Jamie L. Whitten

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jamie L. Whitten

Jamie Lloyd Whitten (born April 18, 1910 in Cascilla , Tallahatchie County , Mississippi , † September 9, 1995 in Oxford , Mississippi) was an American politician who represented the state of Mississippi in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Jamie Whitten was born in Cascilla. He attended the local public school and later the University of Mississippi . He also worked briefly as a teacher before he was admitted to the bar in 1932. In a special election in 1941, Whitten was elected a Democrat to the US House of Representatives to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of MP Wall Doxey . He had previously decided to run for the US Senate . Whitten was subsequently elected to Congress 27 times .

Whitten served on the Grants Committee throughout most of his House tenures . Following the resignation of George H. Mahon he took over in 1979 even presided over the US Congress and held this post until after the election of 1992. He was in fact by the newly elected Liberal Democrats the House Democratic Caucus in favor of William Huston Natcher replaced . Whitten served in the House of Representatives from November 4, 1941 to January 3, 1995, setting a new record for one of the longest uninterrupted service relationships in the US Congress. In 2009 this record was surpassed by Michigan's MP John Dingell .

Whitten was originally a very conservative segregationist ( segregationist ), and so he signed the Southern Manifesto that the ruling Brown v. Sentenced by the Board of Education of the Supreme Court , which decided to desegregate public schools. He also continued to vote with the entire Mississippi delegation in Congress and almost all of his southern counterparts against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 , the Civil Rights Act of 1960 , the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , the Voting Rights Act of 1965 , the Civil Rights Act of 1968 , the Civil Rights Act of 1970, and the Civil Rights Act of 1991 .

Whitten later apologized for these votes, calling them a "mistake" caused by a bad judgment. In his later career he took on a more liberal role, which was seen in a large number of votes. It can be assumed that he feared that if he did not, he would be pushed out of the Appropriations Committee Chairmanship by the new Liberal Democrats , which happened in 1992. He also often came into conflict with the Reagan administration on political matters. He voted against Reagan's economic plans, tax cuts, increased defense spending, welfare reform, abortion regulations, the missile defense system and the second Gulf War .

He is also known as the author of That We May Live , an answer to Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring .

With a dwindling chance of re-election for a historic 28th term, Whitten did not run for the 1994 election. He retired from the House of Representatives to his property in Oxford, Mississippi, after the longest term of any MP (53 years and two months). He died there on September 9, 1995 at the age of 85, eight months after he had left office.

Honors

In June 1995, the United States Congress renamed the United States Department of Agriculture's largest headquarters building in Washington, DC , the Jamie L. Whitten Federal Building in his honor.

The Jamie Whitten Historical Site is located on the Natchez Trace Parkway bridge over the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway , two projects Whitten successfully fought to fund throughout his tenure. In doing so, he had to overcome strong opposition from Conservatives who used state funds for this construction.

Web links

  • Jamie L. Whitten in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)