Physical Geographical Separation, and not Segregation

Theodore Gilmore Bilbo (1877–1947) was possibly America’s most controversial politician to ever be elected to high office, including the governorship and senate of the state of Mississippi.

An avowed Southern nationalist, Bilbo was even a member of the Ku Klux Klan in his youth, although he left that organisation before he was elected to office.

Although a firm defender of Southern state’s rights and segregation, he was unusual in that he was one of the few who realised that racial segregation provided no answer to racial issues, and invoked considerable opposition from his fellow Southerners because of his demand that physical geographical separation, and not segregation, was the only way to preserve America and Western Civilization.

This book, written while Bilbo was awaiting a ruling by the US Senate designed to strip him of his senate seat, summed up his core beliefs about race, civilization and what he called the only solution to racial conflict: separate geographical states. It is a valuable historical document which accurately reflects racial thinking in the Deep South prior to the Civil Rights Era.

"If we choose any plan short of the physical separation of the races, we are in effect adopting the scheme of amalgamation of the races. We have thousands of years of racial contact in world history to prove to us that where different races live side by side, their blood will intermingle and a mongrel people will be the result. The road of amalgamation and mongrelization leads to the destruction of both the white and the Negro races and to the decay of our civilization which is the product of the white man.

Any student of racial history knows that if the Negroes remain in the United States, the last American will be an octoroon or a mongrel with some portion of Negro blood. If the Negroes are not removed, this condition may come about in three to five hundred years: The fact that it will come sooner or later is a certainty." P/B 257 pp