John
Rankin was
born in Bolanda, Mississippi, on 29th March, 1882. After graduating
from the University of Mississippi in 1910 he admitted to the bar
and worked as a lawyer in Clay County. In 1911 he was appointed prosecuting
attorney of Lee County but joined the USA Army
during the First World War.
A member of the Democratic Party,
Rankin was elected to Congress in 1921. Chairman of the Committee
on World War Veterans' Legislation he was co-sponsor of the bill that
created the Tennessee Valley Authority.
After the Second World War he played a prominent
role on the Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC).
Rankin retired from politics in 1953 and afterwards worked in the
real estate business. John Rankin died in Tupelo, Mississippi, on
26th November, 1960.
(1)
Jack
Anderson, Confessions of a Muckraker
(1979)
His (Drew Pearson) larger
purposes - for he was always offensive-minded - were to attack HUAC,
and by his example, to break the ice of fear that kept so many persons
of influence silent. His intended argument was that the HUAC probe
was unconstitutional in the first place. He offered evidence that
Representative Rankin had used the committee rostrum, without rebuke,
to praise the Ku Klux Klan as representative of the highest Americanism,
and that the committee had steadfastly refused to probe the Klan.
This disqualified it. Drew deduced, from any objective inquiry into
un-Americanism and invalidated its proceedings. The court did not
acknowledge Drew's jurisprudential authority, however, and would not
permit him to take the stand, though it did admit to the record some
of his documentation on Rankin. But the attempt to testify was widely
publicized.
(2)
Emanuel
Celler, You Never Leave Brooklyn
(1953)
Perhaps the loneliest moments I experienced
in the House were in the running battle with my former colleague,
Mr. John Rankin of Mississippi. Here was a curious mixture. More than
any other single member of the House, Rankin had led the fight for
Rural Electrification. In the days when TVA legislation needed every
ounce of support it could get, Rankin defied all the cries of socialism
directed against it and defended it with his great command of parliamentary
skill. I believe that had he remained on that track he, perhaps, would
have ranked with the late Senator George Norris in the extension of
power productivity for the people.
Rankin came to the House
the same year I did. The prejudices with which he later became identified
he brought with him. He became bolder as the years went by and to
his theme of white supremacy he added that of anti-Semitism. To listen
to his harangues on the floor became, for me, an agony.
(3)
Walter Goodman, The Committee (1964)
The source of Rankin's animus against Hollywood - and he made no particular
effort to conceal it - with the large number of Jews eminent in the
film industry. In Rankin's mind, to call a Jew a Communist was a tautology.
His convictions led him to attribute all the horrors of the Russian
revolution to Trotsky and see Stalin as a kind of reformer. In the
halls of Congress he called Walter Winchell "a little slime-mongering
kike" and he took glee in baiting his Jewish colleagues, particularly
Adolph Sabath and Emanuel Celler. One day he referred to the latter
as "the Jewish gentleman from New York". When Celler protested,
Rankin asked, "Does the member from New York object to being
called a Jew or does he object to being called a gentleman? What is
he kicking about?"
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