Soviet Union, Rankin was condemned by Jewish groups for repeatedly calling the Rosenbergs a pair of "communist kikes". Japanese Americans In his first term as representative, Rankin introduced an anti-miscegenation bill to prevent whites from marrying "Mongolians" and African Americans. A decade later, in 1930 he lobbied against Hawaii's bid for statehood on the grounds that it would add "two Jap senators" to Congress. Rankin was one of the few Southern congressmen to support West Coast politicians and lobbyists calling for the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans, proposing that every person of Japanese ancestry in the United States be deported at the end of the war. He reintroduced a defeated "concentration camp bill" to remove ethnic Japanese from the country and all U.S. territories. (Most ethnic Japanese Americans were removed from the West Coast.) As the war progressed, he continued to speak out against Japanese Americans, testifying in favor of labeling Japanese and African American blood donations to prevent them from "contaminating" white recipients and limiting the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team to labor battalions instead of active combat. Senatorial aspirations In 1947 Rankin ran for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate that was vacated by the death of Theodore G. Bilbo in office. He finished last among five major candidates with 13% of the vote. Final years and death In 1952, Rankin was defeated for re-election to the House by Congressman Thomas G. Abernethy, also a Democrat, after their districts were joined through redistricting. At that time, most blacks in Mississippi were still disenfranchised, a status that persisted until after Congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Rankin died at his home in Tupelo on November 26, 1960. He is interred in Greenwood Cemetery in West Point, Mississippi. See also List of members of the House Un-American Activities Committee References Citations Further reading Katznelson, Ira. When Affirmative Action Was White, New York: W.W. Norton, 2005, pp. 113–40 Onkst, David H. "First a Negro...Incidentally a Veteran: Black World War II Veterans and the GI Bill in the Deep South, 1944-1948", Journal of Southern History 31 (1998), pp. 517–43 Turner, Sarah J. and John Bound. "Closing the Gap or Widening the Divide: The Effects of the GI Bill and World War II on the Educational Outcomes of Black Americans", Journal of Economic History 63 (2003), pp. 145–77, via JSTOR Vickers, Kenneth Wayne. "John Rankin: Democrat and Demagogue." M.