Walter Sillers, Jr.

Walter Sillers Jr. (April 13, 1888 – September 24, 1966) was an American lawyer, politician, landowner, and white supremacist. A legislative leader from Mississippi, he served as the 56th Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives. An outspoken white nationalist, Sillers has been referred to as one of the most racist political leaders in Mississippi's history. He was one of the wealthiest people to have ever served in the Mississippi legislature. He served on the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a state agency established to combat integration and civil rights organizing.

Background Sillers was born in Rosedale, Mississippi to Walter Sillers Sr. and Florence Warfield Sillers. A member of a prominent Mississippi Delta family, his paternal grandparents were planters and slaveholders in Rosedale. His maternal grandfather was Colonel Elisha Warfield, a planter and Confederate military officer who served in the 2nd Arkansas Infantry Regiment. He was a great-great-grandson of Elisha Warfield and a great-grandnephew of Mary Jane Warfield Clay. He was a grandnephew of Charles Clark, a Confederate general who served as Governor of Mississippi. He was educated at St. Andrew's-Sewanee School, an Episcopal boarding school in Sewanee, Tennessee. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions of 1916, 1924, 1944, 1948, 1952, and 1956.

He inherited multiple plantations from his father and held interests in banks, oil companies, and other businesses in Mississippi. Due to his inheritance and business ventures, he was one of the wealthiest people to have ever served in the Mississippi legislature. has also come under scrutiny, with public calls for the building to be named after Lusia Harris instead, an African American woman who led the Delta State Lady Statesmen basketball team to three consecutive national championships and became the first and only woman ever drafted into the NBA.

Sillers himself, an outspoken white supremacist, advocated for the removal of the names of white namesakes from public spaces should they become integrated.

Personal On November 22, 1911, he married Lena Roberts, the daughter of longtime state senator W. B. Roberts. He was a member of the Freemasons and the Shriners. Sillers died at the age of 78 on September 24, 1966. He was buried at Beulah Cemetery in Beulah, Mississippi.