The deep ideological and political tensions in the United States today have historical antecedents. Some of them, like the Civil War and the Vietnam War years, are already well-known. But there was also a profound rift in the nation during the World War II years that were, superficially, a time of American unity. Two of the repeated antagonists in that period of polarization were Hubert Humphrey, then the young, liberal mayor of Minneapolis, and Gerald L.K. Smith, the self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist and founder of the America First political party. Drawing on his acclaimed book "Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights," professor and author Samuel G. Freedman takes us back to their confrontations in the 1940s—confrontations with many parallels applicable today.

Biography:

Samuel G. Freedman is an award-winning author, columnist, and professor. A former columnist for The New York Times and a professor at Columbia University, he is the author of the ten acclaimed books. The most recent of them, Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights, won the 2024 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism.

Freedman is the author of ten books, including Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School, a finalist for the 1990 National Book Award, and The Inheritance: How Three Families and America Moved from Roosevelt to Reagan and Beyond, a finalize for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize. Freedman was a staff reporter for The New York Times from 1981 through 1987. From 2004 through 2008 he wrote the paper’s “On Education” column, and from 2006 through 2016 he wrote the “On Religion” column.

A tenured professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Freedman was named the nation's outstanding journalism educator in 1997 by the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2012, he received Columbia University’s coveted Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. Freedman holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He lives in New York with his wife, Christia Chana Blomquist.

Presented by the Bentley Historical Library and the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, with additional support from Wallace House Center for Journalists.