THE SOUTH: The Authentic Voice
(6 of 10)
Unmistakable Light. For nine years Jim Eastland seemed to have forgotten politics. He and Libby moved to the Delta, where he quietly plugged away building up a law practice in Ruleville (pop. 1,500), six miles from Doddsville. Just about everybody in Mississippi gasped with astonishment in 1941 when Governor Paul Johnson, a lifelong friend of Woods Eastland, appointed young Jim, after Woods turned it down, to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of Pat Harrison. But the appointment was only for 88 days until a special election could be held, and Jim had promised he would not be a candidate in the special election.
Just about the time Jim hit Capitol Hill, OPA Administrator Leon Henderson injudiciously announced plans to put a price ceiling on cottonseed oil. Jim Eastland rose on the Senate floor and delivered a violent attack on Henderson's decision. The ceiling on cottonseed oil was abandoned, 3,500 congratulatory letters poured into Eastland's office, and when his 88 days were up, he returned to Mississippi with an unmistakable light in his eyes, boasting that he had put $50 million in the pockets of Southern cotton growers.
True to his promise, Eastland didn't run in the special election, but a year later he won a full Senate term in a bitter contest with Wall Doxey, who had the support of Eastland's onetime hero, Theodore Bilbo.
During the campaign Eastland lambasted the Roosevelt Administration from hell to breakfast, and when he got to Washington early in 1943, he was reminded of it by a chuckling F.D.R. Said Roosevelt: "That's all right, son. I got quite a kick out of those anti-New Deal cracks. Now you're elected, though, remember we've got to play together. You can come see me whenever you want to. You take two minutes telling me what you want, and I'll do the talking the rest of the 15 minutes. Then I'll give you anything you ask for." As far as Eastland can recall, however, he never did ask F.D.R. for anything. In fact, during his early years in the Senate, Eastland, as one of his friends concedes, "spent most of his time just accumulating seniority." Colorless, closemouthed and seldom consulted by his colleagues, Eastland was just another Southern Senator who supported low tariffs, opposed organized labor, and generally went along with the Administration on foreign policy. His only noticeable personal interest was agricultureespecially cotton.
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