Theodore Gilmore Bilbo (October 13, 1877 – August 21, 1947) was an American attorney and Democratic Party politician from Mississippi who served as the 39th and 43rd governor of Mississippi from 1916 to 1920 and 1928 to 1932, and represented the state in the United States Senate from 1935 to 1947. Bilbo was a populist, demagogue, and filibusterer whose name was synonymous during his own lifetime with white supremacy and racist extremism. He died of cancer in the midst of an extended controversy over his Senate credentials and accusations that he had accepted bribes and encouraged violence to prevent black Mississippians from voting against him in 1946. Bilbo was born in Pearl River County, Mississippi and educated in rural schools. He attended Peabody Normal College and Vanderbilt University Law School. Though he did not graduate from either school, he opened a law practice in Poplarville in 1907 and entered politics, serving in the Mississippi State Senate from 1908 to 1912. Bilbo supported white supremacy and segregation and was a member of the second Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s.
Despite accusations that he had accepted bribes as a senator, Bilbo was elected lieutenant governor in 1911. He was elected governor for the first time in 1915. During his first term from 1915 to 1919, he enacted a number of progressive measures, such as compulsory education and increased spending on public works. After several unsuccessful campaigns for other offices, multiple sex scandals, and a prison term for contempt of court, Bilbo was elected governor again in 1927. During his second term term, Bilbo proposed the first state sales tax in the United States in 1930 and controversially attempted to move the University of Mississippi to Jackson.
In 1934, Bilbo won election to the United States Senate. He was re-elected in 1940. As a Senator, Bilbo maintained his support for segregation and white supremacy, as well as black separatism and relocation to Africa, making racism an increasing theme of his politics. Although he was elected as a supporter of the New Deal, his politics became increasingly conservative and opposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on issues other than race as well, as he opposed labor unions and internationalism and voted with the conservative coalition on some issues. He was the leading opponent to the creation of the Fair Employment Practice Committee and helped block the nomination of liberal Aubrey Willis Williams as Rural Electrification Administrator.
Although he was reelected to a third term in 1946, liberal Senators led by Glen H. Taylor blocked him from his seat on the basis of accusations that he had denied the vote to blacks through violence and voter intimidation and accepted bribes, and the national media made him a symbol of racism in the American South. Bilbo died in 1947 at a New Orleans hospital while undergoing cancer treatment, without rejoining the Senate, and was buried in Poplarville.
Early life and education Theodore Gilmore Bilbo was born on October 13, 1877, in the small town of Juniper Grove in Hancock County, Mississippi to Obedience "Beedy" (née Wallis or Wallace) and James Oliver Bilbo. His parents were Scotch-Irish. James was a farmer and veteran of the Confederate States Army who rose from poverty during Theodore Bilbo's early years to become vice president of Poplarville National Bank.
After attending rural schools, Theodore Bilbo obtained a scholarship to attend Peabody Normal College in Nashville, Tennessee, but he did not graduate. After leaving Peabody, he taught school and worked at a drug store. During his teaching career, Bilbo was accused of being overly familiar with a female student in Wiggins.
While teaching and working, he attended Vanderbilt University Law School, but he did not graduate there, either. He was accused of cheating in academics, but he likely left school for financial reasons.[unreliable source?] Though these accusations never rose to the level of formal charges, they helped create a perception of profligacy and dishonesty which political opponents would later seize upon.
He was admitted to the bar in Tennessee in 1906, and began a law practice in Poplarville, Mississippi in 1907. He continued his legal education after entering politics by attending non-credit summer courses at the University of Michigan Law School when the Mississippi legislature was not in session.Chester M. Morgan, Redneck Liberal: Theodore G. Bilbo and the New Deal, 1985, p. 31.Larry Thomas Balsamo, Theodore G. Bilbo and Mississippi politics, 1877–1932, 1967, p. 36.
Early political career In 1903, Bilbo lost his first political campaign for Pearl River County circuit clerk to a "one-armed Confederate veteran" and Baptist preacher.
State senator (190812) and bribery scandal On November 5, 1907, Bilbo was elected to the Mississippi State Senate. He served there from 1908 to 1912.
In 1910, Bilbo attracted national attention for a bribery scandal involving the election of a United States senator. After the death of Senator James Gordon, the legislature deadlocked between governor-elect LeRoy Percy or former governor James K. Vardaman for the seat. On February 28, after fifty-eight ballots, Bilbo was one of several legislators who broke the stalemate by switching from Vardaman to Percy. The next day, Bilbo told a grand jury that he had accepted a $645 bribe from Lorraine C. Dulaney but claimed that he had done so as part of a private investigation into corruption. The State Senate voted 28–10 to expel Bilbo from office, falling one vote short of the 3⁄4 majority needed. The Senate passed a resolution – which did not require a 3⁄4 majority – calling him "unfit to sit with honest, upright men in a respectable legislative body."Morgan, Chester. Redneck Liberal: Theodore G. Bilbo and the New Deal, p. 33.
Lieutenant governor (191216) In 1911, Bilbo ran for lieutenant governor. During the campaign, he made disparaging remarks about state senator Washington Dorsey Gibbs, provoking Gibbs to beat Bilbo with his cane until it broke over Bilbo's head. Bilbo was elected and served as lieutenant governor from 1912 to 1916. One of his first acts as lieutenant governor was to remove the resolution calling him "unfit to sit with honest men" from the state records.
In 1912, following the adoption of a popular primary election system, Bilbo managed James Vardaman's successful campaign to challenge Senator Percy for re-election in the Democratic primary. During the campaign, Vardaman and Bilbo emphasized class and racial tensions by accusing Percy of being an aristocrat and a supporter of racial integration for advocating the education of black Mississippians.
First governorship (191620)
1915 election In 1915, Bilbo was elected governor of Mississippi for the first time. He won the August 3 primary over M. W. Riley without the need for a runoff and faced only nominal Socialist opposition in the November general election.
During the campaign, Bilbo vigorously targeted rural, poor white voters, making extensive personal appearances at courthouses and rural crossroads to deliver speeches promising expanded public education, better roads, and relief for farmers suffering under the ongoing boll weevil infestation. His wife Linda made several campaign speeches and may have been the first woman to actively participate in Mississippi politics. He emphasized class struggle, arguing that farmers and the poor were the victims of elite exploitation by railroads, corporations, and political machines, but also emphasized racial solidarity among whites against any perceived dilution of white supremacy.
Tenure In his first term, Bilbo's progressive program was largely implemented.Albert D. Kirwan, ‘’Revolt of the Rednecks: Mississippi politics 1876-1925’’ (1951) pp. 313-314. He authorized a state highway system, as well as limestone crushing plants, new dormitories at the Old Soldiers' Home, and a tuberculosis hospital, earning him the moniker "Bilbo the Builder" in The New York Times. His government also launched reforms in agriculture, education, public health, and labor rights.STATE LAWS RELATING TO EDUCATION ENACTED IN 1915, 1916 AND 1917, P. 245, Hdl.handle.net Bilbo has also been credited with putting state finances in order and supporting measures such as compulsory school attendance, a new charity hospital, and a state board of bank examiners.
Although Bilbo pushed through a law eliminating public hangings during his first year in office, he was criticized in the Haynes report for his response to racial violence and mob lynchings in Mississippi and pointed to as an example of the collective failure of the states to prosecute thousands of lynchings over several decades. According to the report, Bilbo said in a speech prior to the lynching of John Hartfield in Ellisville on June 26, 1919:"I am utterly powerless. The State has no troops, and if the civil authorities at Ellisville are helpless, the States are equally so. Furthermore, excitement is at such a high pitch throughout South Mississippi that any armed attempt to interfere would doubtless result in the deaths of hundreds of persons. The negro has confessed, says he is ready to die, and nobody can keep the inevitable from happening."New York Times: "For Action on Race Riot Peril," October 5, 1919, accessed January 20, 2010. This newspaper article includes several paragraphs of editorial analysis followed by Dr. George E. Haynes's report, "summarized at several points."Hartfield was held and beaten before ultimately being publicly lynched without trial, and the mob burned and mutilated his remains, allegedly selling parts of his corpse as souvenirs.Finnegan, Terence (2013). A Deed So Accursed: Lynching in Mississippi and South Carolina, 1881–1940. University of Virginia Press. .“Negro Still Being Chased Over Country". Hattiesburg American. June 18, 1919. Retrieved March 18, 2021. All this, including the premeditated murder, was done with the overt support of local authorities and was announced in the local papers the day prior."John Hartsfield will be lynched at 5 o'clock this afternoon". Jackson, Mississippi Daily News. June 26, 1919. Remarking on his inability to prevent the lynching after it had already occurred, Bilbo told the press, "This is a white man's country, with a white man's civilization and any dream on the part of the Negro race to share social and political equality will be shattered in the end."
University of Mississippi historian Stephen Cresswell argues that Bilbo's first term was "the most successful administration" in Mississippi history between 1877 and 1917.Cresswell (2006) pp. 212–213.
Sex scandal and unsuccessful campaign for U.S. House While still serving as governor in 1918, Bilbo ran for a seat in the United States House of Representatives. During the campaign, a bout of Texas fever broke out among cattle; Bilbo supported a program to dip cattle in insecticide to kill the ticks carrying the fever. Mississippi farmers were generally not happy about the idea, believing the insecticide would harm the animals. Bilbo's campaign was also damaged by a legislative committee's investigative report on the management of the Beauvoir Confederate Soldiers' Home. The report shockingly included allegations that Bilbo had carried on an improper, illicit affair with the home's head nurse. Bilbo denied the claim, which he attributed to "political manipulators in the Legislature," and accused the report of telling "enough lies to damn half the German army." Bilbo lost the Democratic primary to Paul B. Johnson Sr.
Interim period (192028)
Russell scandal and arrest