Lyndon Johnson and James Eastland on 23 June 1964


Transcript

Edited by Kent B. Germany and David C. Carter, with Ashley Havard High and Patricia Dunn

See the daily introduction for 1964-06-23  [from the Norton edition]

Hoping to gain an entrée to the Mississippi governor, the President reached his old Senate friend James Eastland in the senator’s hometown of Ruleville, Mississippi. Johnson kept Eastland on the speakerphone for the entirety of this conversation, literally shouting into what he called the “squawk box” for over eight minutes. Eastland, in his thick Mississippi Delta accent, mocked the idea that any violence had occurred and gave voice to a prevalent white southern belief that the disappearance was a “publicity stunt,” declaring confidently that there was “nobody in that area to harm them.”

President Johnson

[answering on speakerphone] Jim?[note 1] The Presidential Recordings Program revised the following section of text in 2021 for inclusion in The LBJ Telephone Tapes, a project produced by the Miller Center in partnership with the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library to commemorate the library's 50th anniversary.

James O. "Jim" Eastland

Hello, Mr. President, how you feel?

President Johnson

I’m doing all right. I hope you are. You got a lot of sunshine down there?

Eastland

Need some rain—we need rain mighty bad.

President Johnson

Well, we’re so dry in my country that we’re going to have to sell off all of our cattle if we don’t get rain.

Eastland

Well, I’m in the same shape: got a cotton crop just burning up.

President Johnson

I’ll be darned. I thought you’d be harvesting cotton pretty soon. When is it, July?

Eastland

Yeah.

President Johnson

I guess they’re harvesting the valley right now.

Eastland

Uh-huh.

President Johnson

Jim, we got three kids missing down there. What can I do about it?

Eastland

Well, I don’t know. I don’t believe there’s—I don’t believe there’s three missing.

President Johnson

We got their parents down here.

Eastland

I believe it’s a publicity stunt.

President Johnson

They say that their parents are here, and they’ve come down to see the Attorney General [Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy], and they’ve seen Burke Marshall, and they’re going to be interviewed by the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]—the parents. And they’ve got some newspaper people and some photographers with them and couple of congressmen: Congressman [William Fitts] Ryan [D–New York] and this Republican, Congressman Ogden [R.] Reid [R–New York], whose folks used to own the Herald Tribune in New York.[note 2] Lee White recounts that he pointed out the Herald Tribune connection to Johnson while standing in the doorway of Kenny O’Donnell’s office just before noon. Lee White, transcript, Oral History Interview, 18 February 1971, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, pp. 8–9.

Eastland

Yeah?

President Johnson

They want to come to the White House, see the President, and I told them that I thought that that would be better to let Lee [C.] White—who handles matters like that for me—talk to them, and he’d go up to Ryan’s office and talk to them. I don’t know whether that’s going to be satisfactory or not.[note 3] End of 2021 revisions.

The Attorney General called over while I was out. He thought I ought to make a statement on it. I made one at my press conference this morning. Scotty Reston said, “Mr. President, do you have any information about those three kids that disappeared in Mississippi?” I said [reading]: “The FBI has a number of men who are studying it, and we’ve asked them to spare no efforts to secure information and report to us. I’ve had no reports since breakfast, but at that time I understood that the FBI had forces in that area looking into it. Several weeks ago, I asked them to anticipate the problems that would come from this, and they have sent extra FBI personnel into the area. They have substantially augmented their personnel in the last few hours.” And that’s all I said.

Eastland

Well, that’s all right.[note 4] The Presidential Recordings Program revised the following section of text in 2021 for inclusion in The LBJ Telephone Tapes, a project produced by the Miller Center in partnership with the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library to commemorate the library's 50th anniversary. Now, I’m going to tell you why I don’t think there’s a damn thing to it. They were put in jail in Philadelphia, in East Mississippi, right next to . . . county right next to John [C.] Stennis’s [D–Mississippi] home county, and they were going to Meridian.[note 5] Democratic Senator John Stennis was from Starkville in Oktibbeha County, home to Mississippi State University. It was approximately 70 miles north of Philadelphia, Mississippi. There’s not a Ku Klux Klan in that area; there’s not a Citizens’ Council in that area; there’s no organized white man in that area. So that’s why I think it’s a publicity stunt.[note 6] Eastland’s plantation was in Sunflower County in the Mississippi Delta. The county seat was Indianola, where in 1954 the first Citizen’s Council was formed two months after the Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision. Now, if it had happened in other areas, I would pay more attention to it, but I happen to know that some of these bombings where nobody gets hurt are publicity stunts.

This Nigra woman [Fannie Lou Hamer] in Ruleville [Mississippi] that’s been to Washington and testified that she was shot at 19 times is lying.[note 7] Eastland was referring to Fannie Lou Hamer, the sharecropper who had become one of the most influential civil rights leaders in Mississippi. In late-August 1962, Hamer lost her job as a timekeeper for a plantation and was evicted from her home. On the night of 10 September 1962, 16 shots were fired into the home where she had been staying since her eviction, but apparently unknown to the shooters, she was not in the house. That same night, two women were shot in Ruleville and another home was fired upon. To profound effect two months after this call, Hamer repeated her story to the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Convention. ’Course, with anybody that gets shot at 19 times [slight chuckle] is going to get hit, and she hasn’t been shot at a time, and nobody’s tried to bother her. They let her sit in on the Democratic . . . in the Democratic county convention this morning.

President Johnson

Uh-huh.

Eastland

I don’t think there’s anything to it.[note 8] End of 2021 revisions.

President Johnson

Well, now, here’s what I’m calling you about as my friend: Number one, they said I ought to make a statement. I’ve made this statement, and I think I’ll stand on it. Do you see any need of my going any further?

Eastland

No!

President Johnson

All right, that’s number one. Number two, they’ve suggested I see these parents. I’ve told them I thought that’d be a bad precedent. I’m going to try to get them to see an assistant of mine and get by with that if I can, so I don’t add to the fuel. Uh, do you . . . you . . . you . . . Don’t you think that’s the thing to do?

Eastland

Sure, and I think it’s going to turn out that there’s nothing to it. Now, I don’t know, but . . .

President Johnson

Now, number three, the Attorney General suggested that I probably ought to call the governor [Paul Johnson]. I found out that Burke Marshall called the attorney general, [Joe] Patterson of Mississippi, this morning. He was quite cooperative, and he said they were going to do everything they could to help. If I call the governor, it might put him on the spot a little bit, particularly if it got public, and he might resent it. Now, what’s your judgment?

Eastland

Well, my judgment is that he’s going to do everything he can, and is doing everything he can, to enforce the law.

President Johnson

All right, now, should I call him or not?

Eastland

Well, it’d be all right.

President Johnson

Would you advise it or not advise it?

Eastland

No, I’m not going to advise you. I don’t think it would mean anything either way. He’s going . . . I can call him, and . . .

President Johnson

You just do that, and I’ll say I’ve communicated with the proper people, and I’m doing everything I can with everybody I know.

Eastland

All right. I’ll call him and talk to him about it [unclear]—

President Johnson

I’d rather work with you. Now you tell him that I want to see him anytime he wants to now. I told you and John Stennis we want to get this bill out of the way so they couldn’t say I was trading and filling out.[note 9] Presumably, Johnson meant the Civil Rights Act, which he would sign on 2 July. Now, it’s out of the way, and you tell him anytime he wants to meet—

Eastland

Well . . .

President Johnson

—I’m ready.

Eastland

This boy in the . . . What’s—[Nicholas] Katzenbach said to arrange it one day next week after the sixth.

President Johnson

All right, that’s good. Well, you just—

Eastland

And I’m going . . . I was going to talk to him this afternoon.

President Johnson

All right. You just tell him anything—[note 10] The Presidential Recordings Program revised the following section of text in 2021 for inclusion in The LBJ Telephone Tapes, a project produced by the Miller Center in partnership with the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library to commemorate the library's 50th anniversary.

Eastland

[speaking over President Johnson] Well, let me ask you this question about these three that are missing: Who is there to harm them? There’s no organ—there’s no White organizations in that area of Mississippi. Who would—could possibly harm them?

President Johnson

Well, might have some crank or some nut, like they locked [Eastland attempts to interject] a man up in Minneapolis [Minnesota] today for saying he’s going to kill me Friday when I go out there.[note 11] Johnson had several speaking engagements in Minnesota on 27–28 June.

Eastland

[Unclear.][note 12] Eastland seemed to say, “Naw, it’ll take a bear.” It’ll take a crowd to handle—make three men disappear.

President Johnson

Well, it depends on the kind of men, Jim.

Eastland

Huh?

President Johnson

It depends on the kind of men.

Eastland

Well, there’s nobody in that area to harm them.

President Johnson

They might take a big crowd to take three like you.

Eastland

[chuckling] Ah, well—

President Johnson

I imagine it wouldn’t take many to capture me.

Eastland

[continuing to chuckle] Well, I’d run.

President Johnson

All right. Well, now, you get that rain for both of us and send it on east when you get through using it.[note 13] End of 2021 revisions.

Eastland

I’ll do it.

President Johnson

Now you tell the governor I send my regards. I want to work with him.

Now, we got a party conciliator under this law, Jim. I’ve got to have some southerner that knows something about the South and that the Negroes will have confidence in and won’t say that I’ve fixed them. If you’ve got any ideas or anybody that’s worth a damn, I wished you’d let me know.

Eastland

I’ll do it.

President Johnson

I tried to get the mayor of Atlanta [Ivan Allen] today, and he wouldn’t take it.

Eastland

I didn’t know that.

President Johnson

Well, I asked him, and he said he wouldn’t take it. Some of them have suggested that I try to get Dave Lawrence of Pennsylvania, but he’s been governor, and he wouldn’t want to take it. Some of them have suggested that I get a mayor from North Carolina; I don’t know him [Stanley Brookshire]. One of them suggested that I get LeRoy Collins. I don’t know whether he’d get out of the association he works for or not.

Eastland

Well, he’s a damn cheat, double-crosser, and a liar, and he’s a . . . strictly dishonest. Now, he agreed that the convention . . . before he was to recognize us to vote for you, and he went back on his word, and I called him a goddamn, lying, son of a bitch out there.[note 14] LeRoy Collins was chairman of the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. During the nomination roll call, the Mississippi delegation proved notable for its early morning submission of arch-segregationist governor Ross Barnett as their candidate, a move met by loud boos from surprised Democrats in the Convention Hall. Washington Post, 14 July 1960.

President Johnson

Well, we don’t want him, then, do we?

Eastland

Hell, no!

President Johnson

All right, I’ll tell them that. Now, get some—

Eastland

You couldn’t retain your self-respect and vote a—and support a man that fought you like he did.

President Johnson

All right. OK, much obliged.

Eastland

Well, I think—

President Johnson

You think of anybody you can and give me a ring.

Eastland

I’ll do it.

At 3:32 p.m. (edt), the FBI had located the 1963 Ford Fairlane station wagon driven by Chaney. The burned car rested 15 miles northeast of Philadelphia. It was 48 feet off of Highway 21 and just over 100 feet east of the languid Bogue Chitto Creek. The FBI found the vehicle through tips from the superintendent at a nearby Choctaw Indian Reservation and a local man who had seen ten-foot-high flames in the area at approximately 4:00 a.m. (edt) on June 22 (a little over three hours after the murders). Arriving on the scene were Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and an estimated 20 FBI agents.[note 15] Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Miburn Prosecutive Summary” of the case “Bernard L. Akin, et al.; James Earl Chaney, Michael Henry Schwerner, aka Mickey, Andrew Goodman— Victims,” 19 December 1964, File 44.25706, http://foia.fbi.gov/miburn/miburn6.pdf, pp. 427, 458, 465–78; Chief A. D. Morgan, Mississippi Highway Patrol, Report, Folder 7: “Highway Patrol Reports and Correspondence, June 1964,” Box 144, Series II, Sub-Series 10: Highway Patrol, Johnson Papers, University of Southern Mississippi.

Cite as

“Lyndon Johnson and James Eastland on 23 June 1964,” Tape WH6406.14, Citation #3836, Presidential Recordings Digital Edition [Mississippi Burning and the Passage of the Civil Rights Act, vol. 8, ed. Kent B. Germany and David C. Carter] (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014–). URL: http://prde.upress.virginia.edu/conversations/9080015

Originally published in

Lyndon B. Johnson: Mississippi Burning and the Passage of the Civil Rights Act, June 23, 1964–July 4, 1964, ed. Kent B. Germany and David C. Carter, vol. 8 of The Presidential Recordings (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2011).