Robert Rutledge and Ellen (née Conoway) Rutledge. His paternal ancestors had come to Mississippi from South Carolina in 1840. After attending local schools and a normal school, Rankin attended college, graduating from the University of Mississippi law school in 1910. He established a practice in Clay County near where he grew up. He married Annie Laurie Burrous; the couple had a daughter, Annie Laurie Rankin. He became prosecuting attorney of Lee County in 1912, a position he held until 1915. Military service Rankin served in the United States Army during World War I. Political career Election to Congress In 1920, Rankin was elected to the House as a Democrat. Since passage of a new constitution in 1890 that effectively disenfranchised African Americans, Mississippi had become a one-party state dominated by Democrats. Rankin served sixteen consecutive terms (March 4, 1921 – January 3, 1953) as Mississippi's First District Representative. Appointed to the Census Committee as a freshman congressman, Rankin played an important role in opposing a reapportionment bill that would have reduced the representation of Mississippi, as well as one to reduce the overall representation of the South. Both bills were based on the fact that Southern states had disenfranchised most of their black voters but kept apportionment based on total population in each state, resulting in outsize representation for their white populations. The powerful Democrats consistently defeated northern representatives' effort to reduce southern apportionment. Rankin coauthored the bill to create the Tennessee Valley Authority, bringing major investment into the rural South. He was a supporter of the Rural Electrification Administration under President Roosevelt's administration, which also benefited many Southerners. He strongly supported Roosevelt's New Deal and advocated economic intervention in poor rural communities, but expected that most benefits would flow to southern whites. He supported racial segregation and opposed civil rights legislation. After 1937, he became active in the Conservative Coalition that largely controlled domestic policy. Rankin supported the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, known as the "court-packing plan." The bill itself never came up for a vote in either congressional chamber, although he voted for its substitute version in the U.S. House that would have provided additional incentives for the retirement of U.S. Supreme Court justices in order to ensure new appointments by President Roosevelt. Rankin opposed the creation of the UN, stating, "The United Nations is the greatest fraud in all History. Its purpose is to destroy