Hubert Humphrey got his start in Minnesota politics in the early 1940s. He was an organizer of the Minnesota Democratic Party at the time, and he realized that the party's best chance of success would come if the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party merged with the Democratic party. Other party leaders had been discussing the merger, but Humphrey's idea was to keep the Farmer-Labor name in the name of the merged party, in order to gain the strength of thousands of loyal voters. Thus, the party got the name Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Humphrey first ran for mayor of Minneapolis in 1943, losing by only six thousand votes. He campaigned again in the 1945 election, with the support of the city's labor leaders, and found support with the city's African-American community by promising to implement a city civil rights commission. He also appealed to the city's middle class by giving talks on civic virtue at area churches. He was elected in 1945 by the largest margin to date. When elected, he immediately proposed a city ordinance that would make racial discrimination by employers subject to a fine. After a long period of discussion, the Minneapolis City Council finally approved the ordinance by a 21 to 3 margin on January 31, 1947. The ordinance created the nation's first Fair Employment Practices Ordinance and established Minneapolis as the nation's leader in imposing fines for employment discrimination, though pressure from the local Urban League would also limit employment opportunities for African Americans during the ordinance's first few years. In contrast to similar measures passed in Milwaukee and Chicago, the Minneapolis Fair Employment ordinance gave the city's newly created Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) authority to not only impose fines, but also prison sentences for employers who enacted job discrimination. Larger banks and department stores saw the value in civil rights and began to hire more African-Americans. Humphrey also recognized that city police officers operating under racial and ethnic prejudice were causing urban unrest, so he instructed the city's police chief to have officers in minority neighborhoods keep in contact with clergy, teachers, business owners, and other neighborhood leaders. This helped to redefine the issue of prejudice and got its attention as a problem that could be solved, not just a fact of life that had to be taken for granted. Humphrey's progress with civil rights in Minneapolis gained national attention, with many cities inquiring about how