Bilbo, Theodore Gilmore, 1877–1947, U.S. senator (1935–47), b. near Poplarville, Pearl River co., Miss. After study at the Univ. of Nashville (1897–1900) and Vanderbilt Univ. law school (1905–7), he was admitted (1908) to the Tennessee bar. An ultraconservative Southern Democrat, he won political success by demagogic insistence on white supremacy. He was twice governor of Mississippi (1916–20, 1928–32) before his election to the U.S. Senate. He died while Congress was investigating charges that he had disqualified himself for the Senate by using intimidation to keep blacks from voting and by accepting bribes.
See biography by A. W. Green (1963).
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