The Pittsburgh Press (June 23, 1946)
Stop Negro voter, Bilbo demands
JACKSON, Mississippi, June 22 (UP) – Sen. Theodore Bilbo tonight demanded that the “red-blooded men” of Mississippi bar Negroes from voting.
His demand came a few hours after a Negro Army veteran charged that he had been beaten and flogged by four white men when he sought to register.
‘Resort to any means’
In one of his strongest white supremacy statements of his current campaign for renomination, the Mississippi Democrat said at Laurel that if a few Negroes vote in the Democratic primary this year, more will vote in 1947 “and from then on it will grow into a mighty surge.”
He called on every “red-blooded Anglo-Saxon man in Mississippi to resort to any means to keep hundreds of Negroes from the polls in the July 2 primary.”
“And if you don’t know what that means, you are just not up on your persuasive measures,” Sen. Bilbo added.
His speech came after Etoy Fletcher, Army veteran attending school under the G.I. Bill of Rights, charged in an affidavit that he had been seized, flogged and beaten at Brandon, Mississippi, on June 2 when he attempted unsuccessfully to register.
‘Sleeping on volcano’
His charge was made in an affidavit made public by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in New York.
In his speech, which was broadcast, Sen. Bilbo said that the white people of Mississippi are sleeping on a volcano “and it is up to the red-blooded men to do something about it. The white men of this state have a right to resort to any means at their command to stop it.”