1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [61]
Hughes, Charles Evans (1862–1948) Hughes was governor of New York, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1910–1919), secretary of state (1921–1919), and chief justice of the United States (1930–1941). A distinguished representative of Republican conservatism, he was defeated by Woodrow Wilson in a 1916 bid for the White House. He squared off against another Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937, when he successfully opposed FDR’s attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court by appointing new—liberal—justices to offset the conservative influence of each sitting justice over the age of 70 who refused to retire. Nevertheless, although he was a political conservative, Hughes was instrumental in Supreme Court decisions upholding important provisions of FDR’s New Deal, including the right of labor unions to collective bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (Wagner Act) and much of the Social Security Act.
Hughes, Langston (1902–1967) Hughes briefly attended Columbia University (1921–1922), lived for a time in Harlem—center of African-American urban culture—worked as a steward on an African-bound freighter, traveled widely, then worked as a busboy in a Washington, D.C., hotel. He saw the famous white poet Vachel Lindsay in the dining room, put a copy of his poems beside Lindsay’s plate, and read in the newspapers the next day that Lindsay had announced his discovery of a great “Negro busboy poet.” Hughes was given a scholarship to Lincoln University, and his literary career was launched. Through numerous works of poetry and prose—especially autobiography—Hughes became widely regarded as a representative voice of black America.
Humphrey, Hubert (1911–1978) Hubert Horatio Humphrey served as Democratic senator from Minnesota from 1949 to 1965 and from 1971 to 1978. He was the representative of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, having built his political base on a farm and labor coalition the likes of which had not been seen since early in the 20th century. From 1965 to 1969, he was vice president in the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, and he ran against Richard M. Nixon as the candidate of a splintered Democratic Party in 1968. Conservatives found him too liberal and, at this time, liberals opposed to the Vietnam War found his continued support of that war unacceptable. Nevertheless, his loss to Nixon was by a razor-thin margin.
Hunt, E. Howard (1918–2007) Hunt had been an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative during World War II and was a CIA agent after the war. He was instrumental in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, the abortive attempt to overthrow Cuba’s Fidel Castro in 1961. In the Nixon White House, Hunt, with G. Gordon Liddy, was one of the so-called Plumbers, a secret and illegal band of operatives whose job was to plug information leaks and secure political intelligence for the Nixon administration. He and Liddy planned the burglary of Democratic National Headquarters at Washington’s Watergate office complex in 1972, the exposure of which led to the downfall and resignation of the president. Convicted of burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping, Hunt served 33 months in prison. A colorful character—a prolific author of pulp spy novels—Hunt was also sinister, deemed by the Rockefeller Commission of the U.S. Congress in 1974 a suspect in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Huntington, Collis P. (1821–1900) With fellow California financiers Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford, and Charles Crocker (collectively dubbed the “Big Four”), Huntington financed and promoted construction of the Central Pacific Railroad to link