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This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies.

In the years after World War II, bowling was the fastest-growing recreational sport in America,

and the American Bowling Congress, which ran local tournaments,

limited teams to white men only.

That practice was challenged in 1947 by the 36-year-old mayor of Minneapolis,

who was gaining a national reputation for fighting racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination

in his city and beyond. His name was Hubert Humphrey, and he's best known to history as

Lyndon Johnson's Vice President in the 1960s, who supported an increasingly unpopular war in

Vietnam, then lost the 1968 presidential election to Richard Nixon.

Our guest, Samuel G. Friedman, says Humphrey's better-known political failures have overshadowed

some important achievements in his early years in politics. When he fought bigotry in Minneapolis

and played a critical role in getting the Democratic Party to embrace civil rights in the 1948

presidential election. Friedman says Humphrey's powerful speech at the 1948 party convention

when a group of southern states threatened to bolt and form their own party

helped lead to a critical realignment that allowed Democrats to win national elections in part

by appealing to black voters, rather than segregationists in the south. Sam Friedman is a veteran

journalist, author of nine previous books, and a long-time professor of journalism at Columbia

University. His new book is Into the Bright Sunshine, Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for

Civil Rights. Well, Samuel Friedman, welcome back to Fresh Air. It's such an honor to be on this show,

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