John E. Rankin

Appointed to the Census Committee as a freshman congressman, Rankin played an important role in opposing a reapportionment bill that would have reduced the representation of Mississippi, as well as one to reduce the overall representation of the South. Both bills were based on the fact that Southern states had disenfranchised most of their black voters but kept apportionment based on total population in each state, resulting in outsize representation for their white populations. The powerful Democrats consistently defeated northern representatives' effort to reduce southern apportionment.[13]

Tennessee Valley Authority

Rankin coauthored the bill to create the

Rankin supported the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, known as the "court-packing plan."^[17] The bill itself never came up for a vote in either congressional chamber, although he voted for its substitute version in the U.S. House that would have provided additional incentives for the retirement of U.S. Supreme Court justices in order to ensure new appointments by President Roosevelt.^[18]

Rankin opposed the creation of the UN, stating, "The United Nations is the greatest fraud in all History. Its purpose is to destroy the United States."^[14]

In the 1948 United States presidential election, Rankin opposed the re-election of President Harry S. Truman and supported the Dixiecrat ticket headed by Strom Thurmond and Fielding L. Wright.^[17] He was subsequently removed by the House Democratic leadership from the HUAC.

Veteran's affairs

Rankin chaired the Committee on World War Veterans' Legislation (Seventy-second through Seventy-ninth Congresses)^[19]) and the Committee on Veterans' Affairs (Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses).^[20] In the first role he was the main House sponsor of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, known as the G.I. Bill of Rights. Edward Humes says it was Rankin "who served as the primary force behind the version of the bill that actually got passed into law."^[21] He insisted on a provision that the federal program would be administered in a decentralized manner by the states. This ensured that southern states could continue to practice discrimination against black veterans. According to historian Gavin Wright, "In a comprehensive econometric analysis, Sarah Turner and John Bound find that although the GI Bill had substantial positive benefits for black and white veterans outside the South, those from the South made no significant gains in educational attainment."^[2]

Rankin sought to prevent the desegregation of VA hospitals. He argued for treating black veterans in rural, isolated all-black hospitals.^[22]

House Un-American Activities Committee

Rankin helped establish the

He was criticized for failing to investigate violence and murder perpetrated by chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. After HUAC's chief counsel Ernest Adamson announced: "The committee has decided that it lacks sufficient data on which to base a probe," Rankin added: "After all, the KKK is an old American institution."^[24]

Bigotry

African Americans

Rankin introduced a bill in 1920 to prohibit interracial marriage. During that decade, he opposed bills to make

During World War II, Rankin alleged that the U.S. Army's loss of a certain battle was due to the cowardice of black soldiers. Fellow Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas replied that many black soldiers had been decorated for bravery despite serving in a segregated Army.^[26] Rankin was known to use the slur "nigger" on the floor of the House.

When African American Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was elected to Congress from New York in 1944, Rankin vowed to avoid sitting next to him. In 1945, Powell, a fellow Democrat, called for Rankin's impeachment. Although freshmen congressmen were expected not to speak during their first year in office, Powell rose after one of Rankin's outbursts to say that "the time has arrived to impeach Rankin, or at least expel him from the party."^[3]

During a debate about the 1949

The next person to speak was Representative Jacob Javits (R-New York) who instead condemned the white mob in Peekskill for violating constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and free assembly.^[28] Angered by these comments, Rankin bellowed, "It was not surprising to hear the gentleman from New York defend the Communist enclave." He then wanted it known that the American people are not in sympathy "with that nigger Communist and that bunch of Reds who went up there."^[28]

On a point of order, Representative Vito Marcantonio (R-New York) protested to House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-Texas) that "the gentleman from Mississippi used the word 'nigger.' I ask that the word be taken down and stricken from the RECORD inasmuch as there are two members in this house of Negro race." Rayburn claimed that Rankin had not said "nigger" but "Negro"; but Rankin yelled over him, saying "I said Niggra! Just as I have said since I have been able to talk and shall continue to say."^[29] Speaker Rayburn defended Rankin, ruling that "the gentleman from Mississippi is not subject to a point of order... referred to the Negro race and they should not be afraid of that designation."^[29]

American Jews

Rankin was antisemitic and frequently combined racism against African Americans with invective against American Jews. In a 1943 speech on the floor of the House quoted in both The Jewish News of Detroit^[30] and the antisemitic magazine The Defender of Wichita^[31] he said,

When those communistic Jews—of whom the decent Jews are ashamed—go around here and hug and kiss these Negroes, dance with them, intermarry with them, and try to force their way into white restaurants, white hotels and white picture shows, they are not deceiving any red-blooded American, and, above all, they are not deceiving the men in our armed forces—as to who is at the bottom of all this race trouble.

The better element of the Jews, and especially the old line American Jews throughout the South and West, are not only ashamed of, but they are alarmed at, the activities of these communistic Jews who are stirring this trouble up.

They have caused the deaths of many good Negroes who never would have got into trouble if they had been left alone, as well as the deaths of many good white people, including many innocent, unprotected white girls, who have been raped and murdered by vicious Negroes, who have been encouraged by those alien-minded Communists to commit such crimes.

In a paper by William L. Strickland, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, he observes that "Rankin was an equal opportunity bigot"^[32] as he once—on the floor of the House of Representatives—called the Jewish newspaper columnist Walter Winchell "the little kike."^[5][33] This incident, reported by Time magazine in its February 14, 1944 issue, inspired the novelist Laura Z. Hobson to write her story about antisemitism, Gentleman's Agreement (1947).^[34]

Rankin claimed that the Immigration and Nationality Act was opposed solely by American Jews:

They whine about discrimination. Do you know who is being discriminated against? The white Christian people of America, the ones who created this nation ... I am talking about the white Christian people of the North as well as the South ... Communism is racial. A racial minority seized control in Russia and in all her satellite countries, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and many other countries I could name. They have been run out of practically every country in Europe in the years gone by, and if they keep stirring race trouble in this country and trying to force their communistic program on the Christian people of America, there is no telling what will happen to them here.^[35]

In late 1945, Albert Einstein backed calls for the United States to break off diplomatic relations with Spain's leader Francisco Franco, because the Spanish dictator had been an ally of Adolf Hitler. Rankin condemned Einstein on the floor of Congress, calling him a "foreign-born agitator" who sought "to further the spread of Communism throughout the world."^[6]

An article in an

During the 1951 espionage trial of

atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, Rankin was condemned by Jewish groups for repeatedly calling the Rosenbergs a pair of "communist kikes".^[37]

Japanese Americans

In his first term as representative, Rankin introduced an

anti-miscegenation bill to prevent whites from marrying "Mongolians" and African Americans. A decade later, in 1930 he lobbied against Hawaii's bid for statehood on the grounds that it would add "two Jap senators" to Congress.^[25]

Rankin was one of the few Southern congressmen to support West Coast politicians and lobbyists calling for the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans, proposing that every person of Japanese ancestry in the United States be deported at the end of the war. He reintroduced a defeated "concentration camp bill" to remove ethnic Japanese from the country and all U.S. territories. (Most ethnic Japanese Americans were removed from the West Coast.) As the war progressed, he continued to speak out against Japanese Americans, testifying in favor of labeling Japanese and African American blood donations to prevent them from "contaminating" white recipients and limiting the segregated

442nd Regimental Combat Team to labor battalions instead of active combat.^[25]

Senatorial aspirations

In 1947 Rankin ran for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate that was vacated by the death of Theodore G. Bilbo in office. He finished last among five major candidates with 13% of the vote.

Final years and death

In 1952, Rankin was defeated for re-election to the House by Congressman

Thomas G. Abernethy, also a Democrat, after their districts were joined through redistricting. At that time, most blacks in Mississippi were still disenfranchised, a status that persisted until after Congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

.

Rankin died at his home in Tupelo on November 26, 1960. He is interred in Greenwood Cemetery in West Point, Mississippi.

See also

• List of members of the House Un-American Activities Committee

References

Citations

1. ^ Allen, The Port Chicago Mutiny, 67.
2. ^
   ISSN 1943-8036. Archived
   (PDF) from the original on 2022-05-19. Retrieved 2022-10-05.
3. ^ ^{a b} Haygood, Wil. King of the Cats. Houghton Mifflin, NY. 1993, p. 118.
4. ^ "Executive Order 9066 – The internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans" by Maisie & Richard Conrat, published by the Asian American Studies Center, University of California, Los Angeles, P34
5. ^ ^{a b} Time Magazine
6. ^ ^{a b} "Einstein on Politics". History News Network. June 8, 2007.
7. ISBN 9780299295332
   .
8. ^ Harcourt, Felix. Ku Klux Kulture: American and the Klan in the 1920s. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
9. ^ "Die-hard dixie demos fight Gavagan Bill". Los Angeles, California: California Eagle. April 23, 1937. Retrieved 17 February 2023. This is a bill to encourage Negroes to think they can rape our white women!
10. ^ ^{a b c d e} Maartan Zwiers. "Biography of John Elliott Rankin". Encyclopedia of Mississippi.
11. ^ "John E. Rankin" Archived 2007-09-26 at the Wayback Machine, Biographical Dictionary of the United States
12. ^ Vickers, Kenneth Wayne. "John Rankin: Democrat and Demagogue." Master's thesis, Mississippi State University, 1993.
13. ^ "John Rankin: Congressman Served Sixteen Consecutive Terms", newspaper obituary
14. ^
    ISBN 0-19-505435-0
    p. 505.
15. ISBN 9780807129265
    .
16. ISBN 9780742508880
    .
17. ^ ^{a b} Zwiers, Maarten (July 11, 2017). John Elliott Rankin. Mississippi Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 20, 2022.
18. ^ TO PASS H. R. 2518, (P. A. 10), A BILL PROVIDING FOR THE RETIREMENT OF JUSTICES OF THE SUPREME COURT. GovTrack.us. Retrieved March 20, 2022.
19. ^ 1931 to 1947: Encyclopædia Britannica 1955, Vol 22, p. 845.
20. ^ 1949 to 1953 Britannia (Ibid)
21. ISBN 978-0-15-100710-3
    .
22. ISSN 0021-8723
    .
23. ^ Kern, Gary. A Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitsky and the Stalin Terror, Enigma Books, 2013, p. 384
24. ^ John Gunther Inside U.S.A., (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1947, p. 789)
25. ^ ^{a b c} Herzinger, Kyna. "John Rankin". Densho Encyclopedia. Retrieved September 22, 2014.
26. ISBN 0-394-52836-0
    p. 346.
27. ISBN 978-0766027039
    .
28. ^ ^{a b} Duberman, Martin. Paul Robeson, 1989, Peekskill p. 373.
29. ^ ^{a b} United States Congressional Record, September 21, 1949, p 13375
30. ^ Slomovitz, Philip, ed. (1943-07-16). "A Rest From Bigotry". As the Editor Views the News. The Jewish News. Vol. 3, no. 17. Detroit. Archived from the original on 2021-04-27.
31. ^ Winrod, Gerald Burton, ed. (September 1943). "Congressman Says Negroes Deceived" (PDF). The Defender. Wichita, Kansas. p. 12. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2013-05-30.
32. ^ Haygood, Wil (2006). King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. HarperCollins. p. 118.
33. ^ William (Bill) Strickland (March 26, 2009). "Du Bois'S Revenge: Reinterrogating American Democratic Theory...Or Why We Need a Revolutionary Black Research Agenda In The 21st Century". Black Commentator (317).
34. ^ Hobson, Laura Z. Laura Z: A Life. New York: Arbor House, 1983, pp. 322-323, 328-329.
35. ^ Congressional Record, April 23, 1952, p. 4320
36. ^ Jews Against Prejudice, p. 120
37. ^ A Fire in Their Hearts, p. 258.

Further reading

• OCLC 63179024
  .
• Katznelson, Ira. When Affirmative Action Was White, New York: W.W. Norton, 2005, pp. 113–40
• Onkst, David H. "First a Negro...Incidentally a Veteran: Black World War II Veterans and the GI Bill in the Deep South, 1944-1948", Journal of Southern History 31 (1998), pp. 517–43
• Turner, Sarah J. and John Bound. "Closing the Gap or Widening the Divide: The Effects of the GI Bill and World War II on the Educational Outcomes of Black Americans", Journal of Economic History 63 (2003), pp. 145–77, via JSTOR
• Vickers, Kenneth Wayne. "John Rankin: Democrat and Demagogue." M. A. Thesis, Mississippi State University, 1993. online
• Whayne, Jeannie H. A New Plantation South: Land, Labor, and Federal Favor in Twentieth-Century Arkansas, pp. 167, 175, 216 (about administration of federal programs), University of Virginia Press, 1996

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to John E. Rankin.

• United States Congress. "John E. Rankin (id: R000056)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Historical Highlights History.House.gov
• The University of Southern Mississippi Manuscript Collection
• "John E. Rankin". Find a Grave. Retrieved 2009-02-22.

U.S. House of Representatives
Preceded by Ezekiel S. Candler, Jr.	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Mississippi's 1st congressional district 1921-1953	Succeeded by Thomas Abernethy