How 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, starting with the 1940s, for an answer that punctuates the relationship between antiracism and American politics in the twentieth century. Here, Delton is joined in conversation with David Baum.


Jennifer A. Delton is professor of history at Skidmore College and author of several books, including Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, now out in paperback, and The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism.

David Baum has taught at several colleges and universities, including NYU, Skidmore College, Union (NY) College, the American University in Iraq-Salaimani, and West Texas A&M University.



PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:
"We long ago recognized 1948 as a pivotal year in American politics. Delton shows us how and why, rightly bringing back into sight the radicals of the era of the Great Depression."
—Nell Irvin Painter

"This is not just a Minnesota story. It is an important national story, a story of the organizational and political restructuring that took the United States from the New Deal to—and through—the Cold War and into the Vietnam War and the Great Society."
—Journal of American History

"A tremendously impressive feat of scholarship, it is also short, breezily written, and full of pleasing anecdotes and pen portraits. Delton tells a thoroughly good story."
—American Historical Review



Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Partyby Jennifer A. Delton is now available in paperback from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.