James Eastland

James Oliver Eastland (November 28, 1904 – February 19, 1986) was the United States Senator from Mississippi in 1941 and from 1943 to 1978. A Democrat, he served as President pro tempore of the Senate (1972–1978) and Chairman on the Judiciary (1956–1978). He is best know as a member of the party’s southern conservative wing, who favored racial segregation.

Quotes

1940s

  • I have no prejudice in my heart, but the white race is the superior race and the Negro race an inferior race and the races must be kept separate by law
    • Johnson, John Harold (1944). Negro Digest. Johnson Publishing Company. p. 72
    • Another, longer, version: I have no prejudice in my heart against any man because of his race, creed, or color. But, Mr. President, I go further than does the distinguished Senator from Arkansas. I am of the opinion that we should have segregation in all the States of the United States by law. What the people of this country must realize is that the white race is a superior race, and the Negro race is an inferior race. Social equality is growing in this country, and in addition to teaching the white race the importance of racial purity, we must prevent racial intermingling by law. (Congressional Record of 1944)
  • When they return to take· over they desire more than anything else to see the integrity of the social institutions of the South unimpaired. They desire to see ·white supremacy maintained. Apove all things they do not desire to see the election laws of the South or the powers of the States in defining the qualifications of electors tampered with. Those boys are fighting to maintain the rights of the States. Those boys are fighting to maintain white supremacy and the con-trol of our election machinery.
  • This decision reveals an alarming tendency to destroy the sovereignty of the states. Our supreme court is usurping the legislative function, and Congress may yet prove the last citadel of constitutional government
  • Let me say frankly that in my judgment the CIO and the PAC are Communist organizations. I know that there are millions of good loyal Americans who belong to the CIO; but in my judgment the leadership of that organization is definitely Communistic.
  • Who has won this war? Why should the white soldier, the warrior who has returned home after having achieved the greatest victory in history be penalized for political reasons?
  • The Negro soldier was an utter and dismal failure in com-bat in Europe. When I make that statement, it is not from prejudice. I am not prejudiced against the Negro.
  • In Europe Negro soldiers are used principally as service troops ·behind the ·lines, and I state now, on the authority of many American officers, that they ·were lazy; that they would not work; that it was a mistake to send them to Europe, and furthermore, that .they should be returned from Europe ar:d sent to the Pacific, where there are races of color.
  • Negro soldiers would go to farm houses and holler "Boche! Bache!" as if they were looking for· Germans, call the men of the families out into the yards, and hold guns on them while they went in and criminally assaulted the women members of the family.
  • Mr. President; how does that compare with what happened during 4 years under German occupation? During 4 years while the Germari Army was there, there were two cases of criminal assault, and in each case the man guilty was apprehended and shot the very day the assault happened, while in the cases of American culprits files would have to come back to Washington, the opposition of the Organization for the Advancement of Colored People would have to be faced, a fight against the infliction of the penalty would be made by the Communist Party, this group and that group, so that it would take 7 or 8 months before any sentence was carried out, and by that time the entire effect of the punishment would be lost.
  • I state that the conduct . of the Negro soldier in Normandy, as well as all over Europe, was disgraceful, and that Negro soldiers have disgraced ·the fiag of their country. They consti-tute roughly one-twelfth of the Ameri-can Army, yet they are guilty ·of more than half tpe crime in-the Army.
  • There will be· no FEPC when the soldier gets back home, and I make that statement as one who has visited many of our armies and talked to literally hundreds of American soldiers.
  • I repeat that when communism enters a country it makes the classes class-conscious. It makes races race-conscious, in order to weaken the internal structure of the country and pave the way for communism.
  • We are dealing with an inferior people, and yet we are discriminating against the white soldier, in favor of the inferior person, and under this ·measure we are giving the-inferior person a preference in securing employment.
  • After Liberia was founded the white man ruled it for a period of from 25 to 30 years. It was doing well under white control. But 80 years after the white man withdrew, as the League of Nations found, it had not become even semi-civilized. Yet, Mr. President, we talk about racial equality. I assert that the Negro race is an inferior race. The doctrine of white supremacy is one which, if adhered to, will save America.
  • The people of the South are expected to remain docile while their civilization and culture are destroyed, while their segregation statutes are repealed by Federal action, and while the white race is destroyed under the false guise of another civil-rights bill. We are expected to remain docile while the pure blood of the South is mongrelized by the barter of our heritage by northern politicians in order to secure political favors from Red mongrels in the slums of the cities of the East and West.
  • This much is certain. If the present Democratic leadership is right, then Calhoun and Jefferson Davis were wrong. If the present Democratic leadership is right, then Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner were right, and Lee, Forrest, and Wade Hampton were wrong. If the President’s civil-rights program is right, then reconstruction was right. If this program is right, the carpetbaggers were right.
  • Organized mongrel minorities control the government. I am going to fight it to the last ditch. They are not going to Harlemize the country.
  • The Senator from New Hampshire certainly does not believe that the Governor of New York would clean Communists out of the Government service, when New York, for all practical purposes, is a Communist State.

1950s

  • 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. Segregation is not a badge of racial inferiority, and that it is not is recognized by both races in the Southern States. In fact, segregation is desired and supported by the vast majority of the members of both races in the South, who dwell side by side under harmonious conditions. ... Let me make this clear, Mr. President: There is no racial hatred in the South. The Negro race is not an oppressed race. ... Mr. President, it is the law of nature, it is the law of God, that every race has both the right and the duty to perpetuate itself. All free men have the right to associate exclusively with members of their own race, free from governmental interference, if they so desire. Free men have the right to send their children to schools of their own choosing, free from governmental interference and to build up their own culture, free from governmental interference. These rights are inherent in the Constitution of the United States and in the American system of government, both state and national, to promote and protect this right.
  • That is a very strong statement, Mr. President: “All is race; there is no other truth.” These are known to have been Disraeli's views. Disraeli would have been horrified at a program designed to mongrelize the Anglo-Saxon race which he so greatly admired.
  • The white people of the South do not have race prejudice. They have race consciousness, and they are proud to possess this awareness of the significance of race. Had they not possessed it, the South would have been mongrelized and southern civilization destroyed long ago.
  • 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.
    • Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965, by Juan Williams, Viking Penguin, January 1, 1987, ISBN 978-0-670-81412-1, p. 38.
    • On August 12, 1955 in Senatobia, Mississippi, about the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. The Board of Education, which found racial segregation in the public schools unconstitutional
  • Today, however, a trend away from traditional standards of propriety begins to be in evidence. Our Court has been indoctrinated and brainwashed by left-wing pressure groups. The Court is out of step with the American people. We see Justices of the Supreme Court banqueted and honored by left-wing Communist-front organizations militantly interested in legislation on which the Supreme Court must pass.
  • As I said, we have more Nigra professional men, more businessmen, we have substantial Nigra cotton planters. In fact, they have made more progress in the south than in the north. The master-servant relationship today is largely a northern product.

1960s

  • I don’t like you — or your kind.
  • I would not be surprised if Martin Luther King and these agitators next desecrate the graves of Confederate soldiers and drag their remains through the streets in an effort to garner headlines. And what kind of person is participating in this march? Beatniks, frauds, and persons wanted to answer for crimes in other States.
    • To the Senate about the Grenada, Mississippi civil rights movement, after activists put American flags on the place where a Confederate memorial stood. June 16, 1966
    • Congressional Records

Misattribued


  • In every stage of the [Montgomery] bus boycott we have been oppressed and degraded because of black, slimy, juicy, unbearably stinking niggers. … African flesh-eaters. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, slingshots and knives. … All whites are created equal with certain rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers.

About him

  • 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.
  • The Senator from Mississippi has said on the floor of the Senate: We will protect and maintain white supremacy throughout eternity.
    He has said on the floor of the Senate: The Negro race is an inferior race.
    He has said on the floor of the Senate: Let me say frankly that in my Judgment the CIO and the PAC are Communist organizations.
    He has said on the floor of the Senate: New York, for all practical purposes, is a Communist state.
    He has said on the floor of the Senate that the Supreme Court has become indoctrinated and brain-washed by left-wing pressure groups.
  • He has associated himself in a leadeiship role with the so-called White Citizens Councils whose purpose is to organize defiance to the Constitution of the U. S., as interpreted by the Supreme Court, and which have engaged in activities which I consider to be wholly un-American and dangerous to American democracy.
    I believe that Senator Eastland is a symbol of racism in America.
    I believe that Senator Eastland is a symbol of defiance to the Constitution of the U. S. as interpreted by the Supreme Court.
    I believe that Senator Eastland is precluded by philosophy, conviction and activities from presiding over the Senate Judiciary Committee as chairman in an impartial way, and from discharging the agency of the Senate in that regard.
  • 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 -— but, he'd say, we gotta have help from Washington.
  • Your chances of getting support in the black community are poor at best. You have a master-servant philosophy with regard to blacks.
    • Aaron Henry to Eastland relative to his chances of reelection. 1978
    • James O. Eastland
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