Big Jim Eastland; The Godfather of Mississippi
Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2016. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. xii, 426, [2] pages. Card of Constance A. Morella, who served as U.S. Ambassador, and as a representative from Maryland in the U.S. House of Representatives, is laid in, with an inscription to Cokie and Steve Roberts. The inscription reads: To Cokie and Steve, who know first hand the rhythms and movements of civil rights legislation, with love and admiration, Connie and Tony. Publisher's ephemera also laid in. J. Lee Annis Jr. has taught history at Montgomery College for the past thirty years, and he is currently chairman of the History and Political Science Department. He is author of Howard Baker: Conciliator in an Age of Crisis, and, with Senator William H. Frist, co-author of Tennessee Senators, 1911–2001: Portraits of Leadership in a Century of Change. A blunt man of few words but many contradictions, Jim Eastland was an important player in Washington, from his initial stint in 1941 where he rapidly salvaged several key local projects from bungling intervention, to the 1970s when he shepherded the Supreme Court nominees of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to Senate confirmation. The author paints a full picture of the man, describing the objections Eastland raised to civil rights proposals and the eventual accommodations he needed to accept after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. More