No Tickle

When Theodore Bilbo died of cancer last summer (TIME, Sept. i), it did not mean that Mississippi was out of demagogues. Poodle-haired Congressman John E. Rankin automatically succeeded him. Rankin thought he might succeed almost as easily to Bilbo's seat in the U.S. Senate. Apparently he thought wrong.

John Rankin was back home last week, stumping hard for the special senatorial election on Nov. 4. He was trying to make good on his promise to out-Bilbo Bilbo. But few Mississippians were listening.

Hillbilly Come-On. One afternoon when he drove into Mendenhall, seat of Simpson County, only seven courthouse loafers were on hand to greet him. To drum up a crowd, his nephew, Cason Rankin, hooked up a loudspeaker in the Congressman's black Buick sedan, toured the town playing hillbilly recordings. But half an hour's driving netted only three more shirtsleeved listeners. John Rankin brushed back his mane of stringy yellow hair, flung out his arms and shouted:

"What is that band of nigger Communists headed by Joe Louis circulating a petition seeking to get a million names on it to deny me my seat in the Senate for? Because they know I'll take the floor and tear to shreds the arguments for the Communistic F.E.P.C.--one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation ever introduced.

"They talk about us treating the nigger bad in the South. Why, in Chicago 20 years ago, they killed more Negroes in one riot than we have killed in the South since Reconstruction. In Detroit three years ago, they killed 300 niggers. They said they killed 30, but I have the figures."

Applause was light. Said one rednecked farmer: "Nothing like old Bilbo. Old Bilbo would tickle you right down to the seat of your pants."

End of the Road? John Rankin drove on. It was the same everywhere. Many a knowing Mississippi politician predicted that Rankin would be so badly beaten in the Senate race that he might not even run again for the House seat which he has held for 21 years.

The real senatorial race was between Rankin's fellow Congressman, William Meyers Colmer, 57, and Circuit Court Judge John Cornelius Stennis, 46. Colmer and Stennis were both waging well-organized, serious campaigns. Significantly, neither was making an issue of white supremacy; they went on record as favoring "the Southern way of life," and let it go at that. Running neck & neck, both were pulling bigger crowds than Rankin.

Commented an Episcopal minister at Jackson: "I believe that the tide of progress is finally sweeping even into Mississippi."

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