Big Jim Eastland: The Godfather of Mississippi by J. Lee Annis

Abstract

Reviewed by: Big Jim Eastland: The Godfather of Mississippi by J. Lee Annis Marco Robinson Big Jim Eastland: The Godfather of Mississippi. By J. Lee Annis Jr. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016. Pp. xii, 426. $35.00, ISBN 978-1-4968-0614-7.) To date, this book is the most comprehensive and authoritative work on the life of James Oliver Eastland, former six-term Mississippi senator and perennial Washington, D.C., political power broker. J. Lee Annis Jr. frames Eastland "as a quiet patron for the common white men and women of the Magnolia State, be they ginners or farmers, peckerwood sawmill operators or poultry producers, or even those African Americans who respected his authority as a white man" (p. 5). In contrast to the persona of a white supremacist demagogue, Annis presents Eastland in a nuanced light as a Bourbon politician who maintained connections to Mississippi's "plebeian white majority" and as having a profound impact on the federal judiciary through facilitating the confirmations of several federal judges (p. 7). Annis's ultimate purpose in the book "is to illuminate the parts of Mississippi's past that spawned Eastland's ideology, as well as to explore how Eastland reacted for the third of a century after World War II to changes in the American consciousness, which, particularly in the area of race relations, he saw as revolutionary" (p. 4). The "Godfather of Mississippi," as former Mississippi senator Trent Lott warmly referred to Eastland, was an enigmatic, controversial, and complex political figure. Annis devotes the first four chapters of the book to examining the aspects of Mississippi's history that birthed Eastland's social and political ideologies. Eastland's membership in the white landed aristocracy of Mississippi profoundly shaped his childhood and his ideas regarding race as a young man. Annis asserts, "In rural communities like Doddsville, whites and blacks lived near each other, but African Americans were expected to know that they were inferior and to show deference to all whites" (p. 31). Ultimately, this feature of Eastland's rearing served as the basis for his ideas regarding race and informed his decisions regarding his political platform on social equality. Annis concludes Eastland took this "paternalistic outlook" with him to Washington in 1941 and "sought to preserve" this "racial order" for the entirety of his political career (p. 33). Eastland's political career emerged in the shadow of Theodore G. "The Man" Bilbo, an early 1900s charismatic white supremacist and outspoken political stalwart in Mississippi. While Eastland served as a state representative [End Page 1040] and Bilbo was governor of Mississippi, Eastland and two other young state representatives were known as "Bilbo's 'Little Three'" (p. 24). Years later, Bilbo and Eastland's relationship soured when Bilbo backed an opponent of Eastland in a close U.S. Senate race. Annis uses this falling-out to illustrate the personal and political differences between two of the South's most defiant politicians in regard to racial equity. In this instance, Annis paints Eastland as a Bourbon politician and not as a "populist demagogue" (p. 6). After Bilbo's death in 1947, Eastland came to the helm as the heir apparent spokesman for white supremacy and the pro-segregationist position in Mississippi. The burgeoning social changes of the 1950s and 1960s presented a myriad of challenges to the white political establishment in the South. However, white southern political leaders were prepared for the long haul and committed to massive resistance. Eastland played instrumental roles as an architect of the Dixiecrat movement and, more pronouncedly, as an arbiter of any civil rights legislation by way of his position as chair of the Senate Civil Rights Subcommittee. Eastland unyieldingly continued his obstructionism of expanded voting rights, antilynching legislation, and other full citizenship rights for black people throughout the presidencies of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon. Big Jim Eastland: The Godfather of Mississippi is a well-written and thoroughly researched biography that makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the complex political dealings of Senator Eastland and Mississippi's multifarious political history. Additionally, Annis makes a contribution by exploring Eastland's role as chair of the Senate Judiciary...