James Eastland

James Oliver Eastland (November 28, 1904 to February 19, 1986) was born at Doddsville, Mississippi, "only months after his father had orchestrated the gruesome lynching of a Black woman and her lover, who was accused of murdering Woods's twenty-one-year-old brother, James, in whose memory the newborn was named." His grandfather had bought more than 2,000 acres of Sunflower County "for speculative purposes," and his father, Woods Eastland, a personal injury lawyer, made it a plantation. He studied at the University of Mississippi, Vanderbilt, and the University of Alabama, was admitted to the bar in 1927, and sat in the state legislature as a supporter of Governor Theodore G. Bilbo. When Senator Pat Harrison died in 1941, Woods Eastland declined the appointment and suggested his son. "The boy'll do it," said Governor Paul Johnson.¹²

The Plantation

On the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry he "zealously guarded the interests of southern farmers, especially the planters of his native Delta, who reaped millions of dollars in annual subsidies. His own plantation, which eventually grew to nearly 6,000 acres, consistently received more than $100,000 a year in price supports until Congress capped the payments at $50,000."²

The Committees

He left the Democratic ticket for the Dixiecrats in 1948. In 1953 he became chairman of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, "a forum from which to hound suspected domestic subversives, especially those involved in civil rights activities and the labor movement," and in 1956 chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which he made the "graveyard of civil rights legislation," blocking "more than one hundred civil rights measures." He told white audiences "that he once had special pockets sewn into his trousers so he could carry civil rights bills around with him to make sure no one called them up for consideration in his absence." Senator Herbert Lehman called him "a symbol of racism in America." The Episcopal Diocese of New York charged him with "subversion just as real and, because it comes from a U.S. Senator, far more dangerous than any perpetrated by the Communist Party." Senator Ted Kennedy praised the "scrupulously fair and even-handed manner in which he presided." Aaron Henry told him: "You have a master-servant philosophy with regard to blacks."¹²

Welch

On March 31, 1961, Robert Welch of the John Birch Society telegraphed Eastland asking the subcommittee to investigate the society. "None of our members will plead the Fifth Amendment." On July 3, 1962, Welch wrote that the society had spent "several thousand dollars" to send its members Eastland's speech "Is the Supreme Court Pro-Communist?" and closed "with admiration for both your patriotism and your courage."³

Wickliffe Draper's money for the campaign against the Civil Rights Act went through the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission of Eastland's state.⁴

The Hunts

"Nelson Bunker and his father met President Nixon at the celebrated barbecue at John Connally's Floresville ranch in the autumn of 1972. Soon after, Nelson Bunker huddled with Richard Kleindienst, then the new boss of the Justice Department, at the plantation of Mississippi Senator James Eastland." The account came from Hunt sources. The wiretapping indictments of the Hunt brothers followed regardless.⁵

The Succession

Eastland became president pro tempore of the Senate in 1972 and "twice came within a heartbeat of the oval office," when Spiro Agnew resigned in 1973 and when Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon in 1974. He resigned on December 27, 1978, days before his term ended, so that the Republican senator-elect, Thad Cochran, could be appointed early and gain seniority. "I voted my convictions on everything," he said. In 1991 he entered the Mississippi Hall of Fame on the same day as Medgar Evers.¹²