National Affairs: Demagogue Defeated

As U.S. Representative from Mississippi for 32 years, John Elliott Rankin has been a living parody of the Confederate ideal. White hair abristle, pouchy eyes aflame, he tirelessly took the floor of the House to shrill the rebel yell of “white supremacy.” In May 1942, when U.S. Negro troops were dying in battle, he attacked “the crackpots, the Communists and parlor pinks” for trying to “mongrelize” the nation. He said they were trying to persuade the Red Cross to remove labels which identified blood donors as white or colored. He was a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee until his ranting so embarrassed fellow Democrats that they kicked him up to the chairmanship of the Veterans Affairs Committee in 1949. Rankin, however, is no clown. A master parliamentarian, he often dominated debate by his chapter & verse knowledge of Congress rules.

Last week Mississippians rejected 70-year-old John Rankin. Opposed for renomination to his 17th term by Representative Thomas G. Abernethy (their constituencies had been combined), Rankin lost by 6,300 votes.

Abernethy had asked out-of-state newspapermen to ignore the contest. One of Rankin’s followers complained that if national magazines, Northern newspapers and columnists “had taken out after Mr. Rankin, nothing could have stopped him.”