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Mississippi State University Library
Sen. John C. Stennis signs an autograph for Robert A. Guyton and Jan Singletary at Ole Miss on April 12, 1967.
Remembrances from:
Sam Wilhite
The 1947 senatorial campaign in the Mississippi Delta had shaped up into a race where the major leadership of the Delta were supporters of Congressman (Bill) Colmer. He had become a very conservative congressman and such leaders as Walter Sillers and others in Bolivar and
Washington counties were support-_________________
ing him.	Wilhite
They made a bad political error. The Stennis people took immediate advantage of it.
Just a short time before the election, Mr. Sillers and others gathered in Memphis to fly to Canada to hunt geese. They made a picture standing in the doorway of a DC-3. They all had shotguns and hunting gear, looking all the part of the hunting safari.
A Commercial Appeal reporter asked the hot question of the day: What did they think about the senatorial election in Mississippi? The answer came back loud and clear — Congressman Colmer was their choice. They gave him a ringing endorsement and urged everyone to suport him.
Well, the Stennis folks knew that this must be an-
From a March 4, 1948, speech on the Senate floor decrying anti-poll tax, anti-lynching and other civil rights bills:
“I believe... that the poll tax is more of a stabilizing regulation of the voting franchise than it is a
I tax_______I am not thinking of the Negro. I would
strongly favor such a regulation in our state as a stabilizer of the ballot if there was not a Negro in the entire state. Our tax applies, of course, to all
races alike____
“Lynching is a form of murder, condemned by all
decent people______It is on the decline. It was down
to one in 1947. That is, of course, one too many. All other forms of murder have increased over the years. The problem is almost solved, due to local interest local pride and local support of laws. Do
swered. We struck upon the old Private John Allen story when he ran for Congress. His opponent was a general and the general was telling one and all what he did in the Civil War. Private John Allen merely said he was the private guarding the general’s tent and he hoped all the privates would vote for him. They did and he won.
We took the Commercial Appeal picture and made a flyer out of it. We changed the geese to moose, because we figured few had ever gone moose hunting, and (the flyer) deplored that these moose hunters on their way to Canada stopped long enough to tell all the rabbit and squirrel hunters of Mississippi who certainly could not afford a trip to Canada how to vote.
We urged them all to have a great hunt for rabbits and squirrels and be sure to vote for Judge John C. Stennis.
It apparently worked. Judge Stennis carried the Mississippi Delta and it played a major role in his 7,000-vote margin of victory.
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Sam Wilhite, chairman of the Columbus & Greenville Railway, worked in Stennis’ 1947 campaign.
not rebuke and then destroy the only true spirit of proper law enforcement, which is a lively local interest and pride___
“Passage of these bills will destroy the Southern wing of the great political party which the South has followed for more than 80 consecutive
years......The only appreciable number of people
who will do anything worthwhile for the rank-and-file Southern Negro... are the Southern white people who live where he lives___
“We in the South have no fear of our relations with the Southern Negroes. We fear the paid agitators and the organizers who make their living by coming in and stirring him up, arousing his suspicion, inflaming the feelings of both races, and then skipping the country if trouble does threaten.”
Stennis says:
In a 1954 Senate floor speech on Air Force mechanics serving as technicians in Indochina: “Step by step and day by day, we are coming nearer and nearer to a fighting part of the war in Indochina. —'We are taking steps that lead our men directly into combat. Soon we may
have to fight or run____I renew my request that
our Air Force mechanics be withdrawn from Indochina. For the good they may do, the risk is too great.”	M
Remembrances from:
John Hailman
From 1971 through 1973 I was a member of the personal staff of Sen. Stennis at his Washington office. During my interview, he told me my job would be mainly to “sit in the corner and think.” He told me one of his toughest jobs was matching wits with senators and their staffs who opposed him on certain crucial legislation and that my main job would be helping him scheme out these battles. He told me if I worked out in that position I could make up my own title. Later, when things were going well, he let me call myself his legal counsel. When the Watergate scandal broke, and the infamous John Dean was identified by that same title, we decided to drop it, and from then on I was just his “aide.”
Our most useful meetings occurred when he would pop in and say, “Come walk with me,” and I would rush along beside his long, quick stride through the marble Senate halls or ride the underground Senate railway system with him. The Senator was a tremendously quick study with a phenomenal memory for personal detail. I never knew anyone who said fewer trivial things than he did.
His organizational scheme, however, often consisted of miscellaneous jotting on loose scraps of paper kept in all his pockets at once. He required constant “talking papers,” concise single-page summaries of complex issues. Often the research behind them would run to fifty or sixty pages, but he always insisted on a clear summary of not more than one page.
Some of the memorable staff traditions included our “kits,” the bundles of papers we carried into his office to help us in answering his never-ending questions on all subjects known to man, as well as the “take home,” a huge stack of papers he always carried home with him to study in the evening. It was an eclectic mixture of history, philosophy, politics and the latest gossip around the Capitol, which he always seemed to have memorized by the next morning.
Staff meetings around his mahogany table, formerly used by vice presidents, usually took place between 6 and 7 p.m. — after the senator had returned fresh and full of energy after exercising and showering the marble-wall Senate “gym” downstairs (it was more like a Roman bath). He always had more staying power and intellectual curiosity than any of us much-younger staff members.
One especially vivid memory of Sen. Stennis was his tremendous love for the life and works of Thomas Jefferson, whose letters and papers he often consulted. Like Jefferson, he dictated unusually interesting weekly letters to his grandchildren and required that they respond in kind.
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John R. Hailman is assistant U.S. Attorney in Oxford.
Stennis says:
Hailman