[1] Like many Southern Democrats of his era, Bilbo believed that black people were inferior; he defended segregation, and was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, the United States' largest white supremacist terrorist organization.

During this term, he earned accolades for enacting Progressive measures such as compulsory school attendance and increased spending on public works projects.

He was the leader in fighting FDR's Fair Employment Practice Committee and helped kill the nomination of New Dealer Aubrey Willis Williams, a liberal Southerner, to head the Rural Electrification Administration.

Although reelected to a third term in 1946, liberals led by Glen H. Taylor blocked his seating based on denying the vote to blacks and accepting bribes.

Bilbo was of short stature (5 ft 2 in (1.57 m)), frequently wore bright, flashy clothing to draw attention to himself, and was nicknamed "The Man" because he tended to refer to himself in the third person.

[21] The Senate passed a resolution – which did not require a 3⁄4 majority – calling him "unfit to sit with honest, upright men in a respectable legislative body.

"[22] During his subsequent campaign for lieutenant governor, Bilbo commented on Washington Dorsey Gibbs, a state senator from Yazoo City.

Cresswell (2006) argues that, in his first term (1916–1920), Bilbo had "the most successful administration" of all the governors who served between 1877 and 1917, putting state finances in order and supporting Progressive measures such as compulsory school attendance, a new charity hospital, and a board of bank examiners.

He was known as "Bilbo the Builder" because he authorized a state highway system, as well as limestone crushing plants, new dormitories at the Old Soldiers' Home, a tuberculosis hospital, and his work on eradication of the South American tick.

[citation needed] Several other reforms were carried out during Bilbo’s time in office; affecting areas such as agriculture,[25][26][27] education,[28][29][30] taxation,[31] public health,[32][33][34][35] social welfare[36] and labor rights.

The Haynes Report, a call to national action in response to race riots throughout the summer of 1919, pointed to Bilbo as exemplifying the collective failure of the states to stop or even prosecute thousands of lawless executions over several decades.

Bilbo spread the rumor that Republican candidate Herbert Hoover had socialized with a black woman, which helped keep Southern Democrats in Smith's column.

In 1929, Thomas G. Gunter of Benton County, Mississippi, was convicted of the murder of his son-in-law, Marlin Drew, on the testimony of his seven-year-old granddaughter, Dorothy Louise.

He made national headlines by giving an interview while "sitting in a tub of hot water, soap in one hand, washrag in the other, and a cigar in his mouth.

There he spoke against "farmer murderers," "poor-folks haters," "shooters of widows and orphans," "international well-poisoners," "charity hospital destroyers," "spitters on our heroic veterans," "rich enemies of our public schools," "private bankers 'who ought to come out in the open and let folks see what they're doing'," "European debt-cancelers," "unemployment makers," pacifists, Communists, munitions manufacturers, and "skunks who steal Gideon Bibles from hotel rooms.

When the Senate majority leader's job opened up in 1937, Harrison ran and faced a close contest with Kentucky's Alben Barkley.

When asked if he would make the personal appeal to Bilbo, Harrison replied, "Tell the son of a bitch I wouldn't speak to him even if it meant the presidency of the United States.

"[57] But Thomas W. Harvey, a senior Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League leader in the US, distanced himself from Bilbo because of his racist speeches.

[58] Bilbo continued to pursue the idea of repatriating African Americans, with support from black separatists such as Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, founder of the Peace Movement of Ethiopia.

Gordon collaborated with Bilbo on his proposed legislation, the Greater Liberia Bill, and directed the Peace Movement of Ethiopia in a national grassroots campaign in support.

[59] Gordon’s support of Bilbo was motivated by her belief that only "government aid" could attain her foreign policy goal of African-American repatriation to West Africa.

[62] Moreover, Gordon’s recognition of the power of government officials to help her attain her goal provoked her to use her gender in her communication with Bilbo in order to appeal to his masculinity.

[64] The movement was to be funded through federal expenditures, initially suggesting $1 billion, and encouraged support from "any country in Europe that owes us a war debt".

He ridiculed blacks, Jews and Italians and helped defeat the renewal of Roosevelt's Fair Employment Practice Committee, which tried to abolish job discrimination based on race or ethnicity.

Black World War II veterans complained of longstanding disfranchisement in the South, which Mississippi had achieved in 1890 by changes to its constitution related to electoral and voter registration rules, which the other Confederate states and Oklahoma followed with similar changes through 1910, most of which survived court challenges.

"[72] During the 1946 Democratic Senate primary in Mississippi, his last race, Bilbo was the subject of a series of attacks by journalist Hodding Carter in his paper, the Greenville Delta Democrat-Times.

It was resolved when a supporter proposed that Bilbo's credentials remain on the table while he returned to Mississippi to seek medical treatment for oral cancer.

His house, which served as the eponym and office of his publishing company, burned down in late fall that year, with the fire consuming many copies of the book.

I believe Negroes should have the right [to indiscriminate use of the ballot], and in Mississippi too—when their main purpose is not to put me out of office and when they won't try to besmirch the reputation of my state.

According to Charles Pope Smith, when he died:Theodore G. Bilbo was perhaps the most controversial public figure on the national scene....The extremism of his pronouncements on race relations had polarized much of the country....To the vast majority of southern whites Bilbo had become the leading spokesman in the fight to preserve that section's structure of racial segregation from those who wanted to bring about racially equality.