His Honor Speaks

A jug-eared little U.S. Senator filled the tank of his sleek, grey Cadillac and drove 1,000 miles to address the Legislature of his own State. Home to campaign—for 1946—was Mississippi’s red-necktied Theodore Gilmore (“The Man”) Bilbo, who boasts, at 66, that ladies still find him fascinating (“I don’t expect to reach my prime until I’m 75).

Before he had finished his long (1 hr., 18 min.) anti-Negro harangue, some of Mississippi’s listening Senators, Representatives and assorted littlewigs had propped their feet on legislative desks, were deep in the pages of the Jackson Daily News. But Fustianeer Bilbo ranted on. Stepping gingerly as Agag through the bad eggs of his logic, he somehow managed to: 1) praise Franklin Roosevelt, 2) damn Eleanor Roosevelt, 3) boom Term IV, 4) denounce New Deal bureaucracy, 5) predict bloody postwar race riots, 6) deny that U.S. Negroes have any right to vote. Typical Bilboisms:

¶ “We people of the South must draw the color line tighter & tighter. . . .”

¶ “The white man is the custodian of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

¶ “We will tell our Negro-loving Yankee friends to go straight to hell.”

The Man’s words distressed some in Jackson, Miss., but they gave a stomachache to the good citizens of Washington, D.C. As chairman of the Senate District Committee, The Man is mayor of the nation’s capital. For a quarter of a century, disfranchised residents of Washington have agitated for a vote. Now Mayor Bilbo explained why he is determined that they shall not have it: “Negroes already compose 30 to 40% of the population of the capital city. . . . The alleys would outvote the avenues.”

For the first time since the city was laid out, Washingtonians were united against the common foe. “Disunity!” screamed the D.C. Communist Party. The Southeast Council of Churches considered charges that Mayor Bilbo is “unpatriotic and un-Christian,” solemnly resolved that he be removed. “Vicious,” said the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax, “un-American.” The sober Washington Post editorialized: “Bilbo Runs Amok.” The Scripps-Howard Daily News fumed: “This socially benighted man . . . throw him out!”

There was little hope of throwing The Man out. Senate seniority made him chairman, and Senate seniority will probably keep him there.