Jamie L. Whitten

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

Career

Jamie Whitten was born in Cascilla. He attended the local public school and later the University of Mississippi. He was also briefly worked as a teacher before becoming a lawyer in 1932 got his approval. In a special election Whitten in 1941 elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives to fill the vacancy that was created by the resignation of Mr Wall Doxey. This had previously decided to run for the U.S. Senate. Whitten was elected to the sequence 27 times to Congress.

Throughout most of his terms of office in the House of Representatives, Whitten worked in the Appropriations Committee. Following the resignation of George H. Mahon, he took over in 1979 even presided over the U.S. Congress and held this post until after the election of 1992. Since he was in fact replaced by the newly elected liberal Democrats of the House Democratic Caucus in favor of William Huston Natcher. Whitten exercised its activity in the House of Representatives on 4 November 1941 to 3 January 1995 and thus set a new record for one of the longest uninterrupted service conditions in the U.S. Congress. In 2009, this record of Michigan's John Dingell has been exceeded.

Whitten was originally a very conservative segregationist ( segregationist ) and so he signed the Southern Manifesto that the ruling Brown vs.. Board of Education of the U.S. Supreme Court condemned, with the desegregation ( desegregation ) was decided at public schools. He also agreed to continue with the whole delegation from Mississippi in the U.S. Congress, as well as almost all of his Southern colleagues 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 that vote, calling it a " mistake" that was caused by bad miscalculation. Later in his career, he took a more liberal matter what you looked at a variety of polls. It can be assumed that he was afraid that if he did not, he would forced out by the new liberal Democrats from the Appropriations Committee Chairmanship, which arrived in 1992. In addition, he also came together often in political affairs with the Reagan administration. He voted against Reagan 's economic plans, tax cuts, increased defense spending, welfare reform, abortion restrictions, the missile defense system and the second Gulf War.

The Jamie Whitten Historical Site located on the bridge of Natchez Trace Parkway on the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway -, two projects whose financing Whitten had fought successfully on its terms of time. He had to overcome strong opposition from conservatives, who used to build these federal funds.

He was also known as the author of That We May Live, writ large as a pro -development, pro- chemical pesticide response to Rachel Carson 's book Silent Spring, which was fundamental for the 1962 Beflügelung the modern environmental movement.

With a dwindling chance in 1994 for re-election in a historic twenty-eighth term in office, to Whitten moved with the longest tenure held back as a Member (53 years and two months ) from the House of Representatives. Whitten retired to his estate in Oxford, Mississippi, where he died on September 9, 1995 at the age of 85 years, eight months after he left office.

Honors

The Congress of the United States named in June 1995, the building of the largest main branch of the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington DC Jamie L. Whitten Federal Building in to his honor.