Abstract

AbstractMayor Hubert Humphrey’s “Sunshine of Human Rights” address, delivered to the 1948 Democratic Convention, is universally acknowledged to be a great speech. Historians and biographers credit it as the major reason why the party adopted a strong civil rights plank and committed itself to the struggle from that point forward. Yet rhetorical critics have generally ignored the speech. In this essay, I argue the rhetorical force of the address is best explained through the concept of copia, or an abundant style. Humphrey’s rhetorical extravagance, in turn, suggests that critics ought to develop a new appreciation for this ancient rhetorical concept.

Journal
Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Published
2020-03-01
DOI
10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.1.0077
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References (83)

  1. 1. Hubert H. Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), 116
  2. Robert Mann, The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civ…
  3. and Timothy N. Thurber, The Politics of Equality: Hubert H. Humphrey and the African American Freedom Struggl…
  4. 2. L. Patrick Devlin, “Hubert H. Humphrey’s 1948 Civil Rights Speech,” Today’s Speech 16, no. 3 (1968): 43–47…
  5. 3. Mann, Walls of Jericho, 17–21; and Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South,…
Show all 83 →
  1. 4. David Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s …
  2. 5. Plotke, Building, 279–97; and Gary A. Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey (Lexington: University Press of Kent…
  3. 6. Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey, 186.
  4. 7. Solberg, Hubert Humphrey, 459. See also Philip K. Tompkins, "Hubert Horatio Humphrey on Persuasion," Today…
  5. and L. Patrick Devlin, "Hubert H. Humphrey: The Teacher-Preacher," Central States Speech Journal 21 (1970): 9…
  6. 8. Ann Moss, “Copia,” in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, ed. Thomas O. Sloane (New York: Oxford University Press, 2…
  7. 9. Rhetorical historians and theorists have been more welcoming. For example, see Jeanne Fahnestock, Rhetoric…
  8. 10. The relationship between text and theory described here is defıned nicely as “abduction” in: James Jasins…
  9. 11. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Inventing Woman: From Amaterasu to Virginia Woolf,” Women’s Studies in Communicat…
  10. 12. On the Jeffersonian ideology that shaped the party at its birth, see Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Pers…
  11. 13. See Plotke, Building; Stuckey, Political Vocabularies, xxii–xxiii; David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: T…
  12. 14. Zachary Karabell, The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election (New York: Vintage Books, 200…
  13. 15. Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey, 6.
  14. 16. Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey, 5–19; Steven R. Goldzwig, Truman’s Whistle-Stop Campaign (College Statio…
  15. 17. The Clifford memo appears in every account of the election. For example, see Donaldson, Truman Defeats De…
  16. 18. Harry S. Truman, “Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union,” January 7, 1948, www.presidency.…
  17. 19. Richard Gergel, Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Har…
  18. 20. Harry S. Truman, “Special Message to the Congress on Civil Rights,” February 2, 01948, www.presidency.ucs…
  19. 21. Gergel, Unexampled Courage.
  20. 22. On Truman's evolution, see McCullough, Truman, 586-89. On his civil rights policy and rhetoric, see Willi…
  21. Barton J. Bernstein, "The Ambiguous Legacy: The Truman Administration and Civil Rights," in Politics and Poli…
  22. Harvard Sitkoff, "Harry Truman and the Election of 1948: The Coming of Age of American Politics," Journal of …
  23. Steven R. Goldzwig, "Inaugurating the Second Reconstruction: President Truman's Committee on Civil Rights," i…
  24. 23. Bernstein, “Ambiguous Legacy,” 284.
  25. 24. Sitkoff, “Harry Truman,” 601; and Frederickson, Dixiecrat, 76–96. On positive black reaction to Truman’s …
  26. 25. Eric Schickler, Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932–1965 (Princeton, N.J.…
  27. 26. Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey, 93.
  28. 27. Frederickson, Dixiecrat, 6–7.
  29. 28. Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Prince…
  30. 29. Henry Lee Moon, Balance of Power: The Negro Vote (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1948), 10.
  31. 30. Bernstein, “Ambiguous Legacy,” 287–88.
  32. 31. In fact, Wallace “allowed rampant discrimination in New Deal farm programs and was one of the most freque…
  33. 32. Sullivan, Days of Hope, 181. My account of Wallace relies on 179–81.
  34. 33. Berman, Politics of Civil Rights, 90–91.
  35. 34. Jennifer A. Delton claims that, as a result of the experts, Humphrey abandoned grassroots action and embr…
  36. 35. Hubert H. Humphrey, The Political Philosophy of the New Deal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Pre…
  37. 36. My narrative relies on a number of excellent accounts of early twentieth-century Minnesota politics. See …
  38. 37. Haynes, Dubious Alliance, 16–36.
  39. 38. Solberg, Humphrey, 83–110. Children and physical ailments excused Humphrey from military service, despite…
  40. 39. Solberg, Humphrey, 113.
  41. 40. Solberg, Humphrey, 111–23. Delton implies, without ever quite arguing, that the ADA used illicit means to…
  42. 41. Humphrey, Political Philosophy of the New Deal, xix.
  43. 42. Hubert H. Humphrey, “1942 Minneapolis Moline Employees Picnic: CIO Local 1138,” n.d., Box 1, Speech Text …
  44. 43. Delton, Making Minnesota Liberal, xv–xxvi.
  45. 44. Karabell, The Last Campaign, 154.
  46. 45. Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey, 160–63.
  47. 46. Mann, The Walls of Jericho, 15.
  48. 47. Sloane, On the Contrary, 56. Hawhee quotes Sloane and adds, “I would stress the audible fullness in this …
  49. 48. Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Pres…
  50. 49. Debra Hawhee, “Looking into Aristotle’s Eyes: Toward a Theory of Rhetorical Vision,” Advances in the Hist…
  51. 50. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (New York: Prentice Hall, 1950), 69.
  52. 51. Richard A. Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 8.
  53. 52. Pernot, Epideictic Rhetoric, 87.
  54. 53. Hawhee, Rhetoric in Tooth and Claw, 137; and Perelman and Olbrechs-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 118.
  55. 54. Cave, Cornucopian Text, 5.
  56. 55. Hubert H. Humphrey, “The Sunshine of Human Rights,” in Words of a Century: The Top 100 American Speeches,…
  57. 56. Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson (…
  58. 57. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s concept of “dissociative defınition” explains Humphrey’s strategy. Perelm…
  59. 58. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, 193–95.
  60. 59. Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey, 165–66; and Karabell, Last Campaign, 156.
  61. 60. Auxesis is defıned as strategic word choices that heighten effect. Fahnestock, Rhetorical Style, 391–93.
  62. 61. Lincoln famously used “all men are created equal” at Gettysburg, but the form of Barkley’s construction s…
  63. 62. Fahnestock, Rhetorical Style, 391.
  64. 63. Lanham, Handlist, 8.
  65. 64. Keith M. Finley, Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938–1965 (Bat…
  66. 65. Philip Sipiora, “Introduction: The Ancient Concept of Kairos,” in Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in History,…
  67. 66. Goldzwig, Truman’s Whistle-Stop Campaign, 43–49.
  68. 67. John F. Kennedy, “Ich Bin ein Berliner,” in Words of a Century: The Top 100 American Speeches, 1900–1999,…
  69. 68. Michael Osborn, “Archetypal Metaphor in Rhetoric: The Light-Dark Family,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 53 …
  70. 69. Cited in Osborn, “Archetypal Metaphor,” 120.
  71. 70. Mann, Walls of Jericho, 20–21; and Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey, 187–91.
  72. 71. Offner, Humphrey, 5.
  73. 72. These letters and many, many more can be found in Box 25, “Civil Rights Correspondence July 1–16, 1948/Ju…
  74. 73. Solberg, Humphrey, 127.
  75. 74. Michael Leff and Andrew Sachs, “Words the Most Like Things: Iconicity and the Rhetorical Text,” Western J…
  76. 75. For example, see Murphy’s discussion of amplifıcation in John M. Murphy, “The Primary Colors of Political…
  77. 76. A good indication of his obscurity at the time is the fact that many of the letters misspelled his name a…
  78. 77. Robert L. Scott and Wayne Brockriede, The Rhetoric of Black Power (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 75–76, 81.