of the federal free lunch program, which was enacted in 1945 and continues; it was a welfare program that helped poor students. In 1946, Ellender defended fellow Southern demagogue Theodore Bilbo, who incited violence against blacks in his re-election campaign. When a petition was filed to the Senate, a committee chaired by Ellender investigated the voter suppression. Ellender defended the violent attacks on blacks trying to vote as the result of "tradition and custom" rather than Bilbo's incitements. The committee voted on party lines to clear Bilbo, with the three Democrats siding with the Mississippi demagogue while the two conservative Republicans, Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa and Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, dissented from the verdict. Bilbo, however, ultimately did not take his Senate seat due to medical issues and died a short time later. Ellender served as the powerful chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee from 1951 to 1953 and 1955 to 1971, through which capacity he was a strong defender of sugar cane interests. He chaired the even more powerful Senate Appropriations Committee from 1971 until his death. Denoting his seniority as a Democrat in the Senate, Ellender was President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate from 1971 to 1972, an honorific position. Ellender was an opponent of Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who had achieved national prominence through a series of well-publicized speeches and investigations attacking supposed communist infiltration in the US government, army and educational institutions during the 1950s. In March 1952, Ellender stated the possibility of the House of Representatives electing the president in that year's general election and added that the possibility could arise from the entry of Georgia Senator Richard Russell, Jr. into the general election as a third-party candidate and thereby see neither President Truman or Republican Senator Robert A. Taft able to secure enough votes from the Electoral College. Ellender strongly opposed the federal civil rights legislation of the 1960s, which included the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to enforce blacks' constitutional rights in voting. Many, particularly in the Deep South, had been disfranchised since 1900. In the aftermath of the Duck Hill lynchings, he also helped block a proposed anti-lynching bill which had previously been passed in the House, proclaiming, "We shall at all cost preserve the white supremacy of America." He did support some Louisiana state legislation sought by civil rights groups, such as repeal of the state poll