Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Senator Theodore Bilbo (D-MS): Arch Segregationist
Governor Blagojevich is at it again! He has defied his own party and appointed a successor to President-elect Barack H. Obama in the United States Senate. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has already announces that the Senate would not seat the new nominee, which raised the question, when was the last time that the United States Senate refused to seat an elected Senator. According to U.S. Senate historians, the last time was in 1947, when a coalition of Republicans and Northern Democrats refused to seat Hon. Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi (pictured left). Senator Bilbo was a real character of the game. Let’s turn back the clock and take a look at this little piece of historic irony.
What an irony! The last time the United States Senate refused to seat a legally elected or appointed Senator was in 1947, when the Republican-controlled body refused to seat arch-segregationist Senator Theodore G. Bilbo. Ironic? Sure. Senator Bilbo must be absolutely spinning in his grave with the knowledge that America has elected its first Black President. However, that old devil must also be chuckling because the man who is being blocked 62 years after he was blocked is Black.
Theodore Bilbo was one of the most colorful Southern politicians of the twentieth century. He was one of a new breed of populists (or demoagogues, depending on your point of view) who rose up in the dirt poor deep South. Bilbo was always controversial. As a state senator he was involved in a bribery scandal connected to - ironically - the appointment of a new United States Senator. In the years before direct election of United States Senators, the Mississippi Legislature was set to select a new one. The multi-candidate field was deadlocked through several ballots in the legislature until several legislators changed their votes and resolved the race. The next day, Bilbo claimed to have been bribed by the victor.
No one was ever charged or indicted or convicted in the scandal. However, Bilbo was impeached by the State Senate. He was not convicted. Despite the scandal, Bilbo was elected Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi. He served there, then as Governor and eventually a United States Senator.
Bilbo was an avowed segregationist and an admitted member of the Ku Klux Klan (an honor he shares with his fellow Democrat, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia). In the Senate, he sponsored bills providing appropriations for the relocation of African-Americans to West Africa. He penned a book entitled, Take Your Choice, Separation or Mongrelization, in which he explained the proposition. He publicly stated that he believed that Blacks should not vote. He filibustered an anti-lynching bill in the United States Senate.
Bilbo was later eulogized as a “redneck liberal” for his shameless pandering to poor rural white folk and his support for the New Deal. He was such a figure that he has a namesake in William Faulkner’s fictional Yoknawpatawpha County - Bilbo Snopes.
Theodore Bilbo died in 1947 of mouth cancer.
