JAMES O. EASTLAND - PASS SIGNED CIRCA 1945 CO-SIGNED BY: VIRGINIA SIMMERMAN - HFSID 293599

JAMES O. EASTLAND
His signature on a Senate Pass from 1945
Senate Pass signed: "James O. Eastland", 4¼x3 card, affixed to an 8½x11 page with a Senate Committee on Naval Affairs transmittal envelope bearing Eastland's stamped frank. Accompanied by forwarding letter on Judiciary Committee stationery, signed by Eastland's Executive Secretary "Virginia M. Simmerman", dated July 31, 1945. JAMES O. EASTLAND (1904-1986) was appointed as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1941 to fill a vacancy left by the death of Pat Harrison. He was elected to the Senate in 1942 and served until 1978. He served alongside John Stennis, also a Democrat, from 1947 to 1978. Eastland and Stennis were the second longest-serving Senate duo in United States history behind Strom Thurmond and Fritz Hollings of South Carolina. He was president pro tempore from 1972 to 1978 and was Chairman of the Senate Commitee on the Judiciary from 1956 until his resignation in 1978. Eastland was a strong anti-Communist and an opponent of racial integration who claimed that the Supreme Court's school integration decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), "destroyed" the Constitution. He moderated his opposition to civil rights efforts in later years in response to the growing bloc of black voters in Mississippi. Virginia M. Simmerman, formerly the secretary of Senator Theodore Bilbo and then a War Department employee, was Eastland's Executive Secretary from 1943 to 1951. From the collection of Ralph Errington Ward (1926-2009) a fighter pilot and squadron commander in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II. Ward went on to become President and CEO of Cheseborough-Ponds, Inc., transforming the cosmetics firm into a major home product conglomerate. Fine condition.