Editing James Eastland (section)

===Anticommunism===
Eastland served on a subcommittee in the 1950s investigating the [[Communist Party USA|Communist Party]] in the United States. As chairman of the [[United States Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security|Internal Security Subcommittee]], he [[subpoena]]ed some employees of ''[[The New York Times]]'' to testify about their activities. The paper was taking a strong position on its editorial page that Mississippi should adhere to the ''Brown'' decision, and claimed that Eastland was persecuting them on that account.  The ''Times'' said in its January 5, 1956 editorial:
{{blockquote|Our faith is strong that long after Senator Eastland and his present subcommittee are gone, long after segregation has lost its final battle in the South, long after all that was known as [[McCarthyism]] is a dim, unwelcome memory, long after the last Congressional committee has learned that it cannot tamper successfully with a free press, The ''New York Times'' will be speaking for the men who make it, and only for the men who make it, and speaking, without fear or favor, the truth as it sees it.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Times) |first=News Documents (The New York |title=The Voice of a Free Press |url=https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1391914-the-voice-of-a-free-press.html |access-date=2019-06-22 |website=www.documentcloud.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Dunlap |first=David W. |date=2015-01-08 |title=1956 {{!}} 'The Voice of a Free Press' |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2015/01/08/1956-the-voice-of-a-free-press/ |access-date=2019-06-22 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>}}

Eastland subsequently allowed the subcommittee to become dormant as communist fears receded.