Representative Iris Blitch of Georgia embodied a peculiar
mixture of progressive feminism and southern conservatism
during her long political career, which included four
terms in the U.S. House. As a Georgia state legislator she
pushed women’s rights concerns. In the U.S. House, while
displaying considerable legislative ability, she hewed to
more traditional lines, advocating on behalf of agricultural
interests in her rural district while denouncing federal
efforts to enforce civil rights in the South. Over the span
of her career, Blitch earned a reputation as a quick-tongued
legislator who enjoyed the give-and-take of debate. “I can’t
remember a time when I wasn’t interested in politics,” she
once recalled.1
Iris Faircloth was born near Vidalia, Georgia, on
April 25, 1912, daughter of James Louis Faircloth and
Marietta Ridgdill Faircloth. She attended public elementary
schools in Georgia. Both of her parents died by the time she
was nine, so Iris Faircloth moved to Frederick, Maryland,
to live with her two older sisters. She graduated from
Hagerstown High School and returned to Georgia in 1929
to attend the University of Georgia at Athens. After her first
year of school, Iris Faircloth married businessman Brooks
Erwin Blitch Jr. The couple raised two children: Betty and
Brooks, while working together in their pharmacy, lumber,
cattle, and fertilizer businesses, as well as tending to the
family farm in Homerville.
Iris Blitch became involved in politics during the Great
Depression, out of concern for the lack of assistance for
people suffering from the economic disaster. At the time,
Georgia politics were controlled at the executive level by
Democratic Governor Eugene Talmadge’s political machine,
characterized by its popular conservative, rural, and anti-New Deal stance.2 In this context, Blitch first ran for
elective office as a Democratic candidate for the Georgia
state house of representatives in 1940. Although she was
unsuccessful, she later won a seat in the Georgia state
senate in 1946. Two years later, Blitch was elected to the
state house of representatives. While in the legislature, she
managed to pass a bill to allow women to serve on Georgia
juries. When opponents objected that women were too
delicate for “indecent” courtroom responsibilities, Blitch
shot back, “then it is time to bring women into the court
rooms to clean them up.”3 Blitch also returned to school
in 1949 and attended South Georgia College at Douglas,
where she studied political science, accounting, and English.
After losing her 1950 re-election campaign, she was elected
to the state senate in 1952 and served until December 1954
as a close ally of the administration of Governor Herman
Talmadge (Eugene’s son) and was soon recognized as a top
leader in the Talmadge machine.4 During this time she also
was heavily involved with the national Democratic Party,
serving from 1948 to 1956 as one of the eight members of
the Democratic National Committee’s executive committee.
In 1954 Iris Blitch set her sights on the U.S. House of
Representatives. In the race for the Democratic nomination
for a southeastern Georgia seat, Blitch faced four-term
incumbent Representative William McDonald (Don)
Wheeler, an Alma, Georgia, native, Air Force veteran, and
lawyer. Wheeler had made headlines in June 1953 when
he introduced a motion to impeach Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas after Douglas granted a temporary stay
of execution to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs
had been convicted of passing classified atomic information
to the Soviet Union.5 Blitch blasted Wheeler for his absence
during a number of House votes and for what she described
as his failure to protect the district’s large agricultural
constituency. She also advocated a major water conservation
program for the South, along with the development of the
harbor in Brunswick, Georgia.6 In the September 1954
Democratic primary, Blitch won by about 1,400 votes—46
to 44 percent in a three-way race—carrying 13 of the
district’s 20 counties. In the then-one-party system in place
in Georgia, the nomination was tantamount to election,
and Blitch had no opposition in the general election.
The Congresswoman also was unopposed in each of her
three succeeding elections.7 Throughout her House career,
Blitch ran a district office from her converted garage at her
Homerville residence.8 The family bought a Washington,
DC, residence, but Brooks Blitch commuted to Homerville
to tend to his cattle and timber businesses.
Benefiting from her strong party ties, and from her
connections to powerful southern Congressmen, Blitch
was given a seat on the popular Public Works Committee,
where she served on three subcommittees: Roads; Rivers and
Harbors; and Public Buildings and Grounds. As a member
of Public Works, she steered a series of federal projects into
her district including the construction of many post office
and public buildings and the development of a major port
at Brunswick Harbor. Blitch also proved to be something
of a conservationist and won appropriations to protect the
Okefenokee Swamp from overdevelopment and the threat
of reduced water levels. During her first year, she introduced
a bill providing for the conservation of water on small
farms and the drainage of lowlands to make them suitable
for growing timber. Her amendment to the Watershed
Protection and Flood Prevention Act encouraged small
water conservation projects by providing individual property
owners with federal funds.9 The bill was passed during her
second term in the House. “The management of soil and
water resources must be the concern of everyone who loves
his Nation,” Blitch once remarked in a floor speech.10
Much of her focus was devoted to the agricultural issues
that affected her rural district. Working closely with the
Agriculture Committee, she tried to meet the needs of
farmers of wheat, tobacco, and jute, a fibrous material used
for carpet backing. Seeking to protect the jute-backing
industry in her district and to encourage its growth
throughout southern Georgia, Blitch favored amending
the 1930 Tariff Act to make it more difficult for foreign-made
jute to enter the country.11 Business-oriented as well,
she expended much effort on attracting other industries to
her district.12 Blitch was a fiscal conservative who opposed
federal funding for education. She described efforts to
allocate federal money for public schools and universities
as “a naked lust for national power, rather than a pious
beneficence”; an intrusion of federal oversight on local,
particularly southern, school systems.13 Along similar lines,
she argued throughout her four terms that the U.S. should
not provide large foreign aid packages to its Cold War
allies and other developing nations. “We cannot continue
throwing good money after bad just hoping that it will save
us,” she told House colleagues. “It is up to the people of the
different countries, including the United States of America,
to assume some responsibility for themselves.”14
In March 1956, Blitch was part of a group of
100 Members of Congress—19 Senators and 81
Representatives—from 11 southern states who signed
the “Southern Manifesto.” The document pledged the
signatories to work to reverse the Supreme Court’s
1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing racial
segregation in public schools. Many southerners viewed the
decision as infringing on state’s rights, and the “Manifesto”
denounced it as a “clear abuse of judicial powers.”15 Blitch
also attacked a proposed voting rights amendment then on
the House Floor as “iniquitous, infamous” and a “cancer of
indecencies.” In reaction to federal efforts to enforce civil
rights legislation in the South, Blitch argued that “in an age
where millions have died to preserve freedom, the executive,
the judiciary, the legislative branches of the United States
are destroying it.”16 She blasted a proposed 1956 civil rights
bill as a measure designed to sow internal discord between
southern Blacks and whites. “If you do not think that this
bill is a Communist plan, then you are not using the brain
that God gave you,” she declared in a floor speech. “Russia
would rejoice at the passage of this bill because it would
accomplish what she wants. It would divide and separate
us.”17 During debate on federal aid to education in 1956,
Blitch went so far as to argue that “a grave cloud of doubt”
hung over the “legality” of the post-Civil War amendments
to the Constitution, including those outlawing slavery,
guaranteeing citizenship rights for all Americans, and
conferring voting rights to African-American men.18 She
also argued against the legislation, which eventually was
signed into law as the Civil Rights Act of 1957.19
Due to severe arthritis, Blitch declined to run for
renomination for a fifth term in 1962. Among the 10
colleagues who spoke about her retirement on the House
Floor, Majority Leader Carl Albert of Oklahoma remarked,
“I have never known anyone more persistent in her devotion
to duty. I have seen her sit here on the floor attending to
every item of duty when she was ill and in pain. She is a real
soldier.”20 Not long after she left Congress, however, Blitch
once again made headlines. In August 1964, she announced
her decision to leave the Democratic Party to support the
Republican presidential candidacy of Arizona Senator Barry
Morris Goldwater. “In my political lifetime,” Blitch said
during her endorsement of Goldwater, “only one leader
has come forward to give the American people a choice
between a more centralized state and the complete dignity
of the individual.”21 Afterward, Blitch retired from active
politics and settled on St. Simons Island off the southeastern
coast of Georgia. Late in life, Blitch moderated her stance
on civil rights and supported then-Governor of Georgia
Jimmy Carter when he declared that “the time for racial
discrimination is over.”22 In 1988 she moved to San Diego,
California, to be nearer to her daughter. Iris Blitch died
there on August 19, 1993.23
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