Since yesterday afternoon, like millions of Americans following the trial of Derek Chauvin, my mood has been one of total apprehension.  In the court of public opinion, Derek Chauvin’s killing of George Floyd has already been determined to be an archetypal example of racist police brutality.

Yet one knows how difficult it is to convict a white policeman of an obvious racist murder.  So I dread the possibility that Chauvin will not be convicted, resulting in subsequent explosive racial conflict in America’s major cities.

The famed Kerner Commission in 1968 found that racist white police brutality was the primary cause of the racial conflict that spread throughout America from 1965 through 1968.  When one views the film of Derek Chauvin’s knee on the neck of George Floyd on Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis in May, 2020, it is all too obvious that the toxic cancer of systemic racism remains unabated in the police community.  Accordingly, an emotion of despair accompanied my feeling of apprehension.

Early last evening, however, I received the news that Minnesota’s most famous remaining survivor of the 20th Century, former Vice President and U.S. Senator Walter F. Mondale had just passed away at the age of 93. And at this point, my combined mood of apprehension and despair gave way to an overwhelmingly chilling feeling of irony.

Most Americans think of Walter Mondale as an exemplary vice-president, the first major party presidential candidate to pick a woman, Geraldine Ferraro as his vice-presidential running mate, and a practitioner of progressive politics as a US Senator, most notably his efforts successfully promoting the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. This historic legislation prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin or sex. The Fair Housing Act stands as the final great legislative achievement of the civil rights era.

Yet when I think of Walter Mondale, I identify him primarily as the major protege of Minnesota’s most famous progressive politician, former Vice President and US Senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey.  This status in no way diminishes Mondale: it elevates him.  It is no exaggeration to say that in the area of civil rights, Hubert Humphrey was the greatest legislative figure in the history of the United States of America.  It is a supreme mark of distinction for Mondale as a civil rights advocate to be identified as Humphrey’s principal protege in the same way that Aristotle is most historically honored as the favorite student of Plato.

Hubert Humphrey’s first milestone on his journey to civil rights legend was his successful leadership of a pro-civil rights plank at the 1948 Democratic National Convention.  He was then serving as the mayor of Minneapolis. The following words from his speech to the Convention were historic in their impact:

To those who say, my friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years (too) late! To those who say this civil rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.

The speech and Humphrey’s successful leadership of the pro-civil rights plank were major factors in his election to the United States Senate in November, 1948, in which he scored a 60 percent landslide victory over the incumbent Republican Joseph Ball.

The continuing electoral success of Humphrey and Mondale in Minnesota gave the state the image of being the most racially tolerant state in the nation.  How ironic and jarring it was this past week to hear two Minnesota African-American mayors, Melvin Carter in St. Paul and Mike Elliott in Brooklyn Center express fears for their own personal safety.  Carter put it most cogently when he said “We literally are all George (Floyd).”

All this results in a feeling of hopelessness for the future-until one recalls a nickname given to Humphrey, “the Happy Warrior.”  This was an appellation first given to Alfred E. Smith by Franklin Roosevelt in his speech nominating the New York Governor for president at the 1924 Democratic National Convention.

Humphrey was indeed a Happy Warrior, never losing his sense of optimism at moments of great despair.  I will try to emulate Humphrey in this regard during this time of national agony.  And I will pray for the nation I love.

Alan Steinberg served as Regional Administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.