DIXIE DEMAGOGUE
Marja, Fern
DIXIE DEMAGOGUE By Fern Marja T)Y VIRTUE of an act of survival, both biologic and political, Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi has emerged on the American scene as a major paradox. The...
...Bilbo, who was backing Wall Doxey for the Senate, irately suggested that Eastland could better serve his country by joining the armed forces...
...II The only child of Woods Caper-ton and Alma Austin Eastland, Mississippi's senior Senator was born Nov...
...The employe took out a notebook and flipped through the pages...
...Four years later, when Bilbo and Eastland had completed their respective terms, Mississippi was bankrupt and the governor in disrepute...
...Jim Eastland charged into Washington, a young Senator in a big hurry...
...Jim Eastland gratefully acknowledges his debt to the ancient custom of seniority, a word he pronounces with such reverence that it suggests not Congressional longevity but a composite of sterling virtues...
...He wasn't the kind to dig through books...
...His 1954 campaign manager, C. Arthur Sullivan of Jackson, says bluntly: "I'm glad Jim ran in 1954 and not in 1953 or 1955...
...His office was established in nearby Ruleville, where he still shares rooms on the second floor of the local bank with Robert D. Everitt...
...The first arrived in February, the second in March...
...Throughout the long, hot months that followed, Jim Eastland never once forgot that destiny had assigned him to uphold what he is fond of calling "the Southern way of life...
...There was a grain of truth in this portrait...
...They are just as inimical to liberty as the commissars of Russia and when we resist the usurpation we become worthy of the name of freedom...
...Whether it is diffidence or disdain that is responsible, Eastland has never kissed babies or clapped their fathers' shoulders en route to Capitol Hill...
...Washington was ripe for a freshman Senator from a cotton state...
...Mr...
...I am proud that the purest of white blood flows in my veins...
...The tall, drawling planter with wary blue eyes set in a full-moon face is the self-appointed generalissimo of the South's cold war against the Supreme Court desegregation decision...
...So far as his colleagues were concerned, he was an unobtrusive Southern legislator about whom they knew little and cared less...
...Even Mississippians regard it as a holdover from an antediluvian era...
...Although The Man raged up and down Mississippi delivering 64 speeches against his former associate, Eastland, heralded in his own publicity releases as "the champion of the South" and sardonically labeled by the opposition as "the savior of the farmers," won handily...
...Woods let word get around that he wanted Jim elected," recalls a veteran observer...
...The rest was silence...
...Until then, he had nothing but the farm issue...
...The Eastland farm and plantation (Woods left the estate in part to the Senator, in part to his children, and they are operated as two separate enterprises) form a a formidable private empire valued at more than a million dollars and annually netting an income that soars into six figures...
...Seventy-two this year, Mr...
...That decision gave him enough of the city vote to win...
...It has been estimated that his opponent in the 1954 campaign, Carroll Gartin, shook hands with more constituents in a single day than the Senator did during the entire summer...
...He had given Johnson his word that he would not run in the special election, but that didn't mean he would not try for the full Senate term the following year...
...He's away too much...
...On this score, at least, he has the firm support of a large proportion of the American public...
...Jim was always such a ramblin' type feller," recalls a former classmate, "that I wondered whether he would ever settle down and practice law...
...A genial, lanky grasshopper of a man, Everitt last year served as president of the local Citizens Council and recently explained: "We're not prejudiced against niggers...
...Solemnly he has maintained, "I am not prejudiced against any race...
...Chortling with glee at the opportunity to break with The Man publicly and win the sup port of anti-Bilbo moderates, the pupil shrilled his defiance to the master in a four-page letter that was siphoned into the headlines...
...Woods was more of a dominating person than Jim," comments Oliver B. Triplett, a Forest attorney who went to school with Jim Eastland...
...Skipping blithely from the University of Mississippi to Vanderbilt University to the University of Alabama, he passed the state bar exam and promptly abandoned his law studies...
...Eastland's adherence to this credo has led him to offer to uphold the color line "against the radicalism of all the Negroid groups from New York, Philadelphia, and other metropolitan areas of the East...
...He was not yet a year old when his family moved to the hill town of Forest, where the head of the household achieved a measure of fame as district attorney...
...From early morning until dark, he drives about in his Oldsmobile (his wife chauffeurs a Cadillac), conferring endlessly with his plantation manager...
...The unmaidenly outburst received expensive coverage in the Mississippi press...
...Eastland turned to his guest...
...They may well keep him from mobilizing national power in the style of his good friend, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin...
...for three years to block President Truman's civil rights program...
...I know that the white race is a superior race...
...As a result, the Dixiecrat who insists the Supreme Court has been "indoctrinated and brainwashed by left-wing pressure groups" and who has been attacked as "a symbol of racism in America" now heads the Senate body that considers all civil rights legislation and passes on all appointments to the federal bench...
...Eastland caustically rejected this invitation...
...To the old Negro in charge of the cattle, Eastland said, "How many calves has this bull had...
...On the other hand they may conceivably thrust him into greater prominence as a spokesman for the conservative, respectable elements of the Southland...
...As Woods Eastland occupied himself with buying up land at $1 an acre that is currently valued at $200 to $250 an acre, he was making handsome contributions to the gubernatorial campaigns of his old pal, Paul B. Johnson, Sr...
...Eastland unflinchingly latched on to The Man and precociously gained notoriety as one of a trio of Bilbo floor leaders who gloried in the title of the Little Three...
...As a full-ranking Senator, Eastland was articulate on two topics: cotton and Jim Crow...
...But their yapping didn't get them anywhere...
...The bilbonic plague was yet to assume national proportions, but locally it was already a recognized direat...
...Racial agitation for integration is a Northern problem, not a Southern problem...
...His intimates describe him as a Scotch highball enthusiast, but he looks the interviewer square in the eye and declares, "I don't drink at all— Mississippi is a dry state...
...You know what happened...
...But in Mississippi he was grandiosely depicted as "Mr...
...Jim," he reported...
...Neither the white race nor the black race wants integration in Mississippi...
...May 17, 1954, the date on which the Supreme Court outlawed Jim Crow in the public schools, is called "Black Monday" by the Citizens Councils...
...His appetite whetted, he set about satisfying it with cynical precision...
...And: "It was Southern brains which founded this government, and which gave to the world democracy . . ." Of this purple verbiage Eastland says candidly: "It was a campaign speech...
...For the welfare of this domain, Eastland cheerfully sacrifices his principles on national issues...
...His personality, as displayed beyond his father's radius, was intermittently generous and lordly...
...The thing that irritated him most that summer was for anybody to challenge his leadership in the war to retain segregation...
...The law is nothing but the will of the people We have no racial friction in my state...
...No master of rhetoric, Eastland is now in constant demand as key speaker at Citizens Councils rallies, although he is not a formal member of the group...
...Jim Eastland went home and jubilantly devoted himself to organizing the state...
...I wanted to practice law...
...Any position of force is foreign to the U.S...
...So far, the formula has paid off...
...While shouldering the white man's burden in Senate debate on the Fair Employment Practices Committee, Eastland produced this evaluation of the Negro soldier: "The Negro soldier was an utter and dismal failure in combat in Europe...
...In the process he has chalked up so much absenteeism on the hill that Gartin branded him "a 50 per cent Senator...
...Some of our best citizens are niggers...
...The Eastlands (who now have four children—Nell, 22...
...Gartin was powerless to overcome this advantage...
...they were married in 1932...
...But he clearly outlined the shape of things to come less than two years ago, when he was stumping Mississippi from Yellow Rabbit to Vinegar Bend, from Hush Puckena to Shubuta, boasting that he had broken the law FERN MARJA, stiff writer for the Now York Post, made an extensive study of Senator Eastland for that newspaper...
...Lawyer, landowner, and political virtuoso, Woods Eastland was as affable as his son is taciturn, as eager to meet people as his son is to avoid them...
...But his allergy to black, brown, yellow, and olive skins makes him confer additional designations on those who voice their dislike of racial discrimination...
...I was afraid that they'd call a special session of that committee and vote the bills out behind my back...
...Only a few weeks ago, on a coast-to-coast telecast, he announced, "Now I'm not going to argue the superiority of one race over another...
...He would always be trying to show Jim off...
...He recognized instantly that the Supreme Court ruling could assure his victory in the race with Gartin...
...Still without prejudice, he went on to broaden the indictment: "I state that the conduct of the Negro soldier in Normandy, as all over Europe, was disgraceful, and that Negro soldiers have disgraced the flag of our country...
...That information was general knowledge...
...And there I was, chairman of a committee, and there were Northerners up there—Yankees that didn't know anything about the question—who were lined up against us...
...Restless, morose, short-tempered, highly competitive, Eastland chainsmokes cigars, hunts, fishes, rides horseback, devours true detective stories and thick steaks, willingly travels ten miles for a newspaper...
...I just studied what I wanted to study...
...The feud continued until Bilbo's death...
...And they said that I broke the law...
...Early in June, in his first campaign talk, he described the Supreme Court as "biased and incompetent" and added: "When Justices who are not elected by the people but are appointed for life enter the field of legislation, they become instruments of tyranny...
...But he is most relaxed on the delta, where he can slough off all pretense of statesmanship...
...Woods Eastland declined with thanks in favor of his offspring...
...His personal comfort supersedes all other considerations, including votes...
...He used to keep Jim around older folks when Jim would rather have been with his own age group...
...Jim Eastland may not have relished these demonstrations, but he acquired the political facts of life by osmosis...
...Eastland's maiden venture was what his administrative assistant, Courtney Pace, refers to as "a hell of a speech" lambasting Henderson and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr...
...Wrapped in cotton batting since the day of his birth, he expects the world to conform to his expectations...
...I'd rather," he said, "be that bull than United States Senator...
...Cotton," a selfless, hardworking representative of the farmers who concentrated fiercely on his duties 24 hours a day...
...He did...
...His close identification with Bilbo left Eastland no alternative but to withdraw into private practice...
...he has retained his Senate seat since 1943...
...I liked the taste I got," he admits...
...He also proposed to Elizabeth Coleman, the daughter of a Doddsville physician, on a porch swing...
...It is difficult to tell whether in the long run his negative attributes will prove a help or a hindrance...
...28, 1904, in Doddsville, a hamlet about 40 miles east of the capital city of Jackson...
...He regularly steals away from the Senate to check up on developments in the delta...
...Her writing has brought her the New York Newspaper Guild Page One Award and the George Polk Memorial Award on two occasions...
...Here, where the rampages of the mighty river have deposited layer upon layer of rich, black soil to create one of the lushest cotton-producing areas in the world, the Civil War is still a more significant event than World Wars I, II, and even III...
...I didn't permit them to meet...
...Who's going to force them to integrate...
...It was enough...
...Yet early in March his colleagues deliberately overlooked his leadership of the white supremacy forces and, with furious adherence to club rules, elevated him into the chairmanship of the powerful Judiciary Committee to succeed the late Senator Kilgore of West Virginia...
...Jim Eastland was not yet 24, but Woods' will triumphed...
...I had special pockets put in my pants and for three years I carried those bills around in my pockets everywhere I went, and every one of them was defeated and the CIO and these racial groups yapped and yapped...
...The two were inseparable...
...But he has also asserted: "I say frankly that I am proud of the white race...
...Eastland sincerely espouses the cause of the cotton farmer...
...Ann, 18...
...Unlike Bilbo and Vardaman, Eastland lacks color and passion...
...In his wake, he left a network of legend involving wine, women, and song...
...He has told the Senate: "The Negro race is an inferior race...
...I am not prejudiced against the Negro...
...He summoned Woods and offered him 88 honorary days in the Senate to fill out Harrison's unexpired term...
...Why, for the three years I was chairman, that committee didn't hold a meeting...
...My father wanted me to run," says Eastland in summary...
...It has ruled the world...
...On this level he has managed to turn the CIO and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People into obscene terms in his home state...
...He drew his laughs from playing practical jokes on others, a trait he has never outgrown...
...Sue, 13, and Woods, 11) set up housekeeping on the Doddsville farm, in a pleasant, unpretentious home that today churns with social activities between Senate sessions...
...Supreme Court that transformed Eastland into a crusader...
...Old Jim has veto power on the plantation," says a friend, "but he's afraid to use it...
...In effect, Woods was paying for his heir's Senate seat on the installment plan...
...At the high school in Forest, he was regarded as a gawky prankster who bulleted about in his parents' Premier and was always lavishly endowed with funds...
...IV But consistency has never been one of Eastland's failings...
...At the moment, Eastland is content to solidify his position...
...When his statements were challenged, Eastland was unable to produce any supporting evidence...
...When I make that statement, it is not from prejudice...
...I didn't want a political career," he says now, pursing his mouth as though he were tasting sour grapes...
...The plantation, crisscrossed by public roads, stretches out flat and fertile under the domed skies of Sunflower County- Complete with 400 inhabitants, the atmosphere is that of a tiny kingdom...
...Cotton," who clashed so bitterly with Senator Herbert Lehman of New York over the Displaced Persons Act that the two did not speak for three years, is the only one of the 96 Senate members to come forward as a sponsor for aliens...
...You know, the law says the committee has got to meet once a week...
...This is the delta, the deepest part of the deep South...
...My friends, they said I broke the law when I did it, but I had to protect the interests of the people of Mississippi...
...Eastland of Mississippi," he would chant, flapping his elbows rythmical-ly for emphasis, "became the boss of the committee that had all the civil rights bills and ever since then the CIO and these organizations have been yapping that I was arrogant and high-handed with them...
...And so I did...
...But it was the desegregation edict of the U.S...
...As one of Eastland's lieutenants puts it: "Jim's set himself up as the man to lead the fight for the South...
...Outside the magnolia state, he is almost an anonymous figure...
...It has given us civilization...
...That speech elected me to the Senate...
...At 51, James Oliver Eastland maintains a deceptively homespun facade that conceals the imperious instincts of a Caesar...
...V Like Republican Joseph R. McCarthy, Democrat Eastland equates opposition with communism...
...On June 22, 1941, when Senator Pat Harrison died, Governor Johnson repaid his debt...
...He also inquired plaintively, "What does white supremacy mean...
...He remains the hero of the Citizens Councils, which have been dubbed the manicured Ku Klux Klan, and a guiding star of the Federation for Constitutional Government, an all-South movement dedicated to the proposition that only white men are created equal...
...From the beginning, he enjoyed pulling strings backstage...
...He could have found the answer in his own speeches...
...Eastland, steeped early in Southern history, accepted the past as a blueprint for the future...
...To the Gentleman from Mississippi they are "Northern mongrels" and "Red mongrel minority groups of the North...
...Small wonder, then, that the Senator, no matter where he is physically, spiritually hovers over his property with all the ardor of a Eugene O'Neill patriarch...
...government...
...We have a rule in the Senate that when you report a bill out of a committee, you have got to have the original bill, got to have the original thing there before you...
...Eastland attended three universities without garnering a single degree, a record he doesn't particularly like to be reminded of today...
...It is this blend of the folksy and the dictatorial that is as close to a hallmark as Jim Eastland can get...
...He talked in terms of national meetings, constitutional amendments, attacks on the Supreme Court...
...Eastland assured me, when I called on him, that it is his shyness that motivates his unorthodox behavior as a legislator...
...In this address, Eastland displayed his aptitude as Bilbo's protege: "We of the South are the purest strain of Anglo-Saxon blood," he asserted in the best demagogic vein...
...And so I was...
...Although he is a rigid opponent of liberalized immigration laws, Eastland volunteers with a grin, "That doesn't mean I don't take advantage of the Refugee Relief Act to sponsor two European families...
...Whatever else may be said of Eastland, opportunity did not have to knock twice on his door...
...Both are working for Eastland as sharecroppers, raising cotton, oats, soybeans, corn, and livestock in the delta, where the Senator's neighbors complain that "good" Negroes are departing in sizable numbers to seek industrial employment in the big cities of the North and West...
...Like his picturesque predecessors in the demagogic tradition, Democrat Eastland exploits the prejudices of his fellow-Mississippians for his own advantage...
...I never did take a prescribed course," he says defensively...
...If young Jim failed to catch his father's easy charm, it wasn't for lack of exposure...
...OPA Administrator Leon Henderson had just announced that a ceiling was to be placed on cottonseed oil...
...The Senator," explains one of Eastland's cohorts, "has the quality of being easily irritated...
...But Eastland pere, who had retired from legal practice to build up the 600 acres he had inherited from his own father into the 5,020-acre plantation he was to bequeath to his son, was deftly maneuvering Jim's election to the state house of representatives...
...Eastland has since pointed out that the resistance should be confined to an exploration of the legal methods of delay, but it is impossible to believe that this was the interpretation of his listeners back in 1954...
...For Jim Eastland, it was the most felicitous day in an undistinguished life...
...III The year was 1928, and a leather-lunged redneck named Theodore G. Bilbo occupied the governor's mansion...
...Eastland said to me: "It's been my experience that people have what they want...
...He ardently touted both...
...He has, after all, 5,020 selfish reasons for his devotion...
...You know what happened...
...Not long ago he took a visitor around his estate and proudly exhibited a prize bull...
...For the rest, he was somewhat apathetic and frequently didn't bother to show himself on the Senate floor...
...Both his friends and his foes agree that he is the antithesis of the handshaking, backslapping politico...
...As a boy," says one of his childhood companions, "Jim could fight the Civil War all over again—and he could now...
...It is responsible for all the progress on earth...
Vol. 20 • May 1956 • No. 5
