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→Filibustering anti-lynching legislation
:{{main|Gavagan–Van Nuys–Wagner Act}}
:{{main|Gavagan–Van Nuys–Wagner Act}}
In a 1938 filibuster against [[anti-lynching legislation]], the [[Wagner–Van Nuys Act]] introduced by Northern Democratic senators Robert F. Wagner and Frederick Van Nuys, Bilbo disparaged [[NAACP]] leader Walter F. White as a "flat-nosed Ethiopian" and said on the [[Senate]] floor that the bill would "open the floodgates of [[hell]] in [[the South]]" by encouraging [[black]] men to rape white women.<ref name=fleegler,p.9>"Theodore G. Bilbo and the Decline of Public Racism," p. 9.</ref> Although most Southern Democratic senators opposed anti-lynching legislation on veiled arguments without overt race-baiting, Bilbo notably employed demagogic propaganda.
In a 1938 filibuster against [[anti-lynching legislation]], the [[Wagner–Van Nuys Act]] introduced by Northern Democratic senators Robert F. Wagner and Frederick Van Nuys, Bilbo disparaged [[NAACP]] leader Walter F. White as a "flat-nosed Ethiopian" and said on the [[Senate]] floor that the bill would "open the floodgates of [[hell]] in [[the South]]" by encouraging [[black]] men to rape white women.<ref name=fleegler,p.9>"Theodore G. Bilbo and the Decline of Public Racism," p. 9.</ref> Although most Southern Democratic senators opposed anti-lynching legislation on veiled arguments without overt race-baiting, Bilbo notably employed demagogic propaganda.
While filibustering the 1937–38 anti-lynching bill, Bilbo gave his infamous "floodgates" diatribe:<ref>Mace, Darryl (2014). [https://www.google.com/books/edition/In_Remembrance_of_Emmett_Till/sPL3AwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=theodore+bilbo+costigan-wagner&pg=PT34&printsec=frontcover In Remembrance of Emmett Till: Regional Stories and Media Responses to the Black Freedom Struggle]. ''Google Books''. Retrieved June 16, 2023.</ref>
{{cquote|If you succeed in the passage of this bill, you will open the floodgates of hell in the South. Raping, mobbing, lynching, race riots, and crime will be increased a thousandfold; upon your garments and the garments of those who are responsible for the passage of the measure will be the blood of the raped and outraged daughters of Dixie. as well as the blood of the perpetrators of these crimes that the red-blooded Anglo-Saxon white Southern men will not tolerate.|||Sen. Theodore G. Bilbo (D–MS), January 1938}}
====Pushing for the deportation of blacks ''en masse''====
====Pushing for the deportation of blacks ''en masse''====