the United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1965 to 1969. Humphrey twice served in the United States Senate, representing Minnesota from 1949 to 1964 and 1971 to 1978. He was the nominee of the Democratic Party in the 1968 presidential election, losing to the Republican nominee Richard M. Nixon.
Born in Wallace, South Dakota in 1911, Humphrey attended the University of Minnesota before earning his pharmacist license from the Capitol College of Pharmacy in 1931. He helped run his father's pharmacy until 1937 when he returned to academia, graduating with a master's degree from Louisiana State University in 1940, where he was a political science instructor. He returned to Minnesota during World War II and became a supervisor for the Works Progress Administration. He was then appointed state director of the Minnesota war service program before becoming the assistant director of the War Manpower Commission. In 1943, Humphrey became a professor of Political Science at Macalester College and ran a failed campaign for mayor of Minneapolis. Humphrey helped found the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) in 1944, and in 1945, became the DFL candidate for mayor of Minneapolis for a second time, winning with 61% of the vote. Humphrey served as mayor from 1945 to 1948, he was reelected and became the co-founder of the liberal anti-communist group Americans for Democratic Action in 1947.