JAMES EASTLAND

'James Oliver Eastland' (November 28, 1904 – February 19, 1986) was an American politician from Mississippi who served in the United States Senate as a Democrat briefly in 1941 and again from 1943 until his resignation December 27, 1978. From 1947 to 1978, he served alongside John Stennis, also a Democrat. Eastland and Stennis were the second longest-serving Senate duo in American history, behind only Strom Thurmond and Fritz Hollings of South Carolina (who served together for 38 years).

Early life

Eastland was born in Doddsville, the son of a cotton planter. In 1905 he moved with his parents to Forest where he attended public schools. A lawyer in rural Mississippi, he served one term in the state House of Representatives from 1928 to 1932. In the 1930s, he took over the family's Sunflower County plantation, which eventually grew to nearly 6,000 acres (24 km²). Even after entering politics, he considered himself first and foremost a cotton planter.

Political career

Eastland was first appointed to the Senate in 1941 following the death of Senator Pat Harrison, but did not run in the special election for the seat later in the year; it was won by 2nd District Representative Wall Doxey. In 1942, Eastland was one of three candidates who challenged Doxey for a full term. Even though Doxey had the support of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Mississippi's senior U.S. Senator Theodore Bilbo, Eastland defeated him in the Democratic primary, which at that time was tantamount to election in Mississippi. He was reelected five times, facing substantive Republican opposition only twice.
In 1966, 4th District Representative Prentiss Walker, the first Republican to represent Mississippi at the federal level in over 80 years, ran against him. However, as is usually the case with a Representative who runs for the Senate after a single term, Walker was badly defeated. In 1972, Eastland was reelected with 58% of the vote in his closest contest ever. His Republican opponent, Gil Carmichael, was undoubtedly aided by President Richard Nixon's landslide reelection in 49 states, including 78% of Mississippi's popular vote. Nixon and other Republicans didn't provide much support for Carmichael to avoid alienating conservative Southern Democrats.

Views on civil rights, race

Eastland is best known for his virulent opposition to the American Civil Rights Movement and support for segregationism.
When the Supreme Court issued its decision in the landmark case ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas'' 347 US 483 (1954), Eastland denounced it in a speech given in Senatobia, Mississippi on August 12, 1955, saying: "On May 17, 1954, the Constitution of the United States was destroyed because of the Supreme Court's decision. You are not obliged to obey the decisions of any court which are plainly fraudulent [and based on] sociological considerations."
Moreover, Eastland called Brown illegal and proclaimed that "resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."
Eastland did not mince words when it came to his feelings about the races mingling. He testified to the Senate 10 days after the Brown decision came down: “The Southern institution of racial segregation or racial separation was the correct, self-evident truth which arose from the chaos and confusion of the Reconstruction period. Separation promotes racial harmony. It permits each race to follow its own pursuits, and its own civilization. Segregation is not discrimination… Mr. President, it is the law of nature, it is the law of God, that every race has both the right and the duty to perpetuate itself. All free men have the right to associate exclusively with members of their own race, free from governmental interference, if they so desire.”
When three civil rights workers Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman went missing in Mississippi on June 21, 1964, he reportedly told President Lyndon Johnson that the incident was a hoax and there was no Ku Klux Klan in the state, surmising that the three had gone to Chicago [1]:
'President Johnson': Jim, we’ve got three kids missing down there. What can I do about it?
:'Eastland': Well, I don’t know. I don’t believe there’s . . . I don’t believe there’s three missing.
'President Johnson': We’ve got their parents down here.
:'Eastland': I believe it’s a publicity stunt. . . .
(Johnson once said that, "Jim Eastland could be standing right in the middle of the worst Mississippi flood ever known, and he'd say 'The niggers caused it, helped out some by the Communists.") As such he was portrayed in the Hollywood version of the incident, ''Mississippi Burning''.
Eastland also served as a director of the infamous Pioneer Fund, a foundation dedicated to "improving the race." (Eastland would some years later stare coldly down a committee table at Senator Jacob Javits of New York, who was Jewish and say, "I don't like you — or your kind.") Eastland, along with Senators Robert Byrd, John McClellan, Olin D. Johnston, Sam Ervin and Strom Thurmond, made unsuccessful attempts to block Thurgood Marshall's confirmation to the Federal Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court.
Given Eastland's vitriolic public statements against the civil rights movement, observers sometimes attribute racist anecdotes or statements to him without substantiation. Contrary to oft-published historical accounts, for example, Eastland and Judge Harold Cox, a notoriously racist judge, were not college roommates; they were friends, but Cox was in law school at the University of Mississippi while Eastland was an undergraduate (Eastland never graduated from college and did not attend law school). The senator did not use Cox as leverage against President Kennedy in the latter’s attempt to appoint Thurgood Marshall to a federal judgeship. Cox was appointed more than a year before Marshall even came up for consideration, and his approval from the president resulted from a personal conversation between Cox and Kennedy. The president, not wanting to upset the powerful chairman of the judiciary committee, generally acceded to Eastland's requests on judicial confirmations in Mississippi — Eastland's power, not his racism, was the determining factor.
Another widely-repeated but inaccurate rumor claims that Eastland called civil rights activists "black, slimy, juicy, unbearably stinking niggers" and advocated the destruction of the Negro race. This quotation, which was given by another speaker at a rally attended by Eastland, was mis-attributed to the senator. Although Eastland was a staunch segregationist and avowed racist, he refrained from the most extreme rhetoric that characterized other civil rights opponents.
Eastland was appointed as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1956 and held that post until his retirement. Ironically, his committee considered the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which Eastland bitterly opposed. Its passage caused Eastland and most other prominent Mississippi Democrats to openly support Barry Goldwater's presidential bid that year. Although Goldwater was heavily defeated by incumbent Lyndon Johnson, he carried Mississippi with 87% of the popular vote (his best showing in any state [2]) due to his opposition to federal civil rights legislation, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Eastland was named chairman by then-Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, with whom he was later at odds because of Johnson policy on civil rights (previously, Johnson was one of just three senators from the South who didn't sign infamous Southern Manifesto, as Eastland and other did).
During his last Senate term, he served as president pro tempore of the Senate since he was the longest-serving Democrat in the Senate.

McCarthy supporter

James Eastland

Eastland was an ally of Joseph McCarthy and served on the Committee investigating many Americans' connections to the Communist Party. Even after McCarthy was discredited, Eastland tried to press the issue. Using his power as chairman of the Internal Security Subcommittee, he subpoenaed a number of employees of ''The New York Times'', which was at the time taking a strong position on its editorial page that Mississippi should adhere to the ''Brown'' decision. The Times countered in its January 5, 1956 editorial:
:"Our faith is strong that long after Senator Eastland and his present subcommittee are gone, long after segregation has lost its final battle in the South, long after all that was known as McCarthyism is a dim, unwelcome memory, long after the last Congressional committee has learned that it cannot tamper successfully with a free press, The ''New York Times'' will be speaking for (those) who make it, and only for (those) who make it, and speaking, without fear or favor, the truth as it sees it."

Later years

In his last years in the Senate, he avoided associating himself with racist stands in the face of increasing black political power in Mississippi. He considered running for reelection in 1978 and sought to win black support. He won the support of civil rights leader and NAACP president Aaron Henry, but he ultimately decided not to seek reelection in 1978. Due in part to an independent black candidate siphoning off votes from the Democratic candidate, Republican 4th District Representative Thad Cochran won the race to succeed him. Eastland resigned two days after Christmas, giving Cochran a leg up in seniority. After his retirement, he remained friends with Aaron Henry and sent contributions to the NAACP, but he publicly stated that he "didn't regret a thing." He died on February 19, 1986.
The law library at Ole Miss is named after Eastland. This has caused a good deal of controversy in Mississippi given Eastland's unabashed racism.

Twice as Senate President

James Eastland was, as of 2007, the last President pro tempore who served as the permanent Senate President during a vacancy of the Vice Presidency. He actually did so twice during the tumultuous 1970's, first in 1973 between Spiro Agnew's resignation and the swearing in of Gerald Ford as Vice President, and then one year later when Ford became President and Nelson Rockefeller was sworn in as Vice President.

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JAMES EASTLAND

Early life

Political career

Views on civil rights, race

McCarthy supporter

Later years

Twice as Senate President

Further reading

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