Theodore G. Bilbo

Life & Legacy

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.