Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party

The surprising story of how Minnesota politicians in the 1950s helped redirect American politics - now in paperbackHow 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 to our understanding not only of Minnesota's political history but also o