Bilbo Rides Again

Moonlight flooded the courthouse square at Laurel, Miss, one night last week as a big, enthusiastic crowd gathered to hear a home-town boy, Lieut. Governor Carroll Gartin. 41, open his campaign for the Democratic senatorial nomination. The traditional statue of a Confederate soldier and one of a bowed, weeping woman (the crushed South) overlooked the scene. Gartin, handsome and well-bred, is generally considered the most promising politician to arise in the state for many years.

Gartin attacked the voting and attendance record of incumbent Senator James 0. Eastland. Then he startled--and delighted--rednecks and townsfolk alike by suddenly waving the old, tattered banner of white supremacy. The crowd whooped and clapped with electric excitement when Gartin said: "The greatest champion of white supremacy in our generation was Theodore G. Bilbo." He charged that "the great cause of white supremacy suffered a stunning defeat . . ." when Bilbo's right to sit in the U.S. Senate was challenged before his death in 1947. Gartin, who had never hinted that he planned such a campaign, tongue-lashed Eastland for failing to stand by Bilbo when most of the Senate refused to speak to the old man. He drew the loudest cheers of all when he promised: "We will not in this state see our segregated way of life broken down." When Gartin finished speaking, women rushed to kiss him on the cheek and men to shake his hand.

The speech stunned liberal Mississippi newsmen (said one: "He isn't that kind of guy at all"). More important, it was characteristic of the intemperate reactions to the Supreme Court's segregation decision that have begun to come out of the Deep

South. In any case, Gartin certainly struck the right chord for many voters. One farmer summed up: "Gartin's going to beat Jim Eastland by a tremendous vote. When he mentioned Bilbo, that's what will carry him all the way to the Senate."

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