by J. W Lateer
President Eisenhower feared Eastland and let him dispense Republican patronage. Author Robert Sherrill in Gothic Politics repeated a noteworthy quote: “Eastland has been called ‘a mad dog loose in the streets of justice.’” This evaluation of Eastland undoubtedly sprung from the brand of hate that Eastland brought with him from the violent territory of Sunflower County, Mississippi from whence he came.
In 1956, Eastland was appointed as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under the Senate’s seniority rules, he was next in line for the chairmanship and there was no significant effort to deny him the post, which he held until his retirement. He was re-elected five times, facing concerted GOP opposition only twice and not until the late 20th century, at which time party politics were shifting after passage of civil rights legislation that enforced constitutional rights for minorities.
As an illustration of the formidable power wielded by Eastland when he was at the height of his influence in Washington, we can quote from Senator Edward Kennedy’s book True Compass: A Memoir where Kennedy wrote the following about Eastland:8
As for the committee assignments, I knew who it was I needed to go to. Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but this does not begin to express this man’s influence on Capitol Hill.
[At pp.192-194] If you were to visit his office during the day, more often than not you would find his desk covered with oil maps. There would be oilmen in there from Mississippi and the Gulf areas, and they’d all be bent over these maps absorbed in oil deals that they were working out. These oil meetings would go on for the better part of a week. Everything that happened on that committee [Judiciary] in fact happened after 5 p.m. That’s when Eastland would invite his people in for a drink. Everett Dirksen of Illinois would come in an drink with him, and Richard Russell, and Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, John McClellan of Arkansas would stop in but didn’t drink.
These men had little use for other committee members-people such as Charles “Mac” Mathias of Maryland, or Phil Hart of Michigan, whom I’ve always thought of as the conscience of the Senate at that time.… I worked with James Eastland; in fact, the two of us became friends.
In humbly requesting if not begging for his initial Senate committee assignments, Eastland told Sen. Edward Kennedy: “… you’ve got a lot of Eye-talians [in your state]… you drink that drink, [the straight whiskey] so you’re on the Immigration Committee. You Kennedy’s always care about the Negras … so you’re on the Civil Rights subcommittee … I think you’re always caring about, you know, the Constitution … so I’ll put you on the Constitution Subcommittee.”
In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Eastland was engaged in activities which were both secretive and subversive. These were typified by the actions of the KKK and other similar extremist groups in Mississippi at the time.
The notorious Southern Manifesto, which had to be signed by southern segregationists to prove their bona fides was drafted by James O. Eastland on March 12, 1956. The first White Citizens Council was formed on July 11, 1954 in Indianola, Mississippi, the county seat of Sunflower County.
In Sunflower County, 68% of the population were African-Americans. On Eastland’s plantation, blacks got $.30 per hour, some had no toilets and slept 4 to a bed. The nearest toilet was 3 miles away. Eastland grossed $250,000 per year on his 5,800 acre plantation.
Eastland was known for his strong opposition to the civil rights movement. When the Supreme Court issued its decision in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas 347 US 4983(1954), ruling that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, Eastland, like most Southern Democrats, denounced it.
In a speech given in Senatobia, Mississippi on August 12, 1955, he said:
On May 17, 1954, the Constitution of the United States was destroyed because of the Supreme Court’s decision. You are not obliged to obey the decisions of any court which are plainly fraudulent sociological considerations.
Eastland testified to the Senate ten days after the Brown decision came down:
The Southern institution of racial segregation or racial separation was the correct, self-evident truth which arose from the chaos and confusion of the Reconstruction period. Separation promotes racial harmony. It permits each race to follow its own pursuits, and its own civilization. Segregation is not discrimination… Mr. President, it is the law of nature, it is the law of God, that every race has the right and the duty to perpetuate itself. All free men have the right to associate exclusively with member of their own race, free from governmental interference, if they so desire.
Three civil rights workers, namely Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, disappeared in Mississippi on June 21, 1964. Almost every American living at the time knew of this tragic situation. In regard to this murder Eastland reportedly told President Lyndon Johnson that the incident was a hoax and there was no Ku Klux Klan in the state. He suggested that the three had gone to Chicago. [From the Johnson tapes]:
Johnson: Jim, we’ve got three kids missing down there. What can I do about it?
Eastland: Well, I don’t know. I don’t believe there’s…. I don’t believe there’s three missing.
Johnson: We’ve got their parents down here..
Eastland: I believe it’s a publicity stunt…
Johnson once said, “Jim Eastland could be standing right in the middle of the worst Mississippi flood ever known, and he’d say the niggers caused it, helped out by the Communists.”
The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, White Citizens Council and the Klan
A topic which is shrouded in a certain sinister type of mystery is the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. The idea of a CIA-type organization operated by a state government would have to be considered unusual by most Americans to say the least.
The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was a secret state police department operating from 1956 to 1977 with the goal of suppressing the civil rights movement and maintaining segregation. The commission kept files, harassed and branded many people as communist infiltrators. They had agents who were retired FBI, CIA and military intelligence employees or agents. The files of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission grew to be much larger and extensive than one would imagine. One reason for this is the Commission probably needed something to do which would be non-controversial and not land them in either a State or Federal penitentiary.
The Sovereignty Commission cooperated closely with the White Citizens Councils. When Ross Barnett became Governor of Mississippi in 1960, the Sovereignty Commission began funding the Councils with the full approval of the Mississippi legislature. Along with the White Citizens Councils working in the cause of segregation was the Ku Klux Klan. Most of Mississippi’s Klan activity took place in the Southern counties of the State. In the racist ecology of Mississippi, the White Citizens Council was made up mostly of middle-class segregationists while the Klan was considered the province of the blue-collar racists.
From his taking a job working for the NAACP in 1954 until a March 1961 sit-in in the Jackson, Mississippi public library, Medgar Evers had been, almost singlehandedly, the entire civil rights movement in Mississippi.
The Links Between James O.
Eastland and the Kennedy Assassination
One of the basic premises of our research is that the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee was linked to the JFK assassination. James O. Eastland was the official chairman of that committee. Ergo, Eastland is linked to the assassination. There is, however, a missing link in that logic. That is because Eastland delegated his active chairmanship of SISS to Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (D,CT). So what evidence is there that Eastland was “in the know” regarding the JFK plot? In 2015, this issue was resolved beyond any doubt by the publication of the book General Walker by Dr. Jeffrey Caulfield. But outside of the book by Caulfield, there is some linkage from the assassination to Eastland based on the circumstances of the “Bayo-Pauley” raid which was explored in a pri
or chapter on SISS. We know that after that anti-Cuban operation, the mercenary soldier of fortune Gerry Patrick Hemming stated that he went on from Florida to Washington to meet with James O. Eastland.
In her book Where Rebels Roost (WRR), author Susan Klopfer presents other linkages leading from Eastland to the JFK assassination. WRR is the definitive work on the subject of Mississippi segregationists. Author Klopfer is possibly the most outstanding and admired historian to research and write about the events in that troubled period. So, Klopfer’s inclusion of the JFK material in her masterwork is almost enough to prove the connection between Eastland, other violent associates of Eastland and the murder of JFK. To back up the above statement, let’s look at Klopfer’s evidence against Eastland.
Medgar Evers Is Assassinated
On June 12, 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot by a sniper from a distance of 150 yards. A man by the name of Byron de la Beckwith of Greenwood, Mississippi was charged as the killer. Greenwood is about 30 miles east of Indianola. By 1963, Medgar Evers was in first place on a “death list” which was being circulated in the State of Mississippi.
As an illustration of the level of violence in the minds of Mississippians at the time of the murder of Evers, the following story was circulating, though never verified. According to this rumor, the FBI made a plea-bargain with a gangster named Gregory Scarpa up north in New York. Scarpa was then brought to Mississippi and Scarpa, being a veteran mobster, was able to kidnap and torture a known member of the White Citizen’s Council until he revealed the identity of the murderer of Evers, de la Beckwith. (This story is reported by author Klopfer at p. 399).
Byron de la Beckwith was active in Greenwood’s White Citizen’s Council. In May, 1966, he had applied for a position with the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission but was not hired. According to the FBI, many years later, it was rumored that the murder of Evers had been ordered by the Klan.
General Walker, Mississippi and the JFK Assassination
Focusing again on the JFK assassination, we have the following digression mentioned by author Klopfer in Where Rebels Roost. “In the fifth volume of the 26 volumes of evidence published by the Warren Commission, there is proof that the John Birch Society cell of which General Edwin Walker was a member, was used as a vehicle for bringing military intelligence agents from Munich, Germany to Dallas to operate at the field level in the assassination of JFK. The source for this information is a published lecture given by Mr. David Emory.
There are not many specifics on the Walker-Munich connection in the JFK assassination histories. It should be pointed out that there is one direct connection between General Edwin Walker and Eastland’s Mississippi. This came in September, 1962 when Walker figured prominently in segregationist violence at Ole Miss.
This insurrection was caused by the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi. During the insurrection, Walker was in Oxford and rendered some encouragement to the rioters. One can read about the events at “Ole Miss” and conclude that Walker’s actions were very limited and his involvement was grossly exaggerated by the Kennedy administration. Walker was heard to say to the Mob “good going, boys” However, the mere presence of such a well-known militant would be expected to inflame rioters just by itself. Ultimately, Walker was charged with sedition and insurrection and was held for 90 days in a psychiatric ward as a result of his actions at Oxford in September, 1962.
In April, 1963, the alleged attempt by Lee Harvey Oswald on the life of General Walker took place in Dallas. So Walker’s connection to, (but not necessarily guilt in) the JFK assassination can scarcely be denied.
Author Susan Klopfer offers the following information which is relevant, in part, to Mississippi and the JFK assassination, though focusing on the research of John Bevalaqua and the immediate subject of his research, a millionaire by the name of Wycliffe P. Draper. Draper is a popular target of anti-conservative writers because of his identification with and funding of eugenics. Draper funded many “oddball” conservative causes including not only eugenics, but the promotion of a “back to Africa” movement for African-Americans, as well as the legitimate research done by the University of Minnesota in their well-known studies of identical twins reared separately. Draper funded much of the research in the best selling book The Bell Curve.
In a more sinister vein, Draper also funded the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission in 1963 and 1964. The MSC attorney referred to Draper’s contributions as coming from “The Wall Street Gang.” Coincidentally, 1963 and 1964 were years of great import in the TX-MS-LA region, featuring the assassinations of Medgar Evers and JFK and the questionable activities of General Edwin Walker and the murder of the three civil rights workers, Goodwin, Chaney and Schwerner in 1964.
Researcher John Bevalaqua had been investigating the Kennedy assassination and Wickliffe P. Draper for almost 20 years. Wycliffe Draper had direct ties to the Nazi movement. Bevalaqua offered some interesting observations in December, 2009 at a well-known website, including the following:
Draper was linked to the Medgar Evers, Jr. murder via Senator James Eastland, from Mississippi, who headed up the Draper Genetics Committee for the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. Evers’ killer was KKK and NSRP member, Byron De La Beckwith, who was visited often in jail after he was arrested for the murder of Medgar Evers, Jr. by Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker who had organized and led the riots at Ole Miss when James Meredith attempted to enroll there as the first Afro-American student.
Thus General Walker, by visiting Evers’ murderer in prison, knowingly linked himself to the cause of the militant segregationists in Mississippi, the subject of Klopfer’s writing.
Many experts on the JFK assassination are willing to connect the assassination, at least in part, to the KKK and segregationist activities. They might do this, if for no other reason, than the reliance on political violence by the KKK, the NSRP and the other segregationist groups of that period. There is also the close physical proximity of the Mississippi Delta, New Orleans and Louisiana, and Texas; Dallas, in particular. These are the locations where the Kennedy tragedy played out and also the travesty of Goodwin, Chaney and Schwerner
Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker was specifically named by Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, in his Warren Commission testimony as being directly involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The Guy
Banister Connection to Mississippi and the JFK Assassination
Author Susan Klopfer wrote in Where Rebels Roost that “Banister was later linked to Lee Harvey Oswald and Mississippi’s Senator through involvement with Eastland’s Senate Internal Security Subcommittee or SISS (sometimes called “SISSY”), and the same information can be found in The Emmett Till Book, by Susan Klopfer and another excellent book by Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement.
The quotes by Klopfer referring to Guy Banister need some clarification. Guy Banister was a private investigator in New Orleans in the early 1960’s. But the term private investigator does no justice to Banister. He could be more aptly described as a traffic controller for most or all covert operations by spy agencies in the South, or even having a major role in worldwide conspiracies of the 1955-1965 era. Banister is credited by some writers for handling the payoff money for attempted assassinations of French President Charles de Gaulle.
The next paragraph is of great note because, unlike much JFK information and rumors, it was published in an well-circulated newspaper at the time it occurred. The only difficulty with the article is that it apparently confuses the HUAC committee with the SISS committee. It also apparently misidentified SISS counsel Robert Morris as Robert Morrison. Robert Morris had actually served both McCarthy and SISS as staff and/or counsel at separate times.
The actual quote of the article by Klopfer is as follows:
The New Orleans Times-Picayune on March 23, 1956, reported that [Robert] Morrison [a former chief counsel for Sen.
Joseph McCarthy] and Banister traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi, to confer personally with Senator Eastland for more than three hours. ‘Describing the conference as completely “satisfactory,” Morrison told the reporter that “Mr. Banister has complete liaison with the committee’s staff which was the main object of our trip.”
In the same vein;
Another Eastland operative, private investigator John D. Sullivan had worked under Banister [both in the FBI and privately] and as a private self-employed investigator often did work for hire for the Sovereignty Commission, the White Citizen’s Councils, of which he was an active member, and for Eastland’s Senate Internal Security Subcommittee [SISS], as had Banister and Lee Harvey Oswald.
The next quote by Susan Klopfer is one of the most direct and significant quotes in all of the JFK assassination literature:
Some twenty-nine years later, in testimony before the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board during a Dallas hearing on November 18, 1994, the late Senator Eastland was directly implicated in the president’s assassination by one of the author/theorists invited to testify. He said “Lee Harvey Oswald was quite possibly an agent of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and he was doing the bidding of [Senator Thomas J.] Dodd, Eastland and Morrison [Morris??],” author John McLaughlin swore,[presumably under oath]. (See Klopfer, Where Rebels Roost, p. xxvi).
