Thread by @KevinMKruse

Senator Jim Eastland (D-MS) was a prominent conservative who supported segregation throughout the 1960s.

But so was Representative Prentiss Walker (R-MS), the Republican who challenged him in the 1966 election.

Jim Eastland, as you likely know, was a prominent white supremacist.

After Brown, he promised to lead "a great crusade to restore Americanism" and defend segregation. He spoke at Citizens' Councils meetings and attacked critics of segregationists at Ole Miss as "Marxists."

Eastland was also a prominent conservative.

He bragged about bottling up JFK's legislative program in Congress, voted against civil rights and Medicare, etc. The ratings he got from the liberal ADA for 1963-1966 make his conservatism clear -- 6, 3, 0, 2.

adaction.org/ada-voting-rec…

In case you don't trust the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, the first year the American Conservative Union did its own rankings from the other end of the spectrum -- 1971 -- they rated him a 94, and the 13th most conservative member of the Senate. acuratings.conservative.org/acu-federal-le…

So, as you can see, Democratic Senator Jim Eastland was a very prominent, very conservative, very outspoken supporter of segregation.

But again, so was his Republican opponent in the 1966 Senate election, Representative Prentiss Walker.

In 1964, Prentiss Walker became the first GOP congressman from Mississippi in 80 years, thanks to Barry Goldwater's coattails.

His first public appearance after winning was before a group called Americans for the Preservation of the White Race. books.google.com/books?id=cBxlC…

In Congress, Rep. Walker stood with most of his fellow Southerners, Democrat and Republican alike, to block civil rights.

He voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and, when Congress investigated the Klan, complained that civil rights workers were actually worse.

Even though he'd only served in Congress for one term, Walker decided to take on the entrenched Senator Eastland in the 1966 election.

And he did so by trying -- against the odds -- to outflank Eastland on the right and link him to the increasingly liberal national Democrats.

The campaign was a contest over which one would be the more reliable white supremacist.

When Walker accidentally backed a black applicant to the Air Force Academy, he claimed it was a dirty trick -- and countercharged that Eastland had OK'ed a black appointee to Ike's cabinet.

It was a race between an old-school conservative segregationist Democrat and a new-style conservative segregationist Republican. Black voters felt they had no real choice. A third-party African American candidate ran but fared poorly.

In the end, Eastland won re-election easily.

So, yes, Democrat Eastland was a bitter segregationist. But so was his Republican opponent.

For conservative white southerners, regardless of their party, segregation was a constant.

Anyone who says otherwise doesn't understand this history. Or is hoping you don't.