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Jimmy Carter was one of the lesser known Democratic candidates in the 1976 presidential elections. Although he had already served as a Georgia Senator and the Governor of Georgia, his name recognition during the campaign was only two percent. Carter's religious background and experience as a peanut farmer appealed to the conservative and rural voters in Georgia. Average Americans recovering from the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate also preferred a Washington outsider like Carter, a fresh face to mainstream politics. To everyone’s surprise, Carter won the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination. He proceeded to win the presidential election against the Republican candidate Gerald R. Ford and served as the 39th President of the United States. He reran for presidency in the 1980 election but lost the race to his Republican opponent Ronald Reagan.

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Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie ran in the 1968 presidential election. Humphrey had previously served as Vice President under Lyndon B. Johnson and was encouraged to run when Johnson announced he would not seek reelection. Humphrey won the official nomination from the Democratic party and ran on a liberal platform that focused on civil rights and nuclear disarmament, although neither issues were popular at the time. They were ultimately defeated by Republicans Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, who won 301 to 191 in the electoral college. 

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Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. served as the 38th Vice-President of the United States. After two previous failed attempts at the presidency, supporters wanted Humphrey to run again in the 1976 presidential election. However, he chose not to run when he learned that he had terminal cancer. Humphrey died of cancer in January 1978.

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Harvey Milk (1930-1978), was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, becoming the first openly gay elected official in California history. Milk earned the nickname, “Mayor of Castro Street” after becoming a well-known community leader and business owner of “Castro,” a camera shop. His liberal views clashed with fellow supervisor Dan White, who resigned from the board in 1978. White unsuccessfully attempted to resume his supervisory role and assassinate both Milk and Mayor George Moscone later that year. Milk had only served 11 months, but his legacy has been immortalized in LGBT history and posthumous tributes such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded by President Barack Obama in 2009. 

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"Had Enough?" was part of Reagan's 1966 campaign for governor of California against the two term incumbent Pat Brown. Four years later in 1970 it was used against him in the his re-election campaign. As the 33^rd governor of California, Reagan's platform was noted for its limited government, welfare reform, efforts to stop student protesting, and substantial elimination of state's budget deficit. 

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George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy were dominant candidates in the Democratic primary campaign of 1968. McCarthy was recruited to run in the primary in an effort to remove incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson from office due to his position on the Vietnam war. McGovern, on the other hand, didn’t join the primary until two weeks before the Democratic National Convention. While neither politician won the Democratic candidacy, both continued to work in the senate against the Vietnam war.

McGovern and McCarthy’s politics were alike in their pursuit to end the Vietnam war. McGovern had been a keynote speaker at several peace demonstrations against the war, and then shifted his focus to try and use legislation to end the war via the McGovern–Hatfield Amendment. Though the Amendment was never ratified, the public recognized McGovern’s intentions and largely agreed with his moral stance on the war. McCarthy, however, had a less amenable reputation in his stance against the Vietnam war and was not equally involved in senate proceedings.

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Charlie Brown, a character from the weekly syndicated comic strip Peanuts, was debuted by Charles M. Schulz on May 30, 1948. Since his release, Brown has been a staple in pop culture and was famously present, in the form of a doll, at the command center for the Apollo 10 launch. His popularity has remained throughout the years inspiring merchandise and memorabilia that channel that sentiment with references to the iconic character. 

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Birch Evans Bayh, Jr. sought the Democratic nomination for the 1976 presidential election and was also a former U.S. Senator from Indiana and Speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives.

Bayh is the only non-Founding Father to author two amendments to the U.S. Constitution - the Title IX of the Higher Education Act of 1965 banning gender discrimination in higher education and the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act which provides funds to states that follow protections for the care and treatment of youth in the justice system. Bayh continues to champion causes that he believes in and is currently a longtime Senior Fellow of the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College.

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1968, a presidential election year, was a tumultuous time in American politics. The year was marked by widespread anti-Vietnam War protests and the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King’s assassination caused riots across America. Richard Nixon had the Republican nomination for president, Hubert Humphrey had the Democrat nomination, and George Wallace was also running as an Independent. Nixon won the general election by less than 1% of the popular vote, but swept the Electoral College. His victory marked the end of the New Deal coalition which had maintained power since 1932. It also marked the rise of the “Southern strategy” where Republicans courted the vote of traditionally Democrat-voting Southern states. 1968 was also the last election where a third party candidate captured all the electoral votes of a state. The button seen here was worn to encourage citizens to vote Democrat straight down the ticket.