Stennis (left) visited the Marshall Space Flight Center in mid-November 1967, where he was greeted at the Redstone Airfield by Center Director Dr. Wernher von Braun.
(August 3, 1901–April 23, 1995) was a
U.S. Senator from the state of
Mississippi. He was a
Democrat who served in the Senate for over 41 years, becoming its
most senior member by his retirement.
Early life
thumb|left|Stennis as a boythumb|left|Stennis takes his seat in the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1928
Born in
Kemper County, Mississippi, Stennis received a
bachelor's degree,
Phi Beta Kappa from
Mississippi State University in
Starkville (then Mississippi A&M) in 1923. In 1928, Stennis obtained a law degree from the
University of Virginia at
Charlottesville, where he was a member of
ΦBK and
ΑΧΡ. While in
law school, he won a seat in the
Mississippi House of Representatives, in which he served until 1932. Stennis was a
prosecutor from 1932 to 1937 and a circuit
judge from 1937 to 1947, both for Mississippi's Sixteenth Judicial District.
Stennis married Coy Hines, and together, they had two children, John Hampton and Margaret Jane.
U.S. Senator
Upon the death of Senator
Theodore Bilbo in 1947, Stennis won the
special election to fill the vacancy, winning the seat from a field of five candidates (including two sitting
Congressmen:
John E. Rankin and
William M. Colmer). He remained in the Senate until 1989. From 1947 to 1978, he served alongside fellow Mississippi senator and Democrat
James Eastland; thus, notwithstanding his long service Stennis would serve 31 years as Mississippi's
junior Senator. He and Eastland were at the time the longest serving Senate duo in American history, later broken by the
South Carolina duo of
Strom Thurmond and
Fritz Hollings. He later developed a good relationship with Eastland's successor,
Republican Thad Cochran.
Stennis wrote the first Senate ethics code, and was the first chairman of the
Senate Ethics Committee.
In 1973, Stennis was almost fatally wounded by two gunshots after being mugged outside his Washington home. In October 1973, during the
Watergate scandal, the
Nixon administration proposed the
Stennis compromise, wherein the hard-of-hearing Stennis would listen to the contested
Oval Office tapes and report on their contents, but this plan went nowhere. Time Magazine ran a picture of John Stennis that read :"Technical Assistance Needed." The picture had his hand cupped around his ear.
Stennis lost his left leg to
cancer in 1984.
He was unanimously selected
President pro tempore of the Senate during the
100th Congress (1987–1989). During his Senate career he chaired, at various times, the
Select Committee on Standards and Conduct, and the
Armed Services, and
Appropriations committees. Because of his work with the Armed Services committee (1969–1980) he became known as the "Father of America's Modern
Navy", and he was subsequently honored by having a
supercarrier named after him. He is one of only two members of Congress to be so honored, the other being former Georgia Democrat
Carl Vinson.
Civil rights record
Throughout Stennis' long career, his record on
civil rights was poor. As a prosecutor, he sought the conviction and execution of three
African American share croppers whose
murder confessions had been extracted by
torture. The convictions were overturned by the
U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case of
Brown v. Mississippi (1936) that banned the use of evidence obtained by torture. The transcript of the trial indicates Stennis was fully aware of the methods of interrogation, including
flogging, used to gain confessions.
As a Senator, Stennis was a strong supporter of
racial segregation. In the 1950s and 1960s he vigorously opposed the
Voting Rights Act, the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the
Civil Rights Act of 1968 and he signed the
Southern Manifesto of 1956, supporting
filibuster tactics to block or delay passage in all cases.
Near the end of his life, in the 1980s, he supported civil rights legislation while opposing the national holiday to honor civil rights leader
Martin Luther King. Stennis campaigned (along with
Governor Bill Allain) for
Mike Espy in 1986 during Espy's successful bid to become the first black Congressman from the state since the end of
Reconstruction.
Civil liberties
Earlier in his career, Stennis was the first Democrat to publicly criticize
Joseph McCarthy on the Senate floor during the
Red Scare.
Retirement
In 1982, his last election, Stennis easily defeated
Republican Haley Barbour in a largely Democratic year.
Declining to run for re-election in 1988, Stennis retired from the Senate in 1989. He had not lost an election in 60 years. He took a teaching post at his alma mater, which he held until his death in
Jackson at the age of 93.
At the time of Stennis' retirement, his continuous tenure of 41 years and 2 months in the Senate was second only to that of
Carl Hayden. (It has since been surpassed by
Robert Byrd,
Strom Thurmond,
Ted Kennedy, and
Daniel Inouye, leaving Stennis sixth).
John Stennis is buried at Pinecrest Cemetery in Kemper County
Naming honors
Quote
"I want to plow a straight furrow right down to the end of the row."
