John E. Rankin

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In 1920, Rankin was elected to the House as a Democrat. Since passage of a new constitution in 1890 that effectively disenfranchised African Americans, Mississippi had become a one-party state dominated by Democrats. Rankin served sixteen consecutive terms (March 4, 1921 – January 3, 1953) as Mississippi's First District Representative. Appointed to the Census Committee as a freshman congressman, Rankin played an important role in opposing a reapportionment bill that would have reduced the representation of Mississippi, as well as one to reduce the overall representation of the South. Both bills were based on the fact that Southern states had disenfranchised most of their black voters but kept apportionment based on total population in each state, resulting in outsize representation for their white populations. The powerful Democrats consistently defeated northern representatives' effort to reduce southern apportionment.

Rankin coauthored the bill to create the Tennessee Valley Authority, bringing major investment into the rural South. He was a supporter of the Rural Electrification Administration under President Roosevelt's administration, which also benefited many Southerners. He strongly supported Roosevelt's New Deal and advocated economic intervention in poor rural communities, but expected that most benefits would flow to southern whites. He supported racial segregation and opposed civil rights legislation. After 1937, he became active in the Conservative Coalition that largely controlled domestic policy.

Rankin supported the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, known as the "court-packing plan." The bill itself never came up for a vote in either congressional chamber, although he voted for its substitute version in the U.S. House that would have provided additional incentives for the retirement of U.S. Supreme Court justices in order to ensure new appointments by President Roosevelt.

Rankin opposed the creation of the UN, stating, "The United Nations is the greatest fraud in all History. Its purpose is to destroy the United States."

In the 1948 United States presidential election, Rankin opposed the re-election of President Harry S. Truman and supported the Dixiecrat ticket headed by Strom Thurmond and Fielding L. Wright. He was subsequently removed by the House Democratic leadership from the HUAC.

Rankin chaired the Committee on World War Veterans' Legislation (Seventy-second through Seventy-ninth Congresses)) and the Committee on Veterans' Affairs (Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses). In the first role he was the main House sponsor of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, known as the G.I. Bill of Rights. Edward Humes says it was Rankin "who served as the primary force behind the version of the bill that actually got passed into law." He insisted on a provision that the federal program would be administered in a decentralized manner by the states. This ensured that southern states could continue to practice discrimination against black veterans. According to historian Gavin Wright, "In a comprehensive econometric analysis, Sarah Turner and John Bound find that although the GI Bill had substantial positive benefits for black and white veterans outside the South, those from the South made no significant gains in educational attainment."

Rankin sought to prevent the desegregation of VA hospitals. He argued for treating black veterans in rural, isolated all-black hospitals.

Rankin helped establish the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as a standing committee in Congress in February 1945 by leading the conservative coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats. In the postwar years, he was active in probing the Communist Party, USA.

He was criticized for failing to investigate violence and murder perpetrated by chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. After HUAC's chief counsel Ernest Adamson announced: "The committee has decided that it lacks sufficient data on which to base a probe," Rankin added: "After all, the KKK is an old American institution."

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