Theodore Bilbo
Bilbo was a twice-elected governor of Mississippi and a two-term US Senator who developed the reputation of being an unrepentant white supremacist, a segregationist, and a dedicated member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Bilbo was not averse to using the known prejudices of his constituents for political gain; while campaigning for Democrat Al Smith in the 1928 Presidential Election he helped spread (some say he originated) a rumor that the Republican candidate, Herbert Hoover, had maintained an illicit relationship with a black woman. The illicit nature of the relationship paled in immorality compared with the racial overtones – at least to those Democrats who had been reluctant to support the Catholic Smith. Soon the religious issues faded when considered against the Republican’s racial faux pas, in their estimation. Hoover won anyway, but not in Mississippi.
Throughout his career in politics, Bilbo was pro-white workers at the expense of all others. In 1938 he proposed a rider to a New Deal bill – which he strongly supported – which would have mandated the deportation of 12 million black workers to Liberia. Bilbo’s speeches were invariably racist, and he opposed throughout his career the idea of blacks being franchised with the vote.
Bilbo is also of historical not as being the first governor in the history of the United States to sign into law a state sales tax. On the Ku Klux Klan, Bilbo proudly admitted his membership and claimed that all members of the Klan were members for life. “No man can leave the Klan…Once a Ku Klux, always a Ku Klux,” he said. He also opposed anti-lynching bills in the late 1930s, saying in a floor speech in the Senate that passing one such bill would “…open the floodgates of hell in the South.” He warned that making lynching illegal would increase rapes, murders and other crimes including, ironically, lynching.