[From "The Man: Theodore Bilbo"]

Author’s Preface: The Jim Crow Era, in my view, was Dixie’s Golden Age and provided it with some of its best statesmen[…]
Theodore Bilbo personified the ideological framework of the lowly Mississippi rural population, or rednecks. Regarded as nothing more than a race-baiting simpleton of a Southern demagogue, Bilbo’s true legacy reveals a man who, in reality, scoffed at such a label[…]
Bilbo’s political career began in 1908 after being elected to the Mississippi State Senate during the midst of the increasing rural White populism flooding into the state’s Democratic Party[…]
Theodore Bilbo was not a race-baiting demagogue[…]His first instance of dabbling in the affairs of race politics took place in 1928[…]and he only did so as a means of competing with the Delta leaders[…]While he did show support for Negro repatriation to Africa, Bilbo remained shockingly quiet on racial discussions until the late 1930s[…]
Racial politics again reared its head during the congressional push for the Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching bill[…]Arguably the loudest opponent of said bill was none other than Bilbo himself. He was reared in an area in which vigilante justice was often the norm[…]Bilbo, and his Southern contemporaries, primarily opposed the bill because it was a blatant attempt at federal overreach[…]
He also led the opposition against the nomination of liberal social rights activist Aubrey Willis Williams to the head of the Rural Electrification Administration. Bilbo knew the levels of destruction and havoc such social revolutionary measures, particularly ones spearheaded by blatant communists, could have on Southern society[…]
Nothing positive is said of Bilbo in modern historiography. His legacy has effectively become the last four years of his life, despite the fact he did numerous great things for rural folk in Mississippi