by J. W Lateer
The Life of James O.
Eastland In The Period After November 23, 1963
Eastland, along with senators Robert Byrd, John McClellan, Olin D. Johnston, Sam Ervin, and Strom Thurmond, made unsuccessful attempts to block confirmation of Thurgood Marshall, an African-American, to the Federal Court of Appeals and the US Supreme Court.
Eastland, like most of his southern colleagues, opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited segregation of public places and facilities. Its passage caused many Mississippi Democrats to support Barry Goldwater’s presidential bid that year, but Eastland did not publicly oppose the election of Lyndon Johnson. Four years earlier he had quietly supported John. F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, though Mississippi voted that year for unpledged electors. This support for Kennedy, despite JFK’s primary heated battle against LBJ in 1960 for the Democratic nomination, could be considered relevant in re the JFK assassination. This would indicate that Eastland was not an inveterate hater of the Kennedys. Although Goldwater was soundly defeated by incumbent Lyndon Johnson, he carried Mississippi with 87 percent of the popular vote (his best showing in any state).
This strong showing by Goldwater was largely because of white opposition to LBJ’s Civil Rights Act of 1964. This raises the obvious question: if Mississippi strongly rejected LBJ in 1964, why would Eastland (if he did) participate in the murder of JFK only to have made LBJ president? This was an outcome which quickly went sour as Mississippi turned against LBJ in favor of Goldwater less than a year later in the 1964 elections. As one of the two or three most powerful Democratic Senators at the time, Eastland must surely have known about LBJ’s deep-down pro-civil rights and pro-welfare beliefs and policies, i.e. The Great Society.
In 1966, freshman congressman Prentiss Walker ran against Eastland. Walker was the first Republican to represent Mississippi at the federal level since Reconstruction and the beginning of the late 19th century disenfranchisement of blacks. This was one of the early campaigns where the Republican Party worked to attract white conservatives in the South to its ranks. Following the lead of national Democrats, who supported civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965, most African Americans in the South began to vote with the Democratic Party on national candidates. Republican Congressman Walker’s defeat was judged as “very devastating” to the growth of the Mississippi GOP.
Eastland was often at odds with Johnson’s policy on civil rights, but their friendship remained close. Johnson often sought Eastland’s support and guidance on other issues, such as the failed nomination of Abe Fortas for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1968. In the 1950’s, Johnson was one of three Senators from the South who did not sign the Southern Manifesto, but Eastland and most Southern Senators did, vowing resistance to school integration. Actually, Eastland wrote the Southern Manifesto. The fact that LBJ was not asked to sign the Southern Manifesto is often cited as proof that LBJ had irrevocably “resigned’ from the conservative Southern coalition at that moment and was never considered part of the Southern segregationist bloc thereafter.
During his presidency, JFK had dealings with the powerful Eastland regarding White House-Senate business. Contrary to popular opinion, Eastland did not use the appointment of a man named Harold Cox to a federal judgeship as leverage against John F. Kennedy’s appointment of Thurgood Marshall to a federal judgeship. Cox was nominated by Kennedy more than a year before Marshall came up for consideration and his nomination resulted from a personal conversation between Cox and Kennedy. The president, not wanting to upset the powerful chairman of the Judiciary Committee, generally acceded to Eastland’s requests on judicial confirmations in Mississippi, which resulted in white segregationists dominating control of the Federal courts in the state.
During his later years, in the face of increasing black political power in Mississippi, Eastland avoided associating with racist positions. He hired black Mississippians to serve on the staff of the Judiciary Committee. Eastland noted to aides that his earlier position on race was due primarily to the political realities of the times, i.e., as a major political figure in a southern state in the 1950s and 1960s
The GOP did work to elect two House candidates, Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, who later became influential U.S. senators from the state. Recognizing that Nixon would handily carry Mississippi, Eastland did not endorse the national Democratic candidate, George McGovern of South Dakota, who was an extreme liberal. Four years later, Eastland supported the candidacy of fellow Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter of Georgia, rather than Nixon’s successor, President Gerald R. Ford, Jr. Eastland’s former press secretary, Larry Speakes, a Mississippi native, served as a press spokesman for Gerald Ford and U.S. Senator Robert J. Dole in the latter’s vice-presidential campaign on the Ford ticket During his last Senate term, Eastland served as President pro tempore of the Senate, as he was the longest-serving Democrat in the Senate.
In 1972, Eastland was reelected with 58 percent of the vote in his closest contest ever. His Republican opponent, Gil Carmichael, an automobile dealer from Meridian, was likely aided by President Richard Nixon’s landslide reelection in 40 states, including 78 percent of Mississippi’s popular vote. However, Nixon worked “under the table” to support Eastland who was a long-time personal friend. Nixon and other Republicans provided little support for Carmichael to avoid alienating conservative Southern Democrats.
When he considered running for re-election in 1978, he sought black support. He won the support of Aaron Henry, civil rights leader and president of the NAACP, but he ultimately decided not to seek re-election. Due in part to the independent candidacy of Charles Evers siphoning off votes from the Democratic candidate, Republican 4th District Representative Thad Cochran won the race to succeed Eastland. Eastland resigned two days after Christmas to give Cochran a leg up on seniority. After his retirement, he remained friends with Aaron Henry and sent contributions to the NAACP, but he publicly stated that he “didn’t regret a thing” in his public career.
Anti-Communist Efforts
Eastland served on a subcommittee investigating the Communist Party. As chairman of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, he subpoenaed some employees of the New York Times, which was at the time taking a strong position on its editorial page that Mississippi should adhere to the Brown decision. The SISS operated largely in secret. The members apparently feared no one or nothing when it came to anti-Communist zeal. The following is due to the vast increase in the influence of journalists, but in 1956, 29 out of 35 witnesses called in executive session by SISS and 14 out of 18 called in open session were past or present staff of the New York Times. The Times countered in its January 5, 1956 editorial:
Our faith is strong that long after Senator Eastland and his present subcommittee are gone, long after segregation has lost its final battle in the South, long after all that was known as McCarthyism is a dim, unwelcome memory, long after the last Congressional committee has learned that it cannot tamper successfully with a free press, the New York Times will be speaking for [those] who make it, and only for [those] who make it, and speaking, without fear or favor, the truth as it sees it.
Jay Sourwine, Chief Counsel for SISS, along with Eastland charged a witness that appeared before SISS, Robert Shelton, with contempt of Congress. The case went to court. The attorney for Shelton was Joseph L. Rauh, Jr. Rauh was an elite attorney with formidable skills. Rauh brought Sourwine and Eastland before the court as hostile witnesses. Sourwine was embarrassed due to misrepresentations he had made. James O. Eastland fared even worse than Sourwine. On 77 questions, Eastland answered “I don’t know” or “I don’t recall.” Eastland was forced to claim that he could not remember even one detail of his hearings against the New York Times, though the hearings had lasted for months.
Like Joe McCarthy, whose reputation plunged after the Army-McCarthy hearings, Eastland “noticeably limped [after] his encounter with [attorney ] Rauh…too many people in Washington could answer the questions…[where Eastland] ‘couldn’t re
member.’”
Eastland subsequently allowed SISS to become dormant as issues such as the perceived threat of Communism receded. However, Eastland was a staunch supporter of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and shared intelligence with the FBI, including leaks from the State Department. Hoover received intelligence that Eastland was among members of Congress who had received money and favors from Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic. Eastland had regularly defended Trujillo from the Senate floor. Hoover declined to pursue Eastland on corruption charges – but accepting money from foreign officials is illegal. Like all the other confidential information Hoover gathered on members of Congress, Hoover could well have used this information against Eastland if he had the chance.
In his last years in the Senate, Eastland was recognized by most Senators as one who knew how to wield the legislative powers he had accumulated. Many Senators, including liberals who opposed many of his conservative positions, acknowledged the fairness with which he chaired the Judiciary Committee, sharing staff and authority that chairmen of other committees jealously held for themselves. He maintained personal ties with stalwart liberal Democrats such as Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and Phil Hart, even though they disagreed on many issues. Following Johnson’s retirement from the White House, Eastland frequently visited Johnson at his Texas ranch.
Eastland died on February 19, 1986. The law library at Ole Miss was named after Eastland until 2012. This caused some controversy in Mississippi, given Eastland’s earlier racist positions, but the University benefited financially from Eastland’s many friends and supporters, as it has done from other political figures.
James Eastland was the most recent President pro tempore to have served during a vacancy in the Vice Presidency. He did so twice during the tumultuous 1970’s, first from October to December 1973 following Spiro Agnew’s resignation until the swearing-in of Gerald Ford as Vice President, and then from August to December 1974, from the time that Ford became President until Nelson Rockefeller was sworn is as Vice President. During these periods, Eastland was second in the presidential line of succession, behind only Speaker of the House Carl Albert.
Following his death, the extensive papers of James O. Eastland were bequeathed to the Ole Miss Law School in Oxford, Mississippi. The Ole Miss Law School was re-named the James O. Eastland College of Law. Eastland’s papers were locked in a room and thereafter, absolutely no researcher or historian was granted any access to the papers.
When our often-mentioned author Susan Klopfer requested access to the files, she received a letter from the Law School librarian stating “in response to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, that the Eastland records are private and hence not subject to FOIA.” In August, 2004, the Law School transferred the records to the Archives and Special Collections of the J.D. Williams [Ole Miss] Library. According to one researcher who was finally allowed to inspect them, the records had been “sanitized.”
The Law School of the University of Mississippi no longer bears the name of James O. Eastland, his name having been taken off the school for reasons which are not available even on the Internet from any source. One can only assume that something came up which would make that name detrimental to the school or generally. Eastland’s name is still seen on dedication monuments on Interstate 55 north of Jackson, which is named the James O. Eastland highway. Incidentally, according to author Klopfer the papers of Senator John Stennis, Eastland’s segregationist Senatorial papers from Mississippi, also remained sealed as of 2005.
The final item about James O. Eastland which we can report is a quote in an oral history for which Eastland was interviewed in 1975. This oral history is in the possession of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library. In this interview, Eastland was asked about the Warren Commission. He stated at p. 9 “…I had no contact at all with the Warren Commission. The President called me in advance and told me what he planned to do…It was a good procedure. I think their conclusions were wrong. I think that some foreign country, the ruler of some foreign country, was behind the Kennedy Assassination.”
Your writer gladly accepts this endorsement by Eastland of the thesis of The Three Barons.
Notes:
This author has quoted extensively from [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Eastland] last edited 09-08-2017, retrieved 09-21-17. This represents the most concise (and one of the few available sources) of general information about James O. Eastland.
Another source of information on the subject is:
Marjorie Hunter “James O. Eastland is Dead at 81, Leading Senate Foe of Integration” New York Times, February 20, 1986.
The following book, cited in the text, is one of the classics on civil rights in Mississippi:
Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited by Susan Klopfer with Fred Klopfer and Barry Klopfer (Lulu.com 2005).
Gothic politics in the Deep South: Stars of the new Confederacy (1969) by Robert Sherrill. The “mad dog” quote is found at page 177.
True Compass: A Memoir (2009) by Edward Kennedy.
For a source regarding living conditions in Sunflower County, see:
Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965, (1987) by Juan Williams.
WhiteHouseTapes.org :: The secret White House tapes and recordings of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower regarding the LBJ conversation with Eastland about the missing civil rights workers.
For the quote about Eastland blaming a flood on black people, see:
Robert Kennedy and His Times (2002) by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. p. 234.
For a commentary on the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, refer to:
Susan Klopfer [a JFK author] in an article entitled “Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, State Government Funded Racist Department” on 1-1-10, read on 2-14-15. [mississippisovereigntycommission.blogspot.com/2010/01/Mississippi-jfk-links.html]
General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy: The Extensive New Evidence of a Radical-Right Conspiracy (2015) by Jeffrey H. Caulfield M.D.
From a lecture given by Mr. David Emory and reprinted in a writing entitled Conspiracy Nation Vol.I No.92, of an uncertain date: www.textfiles.com/conspiracy/CN/cn1-92.txt
For background on the riots at Oxford, Mississippi in 1962, see: An American Insurrection: James Meredith and the Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962 (2003) by William Doyle.
The book which is associated with Draper and mentioned in the text is:
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in America (1994) by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray.
The Bevilaqua citation is from: https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?4-JFK-Assassination
As mentioned in the text, see:
The Emmett Till Book (2005) by Susan Klopfer.
Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled The Civil Rights Movement, (2015) by Devery S. Anderson
For the information on Guy Banister, see:
The Man Who Knew Too Much, by Dick Russell, at p.396.
The article by the Times-Picayune quotes can be found as independently reported in the March 23, 1956 issue of the New Orleans Times Picayune.
For data on the electoral issues described in the text, see:
Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections - Data Graphs.
“Challenging the Status Quo: Rubel Lex Phillips and the Mississippi Republican Party (1963-1967)”, The Journal of Mississippi History, XLVII, No. 4 (November 1985), p. 256.
On the Abe Fortas nomination, see:
Abe Fortas (2008) by Laura Kalman Yale University Press.
For background about the aggressive treatment of the New York Times, see:
Gothic Politics, Sherrill p. 198. New York Times countered in its Januuary 5, 1956 editorial.
For the story of Eastland’s disgrace due to his testimony in the legal case, see:
Gothic Politics, Sherrill p. 202.
Regarding the allegations relating to Trujillo, see
/>
Enemies (2013) by Tim Weiner.
Chapter 28
Eastland and the New Orleans SCEF Raid In October, 1963
Brief History of the Southern Conference Educational Fund-SCEF
The book General Walker by Dr. Jeffrey Caulfield is probably the best single book on the JFK assassination. And in that book, the climax is the October, 1963 raid on the offices of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, more commonly known as SCEF. Most people have never heard of SCEF or its president, James Dombrowski. Yet Dombrowski was a person who was central to the rise of the civil rights movement in the South. Among white people, he was probably the most central of anyone. In the summer of 2016, working under the direction of another JFK researcher, I had the distinct pleasure of going through all 17 boxes of the James Dombrowski papers, which are in the Wisconsin Historical Society archives. This was a unique experience for this author and the first with personal papers of a famous figure. What I found made it well worth the time.
James Dombrowski was born on January 17, 1987 in Tampa, Florida. His ancestors had come from the Germany-Poland area before the Civil War and they were Lutherans. His father, John Dombrowski, had moved to Tampa, Florida and set up a jewelry store in around 1890. Dombrowski graduated cum laude from Emory University. He also attended Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University, both in New York City. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1933. Dombrowski studied under famous theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and the progressive Methodist clergyman Harry F. Ward.
When he graduated from Emory, he was offered an excellent job by the Coca Cola Company. In Dombrowski, two contradictory motivations were combined: he was a natural businessman and manager, but he also was a natural-born religiously oriented altruist whose main drive in life was to be a good person and to do positive things for others. When he became CEO of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, he combined his genius for management with his altruistic ideals.
