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

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This is really two books in one. Part of it is a political history of Minnesota's small black community during the first half of the twentieth century. The other is the story of the takeover of Minnesota's radical Farmer Labor party by Hubert Humphrey's Democrats to form the present DFL party, and the role that civil rights played in that story.

During the thirties Minnesota was governed by the radical Farmer-Labor Party, and the Democratic Party was relegated to third-party status. (The Democrats were old-line supporters of Al Smith who didn't necessarily even support FDR, and Roosevelt tended to work with the FLers.) For Humphrey, a radical on the national stage but a centrist in Minnesota, the civil rights issue allowed him to separate himself from his party's copperhead, segregationist past.

People interested in this topic should also read Vallely's "Radicalism in the States", Gieske's "Minnesota's Farmer Labor Party", and Haynes's "Dubious Alliance". Without pressure from the Farmer Labor Party and other similar groups, their would have been no New Deal. The Democratic Party leadership supported Roosevelt only very reluctantly.