Word: eastlands
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...Eastland was born on the Doddsville plantation, and throughout his youth his father, Woods Eastland, steadily increased its size. "Judge" Woods Eastland was a lawyer by profession, and his practice was in Forest (pop. 1,500), in the hill coufitry about 100 miles from Doddsville. It was there that Jim grew up-a wellborn Delta planter's son set down amongst planter-hating "rednecks." Jim and his father were inseparable, but somehow Woods Eastland's rollicking geniality never rubbed off on his son, and Jim grew up cold, reserved and somewhat arrogant. Said a clerk in a Forest...
...after one semester there switched to the University of Alabama. While still a senior at Alabama, he passed his bar exams ("I made the highest grade") and promptly dropped out of school to run for the Mississippi state legislature. With his father's backing, 24-year-old Jim Eastland had no trouble in getting elected, and for four years he was one of then Governor Theodore Bilbo's leading supporters in the house of representatives. In 1932, when Bilbo left office under a cloud of financial troubles, Eastland also got out of politics and began to practice...
Unmistakable Light. For nine years Jim Eastland seemed to have forgotten politics. He and Libby moved to the Delta, where he quietly plugged away building up a law practice in Ruleville (pop. 1,500), six miles from Doddsville. Just about everybody in Mississippi gasped with astonishment in 1941 when Governor Paul Johnson, a lifelong friend of Woods Eastland, appointed young Jim, after Woods turned it down, to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of Pat Harrison. But the appointment was only for 88 days until a special election could be held, and Jim had promised...
Just about the time Jim hit Capitol Hill, OPA Administrator Leon Henderson injudiciously announced plans to put a price ceiling on cottonseed oil. Jim Eastland rose on the Senate floor and delivered a violent attack on Henderson's decision. The ceiling on cottonseed oil was abandoned, 3,500 congratulatory letters poured into Eastland's office, and when his 88 days were up, he returned to Mississippi with an unmistakable light in his eyes, boasting that he had put $50 million in the pockets of Southern cotton growers...
True to his promise, Eastland didn't run in the special election, but a year later he won a full Senate term in a bitter contest with Wall Doxey, who had the support of Eastland's onetime hero, Theodore Bilbo...