Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to accept her party’s nomination Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention inside the United Center.
The tradition of a nominee appearing in person at their party’s convention to receive this honor began in Chicago in 1932.
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Here’s a look back at what these candidates said at their conventions and how they fared in the presidential election.
Chicago will be Convention City again in 2024. Take a look back at its history as a host.
June 16, 1932: Herbert Hoover (Republican)
Chicago was the center of the American political universe in summer 1932, playing host to the Democratic and Republican presidential nominating conventions.
“For the next three weeks Chicago will be in the spotlight,” the Tribune declared. “By newspaper and radio the American audience will follow with breathless interest the unfolding of the plot of the quadrennial thriller.”
With the nation mired in its worst economic crisis, the Great Depression, the election would be one of the most crucial in the country’s history, and the two parties would offer dramatically different candidates.
A dispirited GOP trooped into the Chicago Stadium to renominate President Herbert Hoover — with 1,126½ of the 1,154 votes — who earlier preached “rugged individualism” as a way for Americans to see themselves through the bad times.
Once notified in Washington, D.C., of his renomination, Hoover sent this message to the convention: “I shall labor, as I have labored, to meet the effects of the world-wide storm which has devastated us with trials and suffering unequaled in but few periods of our history. That storm still surrounds us.”
July 2, 1932: Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat)
Two weeks later, eight candidates turned up at the Democratic convention — also in the stadium — to challenge the front-runner, New York Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who called for massive government intervention to end the Depression.
The biggest threat to FDR came from Al Smith, who had been the 1928 Democratic nominee. Smith’s strategy was to deadlock the convention and give control of the nomination to party leaders, many of whom were wary of Roosevelt’s ideas about social and government reforms. Roosevelt, Smith asserted, “can’t get elected.”
Through three tedious roll calls, the Roosevelt forces bartered with delegations and finally put their man over the top on the fourth try when House Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas folded his candidacy in exchange for the vice presidential nomination.
Roosevelt broke major party tradition by flying nine hours from Albany to Chicago to personally deliver his acceptance speech at the Congress Plaza Hotel, which was carried live from the Chicago Stadium on WGN-AM. Roosevelt, certain of victory against the Republicans because of the Great Depression, promised “a New Deal for the American people.”
“These are unprecedented and unusual times,” Roosevelt said. “May this (appearance) be the symbol of my intention to be honest and to avoid all hypocrisy or sham.”
Roosevelt, who would trounce Hoover and be nominated in Chicago again in 1940 and 1944, summoned the nation to battle back from despair. “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a New Deal for the American people,” he said, introducing the name for the governmental programs that would be created to fight the Depression.
July 18, 1940: Eleanor Roosevelt (Democrat)
Democrats returned to Chicago to nominate Franklin D. Roosevelt for his third term. (Before the first year of his third term was over, the nation would be at war with Japan and Germany.)
When Roosevelt was encountering opposition to an unprecedented third term, the specially installed microphones at the Democratic convention went dead. They were switched off by Thomas Garry, Chicago’s superintendent of sewers, who turned on the arena’s own sound system and started chanting: “Illinois wants Roosevelt! Ohio wants Roosevelt! We all want Roosevelt!”
Dubbed the “voice of the sewers,” Garry was “spontaneously” joined by hundreds of Chicago payrollers, ordered by Garry to attend. The crowd goes wild, and the convention stampedes to Roosevelt, who will be nominated here again in 1944.
Roosevelt delivered his acceptance speech from the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., which was boomed through the sound system at the Chicago Stadium. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt, however, was at the convention during a seven-hour visit. She gave what’s now known as the “No Ordinary Time” speech in support of Roosevelt’s running mate, Henry Wallace.
Apparently referring to her husband’s third-term candidacy in violation of political tradition, she said, “I know and you know that any man within that office of great responsibility today faces a heavier responsibility perhaps than any man has ever faced before in this country.”
She concluded that the situation can only be carried by a “united people who love their country and have the determination that their party shall be absolutely devoted to the good of the nation.”
Roosevelt was reelected to a third term on Nov. 5, 1940, defeating New York Republican Wendell Willkie.
June 28, 1944: Thomas E. Dewey (Republican)
Both parties return to Chicago Stadium for their conventions — the last ones held in the building, which was razed in 1994.
The Tribune differed from its publishing peers because it did not simply support the Republican Party; it believed, with great cause, that it was the Republican Party. The paper would not endorse a Democrat for almost anything until 1972. This powerful and loud editorial voice originated with publisher Col. Robert R. McCormick, who appeared on the cover of Time magazine during the paper’s 100th anniversary in 1947 and was hailed for making the Tribune “indispensable” while violating the commonly accepted requirement of objectivity on front pages.
New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey accepted his party’s nomination before 25,000 people at the Chicago Stadium by stating he came to “this great task a free man” and portrayed the Roosevelt administration as an aggregation of tired, old, squabbling men.
“This election will bring an end to one-man government in America,” Dewey told the crowd.
Four years later, the Tribune found a variety of ways to support Dewey in print.
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It ran a full-page color portrait of him and even praised his mustache. Dewey, however, made no effort to defend his reluctant ally. On a campaign visit to Chicago that same month, McCormick confided to Alf Landon that Dewey acted “as though he was not in his right mind. The governor and senator met him at the station, and he put them in the fourth and fifth cars in the procession behind some New York state policemen. At the meeting, he came on the stage just as he was introduced and left immediately afterwards without speaking to anybody.”
Notwithstanding these reservations, on Oct. 31, 1948, the Tribune editorialized that voters should “Mark It Straight Republican.” (We all now know what happened next.)
July 21, 1944: Franklin Roosevelt (Democrat)
With American troops fighting their way through Normandy, Roosevelt didn’t keep anyone in suspense. He announced he would accept a fourth-term nomination — saying if elected he would serve reluctantly “as a good soldier” — a week before the Chicago convention.
Roosevelt was clearly suffering from the wear-and-tear of years in the White House — dealing with the Great Depression and World War II, traveling to conferences with European allies. And there was no end in sight.
“You in this convention are aware of what I have sought to gain for the nation, and you have asked me to continue,” FDR said in accepting its nomination on July 20, 1944.
It was broadcast to the delegates in the Chicago Stadium from a San Diego naval base. Roosevelt was en route to Hawaii to join military brass debating strategies for the Pacific theater of war.
He was reelected on Nov. 7, 1944, but died on April 12, 1945.
July 11, 1952: Dwight Eisenhower (Republican)
The Democrats and the Republicans convened in Chicago in July 1952 at the start of the most prosperous decade in the history of any country on Earth.
The great social and political divisions and world traumas of war and economic depression that marked conventions from 1860 to the 1940s had been resolved. The aftermath of World War II found America unchallenged as the world’s leader, and the pace of invention spurred by the collective effort to destroy fascism opened a magic new world of technology that spread luxury from the exclusive realm of the very rich to almost anyone who drew a paycheck.
The 1950s were about television. There were fewer than 1 million television sets in America in 1949, the first full year of programming by three networks called CBS, ABC and NBC. By the end of 1952, 20 million homes had televisions, and one reason was the political conventions held by the Republicans and the Democrats in Chicago’s International Amphitheatre in July.
The 1952 Republican National Convention was the first ever broadcast nationwide on TV. It was a primitive broadcast with cameras focused mostly on the podium or providing long shots of the delegations. Television reporters were heard but rarely seen.
In his acceptance speech at the Hilton Chicago, Dwight D. Eisenhower called for party unity.
“The noble service to which we Republicans summon all Americans is not only for one campaign or for one election. Our summons is to a lifetime enrollment. And our party shall always remain committed to a more secure, a brighter and an even better future for our people,” he said.
July 26, 1952: Adlai Stevenson II (Democrat)
Two weeks later, the Democrats came to town.
For the first time since 1932, the Democrats faced a truly open convention. It would also be the last truly open convention of the 20th century, even though many Democrats would not believe it for another 30 years.
Truman had made it an open convention by declaring on March 29 that he would not be a candidate. The 1952 aspirants were plentiful and had excellent credentials. Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia was back, with a more moderate outlook on civil rights. Tennessean Estes Kefauver, a senator, had pulled a surprising vote in the New Hampshire primary. Robert Kerr of Oklahoma was the “log cabin” candidate, the first since Lincoln to boast that he had been born there en route to his oil millions. Averell Harriman of New York, a worldly diplomat and White House troubleshooter, was available and so was lovable, aging Vice President Alben Barkley.
The man who kept saying he wasn’t available had been alternately the favorite and the dark horse throughout the year: Gov. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois.
Stevenson, who did not seek the presidential nomination, was drafted on the third ballot. Although he was a reluctant candidate, he pledged a hard-fighting campaign.
“I have no feeling of exultation, nor sense of triumph,” Stevenson said outside the home of William McCormick Blair at 1416 Astor St. “I shall ask my God to give me courage in this great undertaking.”
Eisenhower won the 1952 election on Nov. 4, 1952, bringing the Republican Party its first White House victory in 24 years.
Aug. 17, 1956: Adlai Stevenson II (Democrat)
It was also at the 1956 convention in Chicago that another, eventually brighter, political star got his first major exposure.
When Stevenson accepted the nomination, he said the country was on “the threshold of a new America … the America of the great ideas and noble visions which are the stuff our future must be made of.”
A fight broke out on the floor under the watchful eyes of the infant television medium when Stevenson asked the delegates to choose his running mate.
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Although the nod eventually went to Kefauver of Tennessee, who often wore a coonskin hat, his closest rival, the youthful Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, benefited from the national television exposure that helped propel him to the Democratic presidential nomination four years later.
Incumbent Eisenhower defeated Stevenson on Nov. 6, 1956, for the second time.
July 28, 1960: Richard Nixon (Republican)
Republicans nominated Vice President Richard M. Nixon to run against Democrat John F. Kennedy.
In a solemn, but fighting acceptance speech, the California grocer’s son bid for support for the highest office. He based his appeal on his experience and training for preserving national security.
“A hundred years ago Abraham Lincoln was asked during the darkest days of the tragic War between the States whether he thought God was on his side and his answer was, ‘My concern is not whether God is on our side, but whether we are on God’s side,'” Nixon said. “My fellow Americans, may that ever be our prayer for this country; and in that spirit, with faith in America, with faith in her ideals and in her people, I accept your nomination for president of the United States.”
Nixon narrowly lost the election to Kennedy on Nov. 8, 1960.
Aug. 29, 1968: Hubert H. Humphrey (Democrat)
Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey was nominated at a stormy Democratic convention that was marked by riots on the streets as well as raucous political demonstrations on the floor of the Chicago Amphitheater.
“This moment is one of personal pride and gratification. Yet we cannot help but reflect the sadness we feel at the violence … in the streets of this great city and for the personal injuries which have occurred,” Humphrey said. “Surely we have now learned the lesson that … violence cannot be condoned, whatever the source. I know that every delegate to this convention shares tonight my sorrow and my distress at these incidents and may we for just one moment of sober reflection … silently … each in his own way, pray for our country …”
Nixon was elected on Nov. 5, 1968, defeating not only Humphrey but also American Independent Party candidate and former Alabama Gov. George Wallace.
Aug. 29, 1996: Bill Clinton (Democrat)
Promising to build a bridge into the 21st century on a foundation of middle-class hopes and dreams, Bill Clinton accepted the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, a chief executive who has tasted sweet triumph and bitter defeat now ready to face his final White House campaign.
“The real choice is about whether we will build a bridge to the future or a bridge to the past; about whether we believe our best days are ahead or behind us; about whether we want a country of people working together, or one where you’re on your own,” Clinton said.
Clinton’s planned moment of triumph after the first three days of a flawless convention came amid a new political crisis for the president. Earlier in the day, old friend and political consultant Richard Morris submitted his resignation after a steamy tabloid newspaper story alleged he had a long-running sex-for-money relationship with a Washington prostitute.
The president and Vice President Al Gore, who accepted his nomination before Clinton, did not address the Morris scandal in their acceptance speeches. But that did not stop endless partisan speculation on the effect of the resignation of Clinton’s top political aide, the architect of his centrist policies and a convention dominated by moderate themes.
The development and Clinton’s prime-time address capped the Democrats’ first convention in Chicago in 28 years, ending a week that saw the president zigzagging up and down the Midwest on a long, telegenic train ride aimed at underlining his agenda and punching at the Republicans who would drive him from office.
Repeatedly invoking the image of a bridge to the next century, Clinton offered two new proposals: a $3.5 billion incentive program to create jobs for welfare recipients who are leaving the rolls and a fat plum for the middle class — elimination of capital gains on profits of under $500,000 on the sale of homes.
If the bad timing of the Morris debacle was on Clinton’s mind Thursday night, that was not seen in his acceptance address, carefully constructed to repeat the themes that dozens of campaign speakers have presented at the podium over four days as they praised the Clinton record.
The president’s speech was preceded by a Democratic National Committee video that offered a Clinton family cameo, including the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, seen more at this convention than at any point during Clinton’s presidency.
First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea sat in the United Center listening to the speech with a special guest, former world champion boxer Muhammad Ali. Clinton thanked Chicago for giving him a great convention, and “for the love and light of my life, Hillary.”
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